The hard facts about online PR

E-Consultancy recently released a comprehensive report all about online PR off the back of a 300 strong survey of marketing and PR professionals. It seeked to understand the percentage of PR budgets being spent on online activity; define who is driving strategy and implementation; explore its growth and highlight the challenges that marketers currently face.

Here are the results in brief:

- A surprisingly large percentage of retained PR budgets are being spent on Online PR. Respondents reported 39pc and agencies report 47pc of total PR fees.

- Secondly, the report found that when companies outsource Online PR to agencies or specialists, 51pc of companies are using PR agencies but a significant percentage are using search marketing agencies (29%) and web development agencies (22%) to develop and deliver Online PR strategy. The question therefore remains then – should online PR be the responsibility of one particular agency?

- Online PR is still very much viewed as a specialist and technical PR function by many respondents. Two thirds of agencies surveyed (64%) have a separate Online PR division. It’s thought that many PR agencies consider online activity as a specialism but predicted it will become immersed into the overall PR strategy over time.

- Surprisingly, when it comes to agencies, levels of client satisfaction are not encouraging and they may need to improve their Online PR knowledge and offering. Only a fifth of clients (20%) are very satisfied with their agency’s level of Online PR knowledge, 28% are moderately satisfied, 19% are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, 15% are mildly dissatisfied and 13% are very dissatisfied. Equally, clients recognise that their own knowledge could be improved with 49% saying that their Online PR knowledge is good and 12% poor.

I’m pretty sure this is related to ‘managing the client expectations’ properly. So many agencies still preach the concept of online PR but don’t know what the likely results will be. It’s all about the ROI I’m sure you’ll agree.  Secondly, many brands need to be properly educated on the subject and realise that whilst being seen within the pages of The Metro still has a place (and always will I must add)... gaining a link back from a well ranked and popular website will pay much larger dividends over time.