I am lucky enough to currently Chair the PRCA’s Technology PR Group in the UK. Our basic remit is to look to ensure the best interests of the tech PR community are represented within the PRCA and it’s also just a good chance to get together with senior peers in the tech PR community and swap stories, talk about the current climate and the industry.
One thing we did decide was that there isn’t a great deal of statistical information around on the PR industry in general, and certainly not on the tech sector specifically. And so we thought a useful exercise might be to commission an external market research agency (the lovely chaps at Vanson Bourne agreed to help us out – www.vansonbourne.com) to ask some very basic questions of our combined client base. The results, we think, are very interesting indeed (and, I hope, useful). The research has been covered today in UK PR Week.
Ever been asked how much of the overall marketing budget is spent on PR? I know I have been, by a lot of big clients. Well, according to our research UK technology brands spend, on average, 17.6% of their marketing budget on PR. Which is probably around the region you thought, right? It’s nice to have a real answer though, isn’t it?
Now, I have no idea if that is how much companies *should* be spending on PR, nor whether a clients expectations of PR might change if they found out they were spending more than this average, or less. Those are discussions for us all to have on the basis of such findings. What I do think is that it is good to *have* some numbers to discuss and debate around, both amongst ourselves in agencies and, hopefully, openly with our clients. It is always good to start conversations from a position of knowledge and to reach conclusions that are backed by evidence.
That’s just one interesting finding. Others include the fact that 25% of marketing budgets now appear to spent on some form of Digital outreach (that’s a lot of budget out there guys!), that the average CEO/MD in a tech firm dedicates 0.8 days to PR per month (this goes up the smaller the firm) – is that a little or a lot I hear you ask. I don’t know, what do you think?, and that those firms who do spend money on ROI tools and measurement (50% of respondents) dedicate 3.7% of the overall PR spend to it.
I’d be interested to know people’s thoughts on this first bit of research from our little Committee, and to hear what you think would be good potential areas for further research. Should we drill down into some of these areas further? Or look at something else? What would help you in conversations with clients or just simply from an agency perspective, either within the PR industry only or in comparison to the other marketing disciplines?
Grant
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Nice work Grantos (and other committee members, though I’m guessing the hardest graft was by you, right?)
I think the figures are useful, so how about a bit of qual to back up your quant? The average CEO devotes 0.8 percent of her time to PR each month (were you actually asking the CEOs, or was it an estimate from PR people?) I’d love to know what sort of activity they categorise as PR. Is it just when they’re speaking to the media, for instance? Do they include conference speaker slots? Meeting local schoolchildren? Etc etc.
Of course, we’d all like a bit more insight into the digital activity…25% of marketing budget spent on digital outreach but only 17.6% of PR? Damn…weren’t we supposed to be the ones nicking the digital work? What is it, and how can we get some?
Oh, it’d be good to index it to…i.e. do it again in a year’s time.
Thank you chap! And I am merely the chairperson-like mouthpiece, it was indeed a Group effort!
You raise very good points and I totally agree and hope that this is done annually so that the figures can start to be benchmarked and compared.
Basically this was a first attempt to get some top line figures on some of the areas that we thought would provide useful stats for agencies and in-house PRs and hopefully provide decent real data for conversations that we know happen within PR all the time. Hopefully this will perhaps even start some of those conversations… is your MD/CEO doing enough PR per month? do you pay your agency the average % of your marketing spend, or more, or less? And what does that mean you should expect in terms of results?
And yes, hopefully either the Tech PR Group itself or others can drill down from this top level around some of the areas discussed and produce more depth and analysis.
The digital question is a good one. It could be, though that the 25% includes online advertising? Also, it may be that PR agencies ARE getting a slice of that digital pie outside of the 17.6% we’re seeing? Or perhaps we’re not but we should be?
Anyway, a decent start point we hope and great to get the feedback chap!
G
Good figures and good initiative.
Does the 25% of 17.6% spent on digital bits of PR count the stuff that ad agencies are claiming is ‘digital engagement’ (but really PR By another name) as they try to muscle in on PR money amidst a backdrop of shrinking budget paranoia? Now that would be a juicy stat.
Haha, that would indeed be a quality Stat, Steve. Unfortunately it’s not
. The two are separate figures – so marketing is spending 25% of digital ’stuff’ and 17.6% on PR. As per reply to Pinny, unfortunately we simply didn’t have the space in this initial survey to really drill down on either of those statistics.
I admit its all very top line in its findings, but hopefully the Group and others can use these numbers as a base for further, more in-depth research into those component parts…
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