Wednesday, July 24, 2013

PR vs Digital Marketing for a Start-up

I'm in the start-up world, and responsible for managing my entrepreneurial endeavors' sales, business development, marketing and PR efforts, I also take out the trash.  In my world you wear multiple hats and become a jack of all trades.  But I would like to address an issue we currently faced regarding PR or Digital Marketing or Both.  For the sake of this post lets assume I work for a social website, PS we are a social site!

Recently I've been debating where to allocate dollars to drive customer interaction and customer traffic specifically should I spend more dollars early on with PR, on digital marketing or both.  Ideally, it would be both but unfortunately I think it makes sense right now.

 So the question is PR or Digital Marketing?

Answer: Depends. Ugh!

For my business being a social platform we've elected to go the PR route.  Hoping to spend dollars on exposure rather than targeted individual marketing.  Its hard to calculate the ROI of a potential user if we aren't necessarily asking them to buy anything.

For an e-commerce business I believe the answer would be different if you have to chose one or the other.  I believe Digital Marketing would generate the most bang for your buck because you can easily calculate the ROI of an individual user.

What do you think is the right answer? If you were a social platform what is your argument to use digital over PR?

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