July 2nd, 2010 by Wadds

CIPR Summer Social debate finds PR and search marketing remain separate worlds

The PR industry has failed to embrace search marketing. That was the conclusion of a group of PR, social media, and search marketing professionals that met yesterday as part of the CIPR’s Social Media Summer series to debate the issue.

There are well-publicised exceptions highlighted by the recent NMA search league tables but the majority of the PR industry has seemingly yet to wake-up to even the basics of search marketing.

Analysis by ­Escherman’s Andrew Smith shows that the majority of the PR Week Top 150 agencies are failing to make even basic efforts to optimise their own web sites.

Disparate functions
But perhaps that’s not important. It is unlikely that PR and search marketing will be integrated until clients break down silos and recognise the opportunity for an integrated approach. And that’s going to take at least a generation of marketing professional according to We Are Social’s managing director Robin Grant.

“The opportunity for earlier wins lies in targeting entrepreneurs, small-to-medium sized businesses and marketing directors that outsource their marketing programmes,” said Grant.

Friend and foe: PR vs search
Site Visibility’s creative director Kelvin Newman spotlighted the similarities between PR and natural search. Content creation, syndication and engagement are all PR techniques he said.

Newman’s view is that the integrated use of PR to drive brand and search to drive sales is a potent combination.

But never the two shall meet according to Nixon McInnes’ managing director Will McInnes. PR and search are completely different disciplines with their own unique cultures.

“We’ve been talking about integrated PR and search marketing for at least four years. If it was going to happen it would surely have happened by now,” said McInnes.

Opportunity?
But developments such as the semantic web and social search could provide the PR industry with fresh impetus to regain ground according Klea’s director David Phillips.

Phillips is a long time PR industry commentator and said that he believed that the next generation of search engines are likely to make it increasingly difficult for search marketing agencies to manipulate search results.

Uniting around a crisis
Crisis management is the one area where search marketing and PR are integrated and the role of the normally discrete functions is well understood according to Lanson’s head of digital Simon Sanders. PR typically takes the lead advisory function but will pull in search professionals to clean up the aftermath of a crisis in search results he said.

One person that has been closely observing how PR and search marketing shakes out is Daryl Willcox, chairman and founder of DW Publishing, the media group whose products include ResponseSource and SourceWire.

In 2007 he wrote a white paper that warned that the PR profession risked being sidelined by search marketing. Today his biggest customer is a search agency.

“A fifth of the 850 press releases that are posted on SourceWire a month are from search agencies. Less than half of the releases from PR agencies include links [indicating a low awareness of SEO],” said Willcox.

Many of the individuals present had a story to share about media confusion that had resulted from search marketing agencies using what have traditionally regarded as PR channels to distribute content.

Search agencies buy PR skills
PR agencies may have been slow to embrace search but there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that search marketing agencies are hiring PR professionals in a bid to understand the editorial world.

But it’s not just the talent that they are seeking. We Are Social’s Grant said that a higher premium was placed on search marketing agencies. “Valuations are at least three times the multiple of PR agencies,” he said.

Grant predicted that search marketing agencies may start to seek out PR firms as acquisition targets in a bid to create scale. It’s unlikely to happen the other way round.

The CIPR’s Social Media Summer Series will continue to explore different aspects of digital PR and social media each Thursday evening in London throughout the summer. Please check the wiki for upcoming topics.

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24 Responses to “CIPR Summer Social debate finds PR and search marketing remain separate worlds”

  1. Tweets that mention CIPR Summer Social debate finds PR and search marketing remain separate worlds | Wadds' PR Blog -- Topsy.com says:
    July 2, 2010 at 7:11 am

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Stephen Waddington, Stephen Waddington and others. Stephen Waddington said: [my blog] CIPR Summer Social debate finds PR and search marketing remain separate worlds http://bit.ly/aEJ98E #ciprsm #cipr [...]

  2. Steve Earl says:
    July 2, 2010 at 7:44 am

    The PR industry has failed to embrace search marketing? Damn right. Why? Because too many PRs are too clueless, lazy or in denial to get off their arses and think about it, learn about it and work out how to apply it.

    Saying they’ve got enough problems to worry about is a limp excuse. This is one of the biggest problems they have to worry about.

  3. Social media bingers ‘under the influence’ – shock | Earlin' PR abuse says:
    July 2, 2010 at 9:00 am

    [...] an audit trail. Fact. Get over it. Get on with it. And while you’re at it, figure out how editorial influence and search marketing join up too [...]

  4. Rob Shepherd says:
    July 2, 2010 at 9:37 am

    Wish I’d been at this debate and thanks for the roundup, Wadds. I absolutely agree with Darryl and Steve Earl and add this: every day I speak to clients from search marketing who – for their part – haven’t got a CLUE about PR but are muddling through, trying it, bolloxing it up and learning on the job but all the while are taking substantial market share from traditional PR because they DO understand search and are offering what their clients want.

    Why (oh why, oh why etc.) is PR yet again left behind? Take most PR agencies away from the basic job of looking for angles and attempting to place stories with journos and they become a shoal of white lumpfish cast out from their evaporating sea by a tidal wave that leaves them stranded, gasping and twitching on a new shore.

    (Please take the bait, someone.)

  5. Josie Herbert says:
    July 2, 2010 at 1:16 pm

    Daryl, you make some excellent points here. From my own conversations with smaller businesses it certainly would appear that the smaller the business the better their handle on social media, search and PR (in that order). A recent pitch to a small information security company (with big name clients) revealed that even though they claimed they’d "done no PR" they were using a search agency extremely successfully as well as forging very close links with their core press contacts. Their investment in search preceded their formal search for PR. I’ll be following this blog thread closely. Thanks for sharing your observations.

    This comment was originally posted on DWPub Sporadic

  6. James Crawford says:
    July 2, 2010 at 7:31 pm

    Search and PR is the most important topic there is right now.

    The ways in which PR can impact on search and vice versa is the biggest commercial opportunity for consultancies since records began.

  7. We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #31 / we are social says:
    July 5, 2010 at 7:05 pm

    [...] for SEO’, myself and Simon went along to last week. It was a lively debate, which both Stephen Waddington and Daryll Willcox have written up magnificently. There are still another eight events in the [...]

  8. Social Media and PR: Are Journalists Quicker to Adapt? | Spin Sucks says:
    August 9, 2010 at 12:46 am

    [...] However, when putting PR agencies under the spotlight, we read that 78 percent of the UK’s 100 powerful agencies are not using Twitter, and our industry watchdog is bemoaning the the fact that PR pros are failing to embrace search marketing. [...]

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