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A research
brief released recently by MarketingExperiments (an
online laboratory that tests every marketing method on
the Internet), announced that public relations campaigns
can cost less and deliver better returns on investment (ROI)
than pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns.
According to the authors, “… we also learned that when
you sit down and do the math, the cost per click of a PR
campaign can be less than driving traffic through the
purchase of keywords in a pay-per-click campaign.”
The company authored and published seven
press releases over a six-month span. It tracked the
cost of submitting the releases to the media and tracked
the links back to its site. From that activity, it
reported 3,000 hits to its site and six interviews,
which led to more (untracked) hits. The company also
reported a five-fold increase in links going back to its
site.
MarketingExperiments looked at the results of the
PR campaign and compared them to the PPC advertising
they had been doing, for both them and their nonprofit
partner i58projects.com. For both companies, the press
release campaigns created directly traceable traffic
that was less expensive than the historical-average PPC
traffic. Traffic generated by press releases for
MarketingExperiments.com was 21.4% less expensive and
for i58Projects CPC (cost per click)
was 56.3% less expensive than traffic from PPC engines.
The
authors noted that the better return on investment was
just the beginning of the story. In addition to getting
thousands of new visitors at a lower cost per click, the
PR campaign generated thousands of new links to the
company’s website (increasing the search engine
rankings), which PPC advertising can’t do.
The campaign
also generated follow-up articles and interviews,
speaking invitations, requests for articles, etc. – all
something that advertising won’t achieve. The exposure
of a good PR campaign can also result in media
visibility that can help build brand awareness – another
arena in which PPC advertising can’t compete.
The
authors said it best when they concluded, “In short, our
tests lead us to believe that PR is extraordinarily
under-utilized in the online industry, and that
companies should conduct their own tests internally to
determine both the short-term and longer-term benefits
of PR.”
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