Online PR Presentation - Citigate Dewe Rogerson

The business case for online PR and its implications for corporate communications By Phil Szomszor Citigate Dewe Rogerson 26 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?

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:

Lack of available budgets (48.6%)

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

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

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.”

Set clear objectives for online PR

Dedicate resources

Get buy-in from across the company

Measure it using combination of web analytics and buzz monitoring

Report back to those involved

Use a combination of tools

Accept that online PR is much more of a two way conversation

Network with peers to find out what works (and doesn’t)

Experiment – there are guidelines but no established rules yet

Keep going – it doesn’t happen overnight

Tips to help online PR take off

The benefits of running an online PR campaign

Competitive differentiator

Boost your website ranking

Greater innovation through collaboration

Get closer to customers – build relationships

Be more responsive to the changing news agenda

Achieve more from traditional PR

Move beyond the ‘spin’ associated with PR

Talk to us about your online PR requirements For more information, please contact: Phil Szomszor Citigate Dewe Rogerson Tel: 0207 6389571 Email: [email_address] Twitter : http://twitter.com/theredrocket