Jennifer Leggio of ZDNET has published the results of a survey to gauge client satisfaction with their PR firms – generally and with respect to social media programs. The majority of the respondents were in-house PR/Marketing Directors from companies with over 1k employees.
- 63% are satisfied that agency communications are “informative and timely”.
- 60% are satisfied with the quality of coverage achieved by their agency.
- Only 38% feel that pitch promises made are being kept (33% were neutral and 29% unsatisfied).
- Respondents are evenly split over whether they have had an overall positive experience with their agency.
The biggest complaint of PR clients (51% unsatisfied) is with agencies’ failure to tie PR initiatives to general business objectives, focusing instead on simply producing coverage. Jennifer points out that part of the issue may be the involvement of junior account managers who lack an understanding of basic business. A bigger issue may be the ease with which traditional media coverage can be measured and thus used to prove ROI. We’ll come back to this in a minute.
Let’s look at the social media responses:
- 79% (!!!) say it is “extremely” important for an agency to understand social media strategy.
- 70% say they themselves have an adequate grasp of how social media relates to business.
- 84% would attend a social media workshop offered by their agency – but over half wouldn’t pay for it.
- Only 22% say their agency has recommended a social media program beyond specific tools (twitter, linkedin).
The survey comments also suggest that agencies might be more successful rolling social media elements into current offerings, instead of adding a social media add-on or upgrade package.
What struck me about these survey results is that clients want two things 1) a comprehensive program that goes beyond traditional PR targets and 2) a clear accounting of the success achieved by their agency.
Understandable. The complication is that often, the more successful you are at 1, the more difficult 2 becomes. Social media initiatives are a perfect example of this.
Many companies are anxious to get involved in social media, both to build a presence and to engage their customers. They want to see how their PR campaigns are translating into social media buzz, respond to customer concerns from a corporate twitter account and figure out how many sales leads resulted from a blog post. But how do you measure message penetration on Facebook? How do you track lead generation from a blog? How do you calculate the value of a retweet?*
Expanding PR programs (out of coverage-chasing and into social media) requires a new level of engagement for PR firms. To avoid the type of dissatisfaction expressed in the survey results, agencies must:
- Be the expert. Only 37% of clients said they fully understand social media for business.
- Be the guide. Work with clients to develop a strategic plan – who and why? Not just how.
- Be the evaluator. What metrics will you use to measure success?
See the full survey results.
*The answer is: one client at a time.
