Lack of clear metrics and industry knowledge leads to dissatisfaction with PR agencies
Lightwater, UK; 3rd December 2019: Two in three marketing decision makers would consider not reappointing their current PR agency if they moved to another cyber security company finds new survey. The findings, from responses to an interactive survey, reveal an underlying level of dissatisfaction with the quality of service and specialist knowledge of PR practitioners in the cyber security industry. An area of particular concern cited by marketeers is the lack of proactivity: 53 percent consider their agencies are not proactive when coming up with new ways to generate coverage and 58 percent say their agency hasn’t delivered coverage in a tier one media title in the last quarter. Overall, two-thirds (68 percent) of marketing decision makers profess to be unhappy with the quality of coverage their agency is generating.
The results come from an interactive online survey conducted by cyber security specialist PR agency éclat Marketing completed by 30 cyber security organisations in the last six months. A worrying trend is the lack of clear objectives, as 33 percent of respondent’s report having no clear metrics or objectives in place with their agency to determine what constitutes success. Of those who do have metrics in place, only half are hitting their targets.
Another area criticised by the marketing respondents is the standard of the account team with 50 percent rating their account team as average or poor. The survey results also indicate that 61 percent believe their team has inadequate knowledge and understanding of the cyber security sector and over half (58 percent) rate the media contacts of their agency as average to poor.
Commenting on the findings, éclat Marketing managing director, Dianne Canham said: “These findings are a damning indictment of the standards of PR professionalism in the cyber security sector. However, they reflect equally poorly on those marketeers who aren’t protecting their investment in PR by settling for second-best levels of service. Agencies also need to be braver and link results to remuneration and get rid of the tired old system of payment by hourly rates. We’ve been a strong advocate of payment-by-results over many years and our clients appreciate the fact that we’re sharing their risk and reward with them. It also means that both agency and client are forced to agree measurable goals each quarter, leaving no room for ambiguity on what constitutes success.”
You can view the full results of the survey here: https://www.eclat.co.uk/is-your-pr-agency-doing-a-good-job-latest-survey-results/
Take the stress test yourself and find out if you should stick or twist with your current agency. https://www.eclat.co.uk/is-your-pr-agency-doing-a-good-job/