Every year around budget planning time, business owners and managers start to pick through everything in the budget and ask, “Is this working and is it worth it?” Marketing, in particular, receives considerable scrutiny because it is difficult to measure. And public relations, because of its vague measurement criteria, invariably begs the question “Is an Orlando PR firm worth it? Do we really need to spend money on PR?”

Your marketing has three primary options: advertise, publicize … or both

The totality of your marketing outreach to build sales of your product or service will depend on how much you can afford to put your name in front of your target audience.

If you totally rely on advertising, be prepared to spend. Advertising is costly, and with the onset of online marketing, has become increasingly fragmented and difficult to measure.

What are the benefits of advertising?

The benefit of advertising is you can totally control where and when your messages appear and who will be exposed to them.

What are the disadvantages of advertising?

The negative of advertising is your ad message must compete with every other ad message.  To put this in perspective, Americans are exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 advertising messages every day.

Some advertising is certainly necessary, but how much you can afford to spend on advertising is totally up to your overall marketing strategy and budget.

Public relations is considerably less costly than advertising.

What are the benefits of PR?

The upside of PR is that media coverage can create awareness levels for relatively little cost, along with the benefit of outside recognition of your business.

What are the disadvantages of PR?

The downside to PR is that publicity requires time and redundancy to connect with media…and media are the decision makers about when and if they will focus on your business.

A sound marketing plan will include public relations in the mix

If your enterprise has the financial ability, a combined marketing approach provides you with double coverage—the ability to control where your message appears via your advertising along with the power of media coverage for your business from media relations.

So, what to do?

This article provides a thoughtful approach that addresses the question of developing a well-balanced marketing plan.

Truth be known, there is no one single answer to the challenge of how much to invest in marketing, just as there are no two businesses that are identical.

At our Orlando PR firm, we can help you with your marketing plan

The folks at our Orlando PR firm look at themselves as marketers first and public relations specialists second.

The only reason we exist is to help you sell your product or service. After all, that is the only reason marketing exists.

What differentiates us is that we think and act like marketers, but we use publicity and reputation building as our primary means of getting the word out. Our tool kit includes things like stories, photos, videos, special events and relationship building with key industry media leaders and audience connectors.

As 2026 starts to appear on the calendar, think about using a combined approach in your marketing plan. Include public relations in the mix.

And when you add public relations, call us at 407-339-0879 or email us at will@wellonscommunications.com and let us help you include an affordable way to include PR.