PR Week this week published its Marketing Management Survey in conjunction with Manning Selvage and Lee. The survey of 346 Chief Marketing Officers, VPs of Marketing and brand managers had one key stat that confirmed - at least in my mind - the role PR professionals can play in helping corporate marketers use Weblogs to connect with customers in this increasingly fragmented media world.
The survey asked respondents what alternatives to traditional marketing they are exploring. The results:
63% - Building buzz/word of mouth
55% - Targeting influentials
53% - Web marketing
46% - Grassroots marketing/DTC
43% - Media relations
37% - Events sponsorship
Furthermore, the study found that only 12% of these senior level marketers said they will seek out help from their public relations agency partners in exploring these alternatives, despite the fact that the disciplines have a strong PR foundation.
As I read down this list of marketing alternatives , I cannot help but feel that some marketers might also want to take a serious look at rolling their own Weblogs and reaching out to the blogging community. The medium plays extremely well in five of these six disciplines …
1) Blogs build word of mouth, provided you have something relevant to say/share on a regular basis and you can convince others to write about you.
2) Blogs clearly are a powerful way to target influentials. Need convincing? Just take a look at the example Robert Scoble wrote about yesterday.
3) Weblogs are a cheap and powerful online marketing tool that can help a company elevate their profile in the search engines. They dovetail nicely with contextual search engine ads that are all the rage right now.
4) Blogs clearly are a grassroots/direct-to-consumer medium. There's no middleman involved.
5) Finally, Weblogs are regularly trolled/read by reporters for news, as Pamela Parker noted recently in her column. PR people have the savvy to develop messages and activities that will pique the interest of both bloggers and reporters...and, more importantly, their readers.
The public relations community is in the best position to help marketers navigate the changing marketing landscape. The best PR professionals have their ear to the ground and their finger on the pulse of public opinion. We cull through thousands of news articles, blog posts, and increasingly, proprietary research to understand what makes audiences tick. We know how to serve as a client's eyes and ears, not just as their mouthpieces.
Most importantly, we know how to devise programs that integrate direct-to-consumer program elements into broader media relations efforts. We can wage the marketing war on multiple fronts. Some in the PR community may see this survey as a challenge, but I see it as a big opportunity for both clients and their PR agencies to work together.
