The business case for online PRand its implications for corporate communications

By Phil SzomszorCitigate Dewe Rogerson26 November, 2008

By 2012…

65.1% say it will be completely integrated with other communications channels

30.3% say it will be an important add-on to traditional channels No-one thought it would be a fad and increasingly unimportant… no

surprises there

There is an appetite for online PR

We’re on the right lines though

23.9% say that it’s an important element of the overall communications strategy

51.4% have adopted some elements of online PR into overall approach 19.3% are still investigating online PR and plan to dedicate

resources/budget to it in 2009

What online PR activities are people doing?

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Yet it doesn’t attract much of the marketing budget

Proportion of marketing budget dedicated to online PR

But there’s light at the end of the tunnel

11.9% intend to start online PR for the first time in the next year 42.2% will increase budget dedicated to online PR

What are the barriers to adopting online PR?

The top three reasons are:

1. Lack of available budgets (48.6%)

2. Absence of skills in-house to drive projects (40.4%)

3. Lack of understanding of what online PR can do for our business (31.2%)

Let’s look at what’s holding things back

It’s not being measured

26.6% don’t measure the effect of online PR at all …and this isn’t just the people that aren’t really doing it yet – almost

30% of the ‘some elements’ respondents don’t measure the effect of online PR

Spread the love

Online PR tends to only involve the marketing team

– Only 24.8% said that online PR was an integrated approach between marketing, PR, corporate comms, IT etc.

The ‘harder’ or less easily measurable activities aren’t being embraced yet

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We can learn from those already doing it…

The Digital Early Birds

Those that said online PR was an important element were… More likely to go for hard to reach fruit, like blogger relations (34%),

social networking engagement (42.3%) and produce own company blog (46.2%)

This is in addition to the ‘easy’ activities, such as PPC or SEO Measure impact (only 3.8% don’t measure the impact of online PR) Dedicate resource (42% spend more than 10% of marketing budgets) …but budget limitations are still a gripe for half of respondents

The Digital Tortoises

Those that said they were investigating online PR for next year were… More likely to go for low hanging fruit, like SEO (38.1%), banner advertising

(47.6%) and e-newsletters (57.1%) More likely to lack the skills in-house than overall sample (47.6%) …but were still confident that it would be an integrated element of the

communications mix by 2012 (57.1%)

Don’t take our word for it…

“It is the best way to reach the media and stakeholders. More and more people are moving online for everything from entertainment to

information.”

“As we are a technical company in quite a niche market often the first place potential customers will research our products is

online so we need to increase our online presence. Also from a corporate image point of view it is important that we have online

visibility as well as offline.“

“We don't want to be

left behind!”

“PPC is the obvious starting point for any online marketer. It is becoming more and more

expensive and SEO, and the online PR variants, will become

more important in the on-line arms-race” “To keep up with trends we

will create more blogs and input more regularly to

industry blogs. We are also looking at having a presence

in Wikipedia. “

“We've not adopted it fully, so it needs more resource, hence more

spend.”

“Online PR will be part of integrated campaigns, the

shift therefore will more and more be in the direction of online

communication moving away from more traditional methods. Online comms is

greener and more cost effective that traditional methods, in theory more

user friendly and turnaround can be a lot

quicker if delivering timely comms.”

1. Set clear objectives for online PR2. Dedicate resources3. Get buy-in from across the company4. Measure it using combination of web analytics and buzz monitoring5. Report back to those involved6. Use a combination of tools7. Accept that online PR is much more of a two way conversation8. Network with peers to find out what works (and doesn’t)9. Experiment – there are guidelines but no established rules yet10. Keep going – it doesn’t happen overnight

Tips to help online PR take off

The benefits of running an online PR campaign

1. Competitive differentiator

2. Boost your website ranking

3. Greater innovation through collaboration

4. Get closer to customers – build relationships

5. Be more responsive to the changing news agenda

6. Achieve more from traditional PR

7. Move beyond the ‘spin’ associated with PR

For more information, please contact:Phil SzomszorCitigate Dewe RogersonTel: 0207 6389571Email: phil.szomszor@citigatedr.co.ukTwitter: http://twitter.com/theredrocket

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