Evolving PR towards influencers
Seth reminds me that PR is a diminishing activity, in terms of its importance. The more enlightened PR firms accept that their business has been commoditised, with minimal opportunities for differentiation and fierce price competition. The question is, what do you do about it?
As ever, it’s a mindset change that’s required. Most start-up firms I know begin their marketing activities by recruiting a PR agency. Why? Because that’s what everyone else does.
Why not try to engage with the 50 most important people in your target market? Sure, some of these will be journalists, and you should definitely reach out to them. But you’ll probably find there are only a relative handful of them, which means you can treat them differently. Find out what they want to hear, what they’d find useful, what they’re interested in. Concentrate on being a resource for these most important journalists.
It means you don’t have to go chasing after the hundred other hacks that cover your space. Then use the time saved to focus on other influencer types, such as analysts, academics, consultants, bloggers, standards bodies and regulators.
The catch? It’s hard to determine which of the hundred journalists are really influential, by which I mean influential on decision makers. And it’s even harder to determine who else is influential, beyond journalists. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, or can’t, do it
As ever, it’s a mindset change that’s required. Most start-up firms I know begin their marketing activities by recruiting a PR agency. Why? Because that’s what everyone else does.
Why not try to engage with the 50 most important people in your target market? Sure, some of these will be journalists, and you should definitely reach out to them. But you’ll probably find there are only a relative handful of them, which means you can treat them differently. Find out what they want to hear, what they’d find useful, what they’re interested in. Concentrate on being a resource for these most important journalists.
It means you don’t have to go chasing after the hundred other hacks that cover your space. Then use the time saved to focus on other influencer types, such as analysts, academics, consultants, bloggers, standards bodies and regulators.
The catch? It’s hard to determine which of the hundred journalists are really influential, by which I mean influential on decision makers. And it’s even harder to determine who else is influential, beyond journalists. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, or can’t, do it
Labels: influencer marketing, influencer relations, PR
posted by Duncan Brown at 12:09 pm
2 Comments:
I can't see any factual basis for your feeling that PR is falling in importance. Seth's post, which you use as your source, doesn't argue that PR is falling in importance, or suggest any trend at all. He names some brands which didn't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on launching but which got their PR after launching. What he does argue is that great publicity is a gift, but not something firms should chase.
Spending on public relations has continued to increase in recent years. Spending on public relations in Britain has risen by one third since the year 2000. This might not change, even during recession: During the recession of 1991, spending on public relations increased, while spending on advertising decreased. What we might see is a shift between the proportion of PR staff that are in-house or agency side.
Hi Duncan. A couple of responses to your comments.
1. I don't use Seth Godin as a source, but as a prompt. I thought my words "Seth reminds me" might have made that clear.
2. I didn’t say that spend on PR is falling. However, since you cite IDC, IDC's figures for PR in the tech sector are thus: In 2007 PR spend was 7.1% of marketing spend. In 2008 IDC expects this to fall to 6.3%.
3. The point of my post isn’t that spend was rising or falling. I haven’t met a marketing director in the past 5 years that thought PR gave his firm a strategy advantage. PR is necessary, they tell me, but it’s not sufficient. So the point is that PR is increasingly commoditised, and so PR firms and technology vendors need to do something different. Targeting influencers is an effective strategy in optimising PR, and other marketing activities.
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