If your company is planning a PR campaign, then it may need to use AVE. But what is this? And is it really necessary? Read our full and explanation to find out! Advertising Value Equivalency or AVE is a tool used to measure the advantage that a PR campaign has had for a business.
PR is public relations. A PR campaign meanwhile is essentially a form of promotional marketing. Promotional marketing is all about getting your company name out there and getting people thinking and asking questions about your business. Of course, the more people a company can reach with promotional marketing, and the bigger the impression they can make, the more likely members of the general public are to consider your business/products/services when they need something in particular.
The question is then how do you go about reaching a large selection of people with promotional marketing? And how do you get your business onto the minds of lots of people? There are lots of different methods so here we will look at a few.
Promotional Products
By giving out promotional products, or selling them, you will be getting people to use clothing and apparel that has your brand on it. This will mean that they are inadvertently promoting your business for you by showing others the items with the logos on them, and by walking through the street with them, appearing in photographs and generally circulating. At the same time this gets people to feel like they are a part of what you are trying to do and gets them behind your movement.
Sponsored Events
Sponsoring an event is a great way to get recognition and awareness from something which is already high profile. By sponsoring say a charity event, or a sporting event, you can get that event to brandish your name or even to change its name in order to incorporate your company title. As this will already be being attended by lots of people or be being televised etc, this will then mean that you need to do no additional work to get your name out to hundreds or thousands of people. At the same time, you can get them to hand out your promotional products so that you better distribute this other method of promotion.
Competitions
Competitions are a fantastic way to generate publicity from promotional ideas. This way people will get something for free by visiting your website or reading your magazine and so you can gravitate more people to your business. From here you can then even make your promotional items the prize so that you end up further spreading your message and distributing your items.
Rebranding
Rebranding is a great way to get media attention and is a great excuse to role out a whole selection of new promotional items.
Marketing Campaign
Smart advertising ‘campaigns’ can go beyond just a simple advert in a magazine or on television, and can become more interactive and generate media speculation. For instance film studios will often tease at plots of their films and create treasure hunts online. Other media companies have used other methods such as leaking details of an upcoming project on a weekly basis to create media hype. Any company can use these strategies however, and it just takes a little imagination.
Launch Parties
If you are launching a new business or a new endeavour, then a launch party is a great way to get people talking about it and to get the media amassed while generating excitement and interest.
Other examples include:
Press releases
Publicity stunts
Granting interviews
Pre-briefs
The question then, is how you ensure that all the money spent on this has been worthwhile. How can you tell if you are likely to get ROI? This is precisely where AVE comes in handy: it is a process of monitoring how brand visibility, hype and more have risen and to thus provide a score, usually out of ten. Whether or not this is an effective/useful tool is debatable however!