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Comment by duncanawoods | Hacker News Reader

One thing I found interesting was "PR is cheaper than marketing" in the slides she references. I think I lazily assumed PR was the expensive end of marketing that also required luck and special access - I have never really seen the numbers that show it might be be better value.

"Speed as the primary business strategy" Dave McClure:

http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/best-strategy-is-speed-...

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>I have never really seen the numbers that show it might be be better value.

I think people misunderstand the function of PR vs. Advertising.

PR is a way to build credibility through third party validation. Advertising is how you convert that credibility into sales.

They both have their time and place and you really need both to build a big brand.

If you run PR as your only marketing, you will be disappointed by the lack of direct sales and quantifiable ROI it drives.

If you run advertising without PR (or other third party validation) you will get frustrated with how expensive your cost per acquisition is from advertising.

The costs of PR vs paid advertising are going to depend on the case and how interesting the story is. As a couple of bits of anecdote, we used to be in the games business and getting a page in a newspaper through PR was like 1/2 to 1/4 as much as paying for the same space as an ad (that was in the old days pre Google).

Also PG in The Submarine implies he got value from PR for Viaweb:

>Our startup spent its entire marketing budget on PR: at a time when we were assembling our own computers to save money, we were paying a PR firm $16,000 a month. And they were worth it. PR is the news equivalent of search engine optimization; instead of buying ads, which readers ignore, you get yourself inserted directly into the stories. [1]

>Our PR firm was one of the best in the business. In 18 months, they got press hits in over 60 different publications.

I completely agree w/ you re: PR - that is the one part of Mike's slide deck that I disagree with.

The author of the slides is Mike Cassidy.

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