This article originally appeared in the April edition of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) magazine, Communication World.
For
years, marketing, advertising, and public relations folks fought over
budgets, scopes of work, ownership, and talent. It was an inefficient,
yet accepted dance at organizations of all shapes and sizes. There was
paid media, and there was earned media — and for the most part, everyone
understood their role.
If only things were still this easy. Today
we have Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Managers, Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) analysts, Digital Analysts, Community Managers,
Content Marketing Specialists, and way too many social media ninjas,
gurus, and rockstars. There’s paid media, earned media, owned media,
shared media, and something called omni-channel media. The traditional
buckets of marketing, advertising, and public relations seem so quaint
now.
Customers don’t care about your org chart, your P&L, or
which of their agencies are managing which channel. They just expect you
to move seamlessly and consistently from channel to channel and device
to device, whether that’s using paid, earned, or owned methods. And
increasingly, the clients don’t care about these artificial lines of
demarcation either.
According to a recent Forbes survey,
68% of CMOs and marketing executives put integrated marketing
communications ahead of “effective advertising” (65%), when they were
asked what the most important thing is that they want from an agency.
Some
of the biggest marketing and PR agencies are already adjusting their
business models and organizational structures to better optimize their
efforts in this new environment:
- Edelman has recently created a position – Global Director of Paid Media – responsible for defining their approach to paid media and for integrating it into their accounts.
- Earlier this year, FleishmanHillard restructured
to be more channel-agnostic, integrating paid, owned, and earned media.
In 2011, they placed $250 million worth of ads in paid media. In 2012,
that number increased to more than $1.2 billion.
- Weber Shandwick created MediaCo, a new unit focused on content marketing, native advertising, and digital media buying.
- Cramer-Krasselt,
my employer, while traditionally seen as an ad agency, actually uses an
integrated structure that aligns PR, social media, advertising, paid
media, CRM, search, and paid media under one P&L that allows us to
create seamlessly integrated campaigns across all forms of media.
PR
professionals know, of course, that their job is to build meaningful
relationships with their stakeholders. However, doing so today means
reaching them through paid, earned, owned, and shared media —
understanding how all of these channels work, the content each requires,
and how to piece it all together into an integrated plan. Clearly, PR
is no longer about just getting “ink” in print or pixels. It’s about
developing multi-channel relationships with a variety of stakeholders.
It means learning more about paid media and how to incorporate those
costs into budgets. It means integrating social ads, sponsored content,
and syndicated content into strategies from the very beginning. It means
the PR pros with experience in paid, owned AND earned media are going
to become much more valuable.
If the traditional practitioner
wants to remain relevant in this multi-channel environment, he or she is
going to have to stop looking at only media hits and impressions, and
start thinking through the entire customer journey across all channels.
For example -
- That reporter at the New York Times just
called and said he’s doing a story on your brand! Will he blog about it
too? Will he share it with his 100K Twitter followers and Facebook fans?
Is your brand willing to retweet his story? How can you use your owned
channels to drive more traffic to that story?
- The blog content
you’re publishing is relevant, valuable, and engaging yet no one is
reading it. What’s the right syndication partner to increase your
audience size? Should you use paid search links to drive additional
traffic? How will the increased traffic impact your bounce rate?
- What’s
the hashtag for that event you’re planning? Should you even have one?
How will you create shareable moments during the event? Who’s serving as
the digital emcee?
- Your brand is doing a large paid media buy
with one of your target publications. How does this impact your pitch to
the editorial staff? How segregated are their advertising and editorial
teams?
Building and maintaining stakeholder relationships
today is very different than even a few years ago. Thankfully, the
tools used to manage them have evolved also. The reach and influence of
some
organizations’ owned channels rival that of some traditional publications. Some publications offer
sponsored content hubs
that mirror the look and feel of their editorial content. The social
media newsfeed has become a mishmash of sponsored and organic content
and they’re often indistinguishable from each other.
Image courtesy of Flickr user Rasta Taxi
Knowing
when and how to pull these paid, earned, owned, and shared levers could
make the PR pro a multi-channel quarterback because we best understand
our stakeholders’ information needs, media consumption habits, and user
journeys. As the lines between paid and earned media disappear, the PR
pro has to be more proactive and get more involved across the entire
marketing mix. Whether that’s being part of the creative team
brainstorming the new commercial or working with paid media to create
more effective media partnerships, one thing’s clear. The PR pro is
going to have to figure out how to get more involved in other channels
or risk being left out of the process entirely.
