B2B Marketing’s first annual B2B PR Agencies Benchmarking Report is to be launched this month. Alex Aspinall shares some key findings ahead of its publication
Anyone with even a passing interest in the world of communications will be aware that the goal posts have been moved more than a little in the last five or 10 years. The tried and trusted has been replaced with new ways of working and a whole raft of new challenges and opportunities have served to transform marketing, PR and publishing to the extent that very few people are now still confident that they can describe exactly where one turns into the other.
Shifting sands
Digitisation – both in terms of the technologies and techniques now available to businesses and business buyers, and the solutions such shifts have spawned – is at the heart of this change. B2B Marketing has examined these issues from a wide variety of marketing viewpoints over the years but relatively rarely from the point of view of those working in PR. The inaugural B2B PR Agencies Benchmarking Report is our attempt to address this shortcoming.
In a bid to understand how digitisation has affected B2B PR agencies we asked respondents to state whether they agreed with a series of statements, one of which garnered an overwhelmingly uniform response. Ninety-six per cent of respondents agreed that ‘PR is now more mixed in with marketing than it used to be’. It’s relatively unsurprising that we recorded such agreement on this point; few would argue that the focus on content, inbound and social media hasn’t created a blurring of boundaries.
But how has this blurring impacted on the realities of getting the job done and making money? It seems there isn’t a great deal of concern detectable at present. Indeed, over a third (35 per cent) reported that they found it easier to satisfy client need since widespread digitisation than they did before. No one reflected that they found it more difficult to satisfy client need.
In terms of the other disciplines with which PR agencies recognise they are overlapping more now than they used to, a sizeable 39 per cent stated that they were competing with publishers more now than they were five years ago, whereas only 14 per cent of those asked recognised increased competition with tech providers.
State of the market
Despite the shifting sands and potential jostling for position that the developments outlined above have created, there exists an encouragingly optimistic outlook in the B2B PR industry at present. When asked how they would describe the current state of the market, no one opted for ‘poor’ or ‘challenging’. Instead, 22 per cent described it as ‘strong’, 56 per cent opted for ‘good’ and the final 22 per cent said ‘static’.
This buoyant description shows that the upturn described elsewhere is filtering through to those reliant on client budgets, and is nothing but good news for everyone associated with B2B media, PR and marketing. When we polled marcomms agencies on the same question towards the end of 2014, we found a similarly positive outlook.
Another question we posed in a bid to ascertain the current state of the market focused on the people paying the bills – the clients. We were specifically interested in how clients were paying, and how they were measuring the contributions being made by their PR partners.
With regard to the first point, it was encouraging to see that, in the vast majority of cases, client/agency relationships are structured in the way most likely to encourage long-term successful working. Eighty-seven per cent of our respondents reported being paid by their biggest client on a rolling retainer. Only 13 per cent were being paid on a campaign-by-campaign basis.
There were similarly conclusive responses when it came to reporting how clients were assessing the success of the work PR agencies were carrying out on their behalf. ‘Share of voice’ was the main metric on which most of our respondent agencies were being measured (35 per cent were most commonly measured in this way). Meanwhile, 30 per cent were judged most commonly according to ‘column inches’, 17 per cent on ‘leads generated’ and nine per cent on ‘brand reach’. Once again we can see the effects of digitisation here. ‘Share of voice’ is certainly a metric to have grown more relevant over the last five or 10 years, and the fact that ‘leads generated’ is now the third most commonly evaluated metric provides further evidence of the blurring boundaries between marketing and PR.
Challenges
We’ve seen that, despite the transformation that has taken place in the communications landscape, PR agencies seem relatively buoyant with regard to their position in the mix. However, this doesn’t mean that there is nothing causing agency bosses to lose sleep.
When we asked our respondents to reflect on the areas with which they were currently struggling, two clear frontrunners emerged. These were ‘attracting talent’ (which was a challenge for 86 per cent of respondents) and ‘time lost pitching for work’ (78 per cent).
It’s perhaps no great surprise to see these two at the top of the ‘challenges’ list. They are two perennial agency gripes. Agencies thrive in direct relation to how good their people are, and – with very few exceptions – also in relation to how much business they manage to win. This second point, particularly, is unlikely to be resolved any time soon.
More positively, once an agency manages to secure the people needed, it doesn’t seem to struggle to retain them. ‘Staff retention’ was described as being ‘not a problem’ by 83 per cent. Meanwhile, ‘embracing technology’ wasn’t a problem for 74 per cent and ‘the speed of industry change’ was not a challenge for 70 per cent of PR agencies.
Though not right at the top of the list, ‘internal skills gaps’ was described as being a challenge for 70 per cent. That so many described it as a challenge, and because it is once again reflective of the fact that the industry has undergone such rapid change, means it’s a phenomena that bears closer investigation. We wanted to know what a skills gap in a PR agency looks like in 2015. The results make for interesting reading.
Data analytics is the area in which agencies most recognise a shortcoming. It was highlighted as a skills gap by 70 per cent of respondents. Again we see the effects of digitisation, technology use and its consequences at play. Oddly, and perhaps slightly alarmingly, the second most acknowledged skills gap is ‘content writing’ (selected by 48 per cent as a gap), while ‘financial/business acumen’ and ‘brand/marketing experience’ were third and fourth, with 43 and 35 per cent, respectively.
Interestingly, when we asked our respondents to report on where they envisaged focusing their recruitment efforts over the coming three years, the list did not mirror the skills gaps. ‘Content writing’ was top, with 78 per cent selecting it as a top-three focus, ‘account management’ was second, chosen by 52 per cent, and ‘data analytics’ came in third, with 43 per cent. It’s possible to put forward a few explanations for this apparent mismatch. But conjecture is not particularly helpful, and it may pay to conduct further research into the ‘ideal’ PR skill set. Does such a thing exist?
The future
The final question in our survey was open-ended, and simply asked respondents to write as much or as little as they liked in response to the question: ‘What do you think the next five years holds for the B2B PR landscape?’ The responses left here provided some of the most interesting data gathered in the survey, and – though reflecting it all in detail here is impossible – it’s worth summarising some of the most noteworthy responses.
In contrast to much of the optimism found elsewhere in the report, one respondent simply wrote: ‘It will get tougher’. Others sought to highlight that further boundary blurring was ahead, particularly in relation to the ways in which PR agencies will interact with marketing agencies and publishers. Several respondents highlighted the prospect of increasing competition, and
few were predicting success would be easily obtained.
But to conclude on more positive notes, many respondents were highlighting the opportunities created by the changing landscape. It seems a majority of PR agencies believe that with the correct focus on embracing new techniques and technologies, and by continually evaluating and updating the skill sets that exist in their organisations, the immediate future is set to be both interesting and profitable. Just don’t go resting on your laurels.