Tom pick-up on some comments I made to him at a recent event on the impact Online Advertising and SEO is having on PR.
I ran into Andy Lark, earlier this week. Andy used to be corporate comms chief at Sun Microsystems. He now spends most of his time as Chief Marketing Officer at LogLogic, a fast growing enterprise software company. LogLogic, like many other startups, uses a PR agency to help get its message out to potential customers. Andy told me that he recently noticed that he was starting to spend more money on buying Google adwords than on PR.
And when push comes to shove, I know where most cmpanies will put their money. You can pin a ROI on GOOG adwords that you can't with PR This is a very significant crossover point. It represents one of the many threats to traditional PR. And there are many PR agencies that only understand the old approach, no matter what they say about new/social media. There is a disconnect in the PR world that is going to hit that industry hard. .... Additional info: Andy Lark's Blog. SVW: Andy Lark agrees...blogging is disrupting PR.
I sat with some other start-up CMOs recently and we did some math together. Sometime late last year our SEO and Google budgets started exceeding our PR budgets by significant amounts. What does this mean for PR?
First, total marketing budgets aren't increasing to accomodate this. So, the money has to come from somewhere.
Like the other CMOs I'm being forced to reallocate budgets. First thing cut - any tradeshows without clear ROI. Then it gets tight. PR, more than ever, is going to have to work harder to show ROI but that isn't where the change stops. PR needs to be engaged in driving content into the middle of this revolution. A focus on awareness needs to be paired with a focus on appearance (a client's presence across the web).
This is bottom-up change. It will be a while before the big companies and big agencies feel it. But start-ups and the agencies that serve them are in the middle of this revolution right now.
More than anything, this is an opportunity for PR professionals (internal and external) to become part of a sea change in marketing.
