Category: tech pr

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tech pr Technology PR

High tech public relations: high CPC/low search volume mystery solved

[polldaddy poll=1008064]In my recent post on Do Tech and Digital PR firms eat their own dog food?, I was curious as to why certain search terms had a high Cost Per Click level and very low search volumes.

I’d spent a while searching for an explanation – Google’s own help pages didn’t shed any light. However, the answer now appears in a post today on Google’s official blog from their Chief Economist Hal Varian:

“Search engines often apply a “disabling rule” that inhibits ads with very low clickthrough rates for a given query from being shown. Or they might set a relatively high minimum cost per click for ads that don’t attract much interest from users as a way to discourage advertisers from showing ads that annoy users and deliver few clicks. A high cost per click can easily be consistent with a low cost per impression when clickthrough rates are low.”

So now you know.

More generally it shows that it is usually a mistake to assume that your potential prospects and customers will automatically use certain keyword terms to find information. Investing time, money and effort in really getting to understand how and what your target audiences are talking about should pay dividends further down the line.

PS This is also an excuse to try out the new instant poll feature in WordPress (see above). Vote away!

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tech pr Technology PR Web/Tech

Do tech and digital PR firms eat their own dog food?

It is now conventional wisdom that PR needs to adopt and integrate new digital techniques into its toolkit. Rather than add to the rather dull debate about what tech PR firms ought to be doing, I thought I’d have a quick look at what they are doing in terms of promoting themselves through digital techniques. In other words, are tech and digital PR firms eating their own dog food?

PPC

Imagine you are an in-house PR manager, marketing manager or director with a technology business. You’ve decided that you want to hire a PR agency or replace an existing firm. In terms of helping you decide who to talk to, you will almost certainly conduct a web search.

In which case, what search terms would you use to help you?

Conventional wisdom suggests they will be terms like:

Technology PR
Tech PR
Technology public relations
Hi-tech public relations

Or UK variations thereof. In fact, if you were looking for a “good UK tech PR agency”, you might think that people would use that as an example search term.

Apparently not. In Sept, the search volumes on the term “good UK tech PR agency” (and other variations such as best UK software PR, etc) were virtually non existent.

Clearly potential purchasers of tech PR services don’t use these terms to find the information they want. But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. As I’ve discussed previously, the majority of search terms consist of only 2 or 3 words.

Going back to the usual suspect terms such as technology PR, a number of them have comparatively high CPC (cost per click rates). In some cases, nearly £6.50 per click. And yet when you examine the search volumes, they are virtually non-existent eg “hi tech public relations” was searched for a total of 12 times last month in the UK.

Let’s look at the highest searched for terms – technology PR (UK Sept 2008 – 880) and tech PR (UK Sept 2008 – 390). Worth noting in both cases that these figures show a decline over the previous 12 month average, which might be a precursor to a drop in demand for tech PR services.

The CPC rates for both of these terms is again comparatively high. But accepting that firms are paying above average CPC for these terms, are they doing everything they can to maximise their investment? ie what happens when you click through on these PPC ads? Every single one goes through to a generic company home page. No attempt to create a dedicated landing page to give the prospect more relevant information or to guide them through the sales process. Or give them a simple call to action. Search marketing 101.

Natural search

Clearly some PR firms are more savvy than others when it comes to natural search. Hat tips therefore to my old chums at Rainier PR who have clearly done some work to come top of the search rankings for the highest volume relevant search terms such as “technology PR”.

But does branding also play a part in the tech PR agency selection process? From a digital marketing perspective, we have already seen that 88pc of the most popular UK search terms are brand names. Does the UK tech PR market reflect this?

Just taking a few of the more well known tech PR brands, it looks like Lewis PR comes out at head of the pack (UK Sept 2008 – 1000). Interestingly, other well known brands such as Brands2Life have negligible volumes.

Web measurement

Tools such as WASP allow you to see what analytics package a web site is using to analyse its traffic eg Google Analytics, Stat Counter, Omniture, etc. It is therefore interesting to note how some agency websites don’t appear to be using any form of analytics package. Which begs the question, how can you claim any kind of digital expertise when you have no idea who visits your own site?

Conclusion

I can already hear the objections being raised to much of above. For example, there are clearly many ways in which a potential purchaser of tech PR services may seek information eg asking friends and peers, looking at PR Week league tables, etc. And I’ve only touched on a handful of digital activity (let’s not get into social media, LinkedIn ,etc or we’ll be here all day). In which case some may argue that I’m laying too much stress on non essential business development activities. But I can’t quite shake off the belief that at some point, the tech PR industry will have to stop just talking about “going digital” but really start putting into practice some of the now standard approaches from the digital marketing arena. Cobbler’s children, etc.

If tech PR firms are to gain a greater share of vendor budgets, then we need to not only talk the digital talk but walk the digital walk as well. And yes, it does require effort. And yes, we aren’t perfect here either and haven’t got all the answers. But we have set off on the road. We’ll keep you all posted on our progress.

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tech pr Technology PR Web/Tech

Using Tweetdeck as a public relations dashboard

According to some sources, there are now around 3 million Twitter users worldwide. Indeed, based on current trends, this could hit 5 million by Christmas.

Like many people, I signed up for Twitter early last year – and then promptly forgot about it for another 12 months. Mainly because it seemed rather pointless and a pain to update ie you had to go to the Twitter website every time or set up your mobile phone so that you could post Tweets via text.

For some reason, at the turn of the year, I returned to Twitter again – this time because some nice new desktop client apps like Twhirl made the process of reading and responding to Tweets a lot easier. There had also sprung up a whole eco-system of Twitter related tools such as Tweetwheel that started to make Twitter look a lot more interesting from a PR perspective.

It also had some real value for me personally as a PR tool (see previous posts on Rory Cellan-Jones and getting on the front page of the Guardian).

However, a few weeks ago, Danny Bradbury suggested trying out Tweetdeck. Like Twhirl, this is a an Adobe AIR-based desktop client – what sets it apart is that it neatly integrates a number of previously separate Twitter functions and displays them in a clear, columnar fashion. The closest I’ve yet seen to a Twitter dashboard.

For example, you can now keep tabs on not only your own friend’s Tweets, but track specific key words or hash tag searches across the whole Twitter community. And these are automatically updated when there is a new relevant Tweet. For PRs who want to keep a real time watch on specific trends and issues, this a great tool (come to think of it, journalists are already using Twitter as a real time research tool). You can also group friends to make it easier to keep an eye on related individuals (eg you could have a group for PR, one for journalists, one for clients, etc).

The Twitterverse is now actually quite a useful place to hang out these days. A combination of expanded numbers – and tools that make finding people and information easier – has given it a (currently) unique position in the PR 2.0 tool kit.

Couple this with the rise of excellent iPhone Twitter apps such as Twitterfific and Twitter looks like it has become a “must have” for the modern day PR.

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tech pr Technology PR

How much are tech firms spending on social media?

Based on the latest IDC report on tech marketing spend, not a lot. In fact, social media doesn’t seem to even register as a discrete item on the tech marketing agenda. It is possible that social media is lumped in as part of “other” digital marketing (which constitutes less than 1pc of total marketing spend). Which seems to bear out that in spite of all the talk and promise surrounding social media, it hasn’t yet made a significant impact on tech vendor marketing spend. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next 12 months in terms of social media’s share of marketing wallet. Or will a tough economy see vendor marketers retrench into sticking with traditional marketing tactics? eg events.

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tech pr Technology PR

Tech firms global marketing spend: events (22pc – $3.3bn); digital (12pc – $1.8bn); PR (5pc – $750m): IDC

IDC’s latest report on tech marketing spend came out a few weeks ago and offers some good insight into where the money is (and will be) going.

According to a story by Kate Maddox in US B-to-B magazine, IDC breaks down tech vendor marketing budget spending as follows: events will make up the largest share of the marketing budget (22%), followed by advertising (17%), direct marketing (16%), marketing support and sales tools (14%), digital marketing (12%), PR (5%), collateral (5%), market intelligence (4%), analyst relations (2%) and other (3%).

Within digital marketing, 33% of the budget will be spent on display ads, 16% on search ads, 15% on Web site, 15% on e-mail, 7% on search engine optimization, 6% on events and 8% on other activities.

Unsurprisingly, traditional advertising has fallen from its number one perch. What is perhaps unexpected is the fact that events appear to have taken the mantle of lead marketing activity, certainly in terms of budget. On the surface, this result seems to fly in the face of anecdotal evidence which suggests that tech marketeers have been finding it more difficult to justify ROI on events. Then again, the definition almost certainly includes vendor’s own events for customers and prospects. Or it may mean they are simply being more choosy about which events they go to – and upping their investment in those. Even so, for all the conventional wisdom about the rise of digital, the fact that tech firms seem to be placing over one fifth of their marketing budget on good old fashioned booths, bums on seats and “pumping the flesh” is worth noting. (IDC says total tech marketing spend is around $15bn globally – which suggests around $3.3bn will be spent on events and trade shows).

Even so, digital is clearly making significant gains, now taking 12pc of budget (or $1.8bn). Even so, the breakdown of digital spend is again insightful. Again, generally accepted wisdom suggests that SEO is one of key elements of any digital marketing approach, but tech firms seem to be continuing to place their faith in display ads, PPC and e-mail, with only 7pc of digital marketing spend going on SEO. Bizarrely, it seems the tech sector is lagging FMCG businesses in terms of SEO investment (certainly judging by the client lists of the top search marketing firms in the UK).

And what about PR? For some reason, it can’t seem to break out of its historical 5pc share of marketing budget. According to IDC, tech firms will spend just as much on producing old fashioned collateral as PR. And as Duncan Brown at the Infuse blog points out in his review of the IDC report: “in real terms, marketing spend is declining.”

Which means spend on traditional tech PR is in decline.

However, Richard Vancil, vice president of IDC’s Executive Advisory Group, does offer some clues as to what tech PR firms should do when he noted some key trends emerging within the tech marketing community: “Tech marketers are getting more input from all sides that greater transformation is required. Much of the corporate marketing agenda across the tech vendor community is really disconnected with the information or content wants and needs of the key constituents of marketing. The sales teams have never really climbed ‘on board’ to marketing’s agenda. And in IDC’s research with technical and business buyers, we see that most elements of the classic tech marketing agenda continue to fall short of how those buyers want to consume information today.” (my emphasis).

That last line seems to reflect David Meerman Scott’s mantra of: “most marketing communications activity is built on what the organisation wants to say rather than what the buyer wants to hear.” And also bears out what we’ve been saying here for some time – that much tech PR activity fails to reflect the real and significant changes in tech buyer audience media consumption and purchase behaviour. As we’ve said here on many occasions, PR needs to change if it is to claim a greater share of marketing budget and mindshare.

Having said that, IDC has some pointers for vendor side marketers too.

According to Michael Gerard, VP-Research for IDC’s CMO Advisory Practice (also in B-to-B magazine): “As we look at marketing organizations, they are far too top-heavy. There is too much spending at the corporate level and not enough in the field closest to the prospects and customers.”

IDC found that at tech companies with less than $500 million in annual revenue, 59% of the total marketing budget is spent on corporate marketing; 32% is spent on regional marketing; and 9% is spent on business unit marketing. At tech companies with more than $3 billion in annual revenue, 43% of the marketing budget is spent on corporate marketing; 36% is spent on regional marketing; and 21% is spent on business unit marketing.

Given that most tech firms have their origins in the US, IDC’s call for spending more regionally should be good news for those of us over here in the UK and Europe. At the very least, even if PR firms can’t get higher margin strategic work (because it’s already been done State side), at least getting paid for more on the ground executional activity won’t be sniffed at in the current climate. Of course, whether anyone pays a blind bit of notice to IDC in this respect is a moot point.

During the last recession in the early 90s, tech PR stood up very well – not least because the technology sector itself was a lone example of continued expansion amongst a general sea of moribund growth.

This time it is going to be different. However, there remains plenty of opportunity for those who are prepared to grasp the nettle of what really is happening out there in the world of vendor marketing departments.

Footnote

Respondents participating in IDC’s survey were from hardware companies (41%), software companies (40%) and services companies (19%).

The breakdown by company size was less than $500 million in annual revenue (30%), between $500 million and $999 million (12%), between $1.0 billion and $2.9 billion (26%), between $3.0 billion and $9.9 billion (17%) and more than $10 billion (15%).

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Humour tech pr Technology PR Web/Tech

The Flackenhack Awards are back for 2008! Adopt-a-hack?

After the roaring success of last year’s inaugural Flackenhack Awards, the world’s leading alternative event for the UK’s technology PR and media community is back = this time on Weds, October 29th, 2008 at The Village Underground, 54 Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, London EC2A 3PQ.

Promising to be “bigger and messier than last year”, the organisers say they’ve come up with a genius plan to get as many technology journalists to attend without them having to put their hands in their wallets ie members of the tech PR industry can buy a hack’s ticket for them on eBay.

Make your way to the Flackenhack 2008 Awards blog for more detail about the event. You can even help decide which hacks should have their tickets auctioned.

And adding to the social media frenzy around the event, there is also a Facebook group.

Tickets are now on sale here.

Go on. You know you want to. Last year’s event was a lot of fun and a refreshing change – here’s to making the 2008 event event better. (There you go TWL, will that do?)

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General PR tech pr Technology PR

“80pc of SEO consultants are scammers”: Peter Kent, author, SEO for Dummies

SEO for Dummies author Peter Kent has been making some pretty scathing comments about the SEO industry in a new interview:

“Over the last few years as I speak to more clients and hear their stories, it has led me to believe that 80% of the business is scam.” Kent qualifies this remarkable statement by adding: “By that I mean that 80% of people in the business doing SEO consultancy are either running an outright scam, or they thought it was good to get into SEO because it’s a hot area – but they don’t really know what they’re doing.”

Web designers also get it in the neck:

“I have never met a web design company or web design consultant who understands SEO,” he says bluntly. “Don’t trust web designers as far as search engine optimization goes – even if they tell you they understand it, they don’t. I used to say that a few understand it but I’m still waiting for them.”

I suspect he may be exaggerating for effect but you can tell that a number of UK PR consultancies have been seduced into building entirely Flash based sites – which effectively renders most of the content invisible to Google (I know that Google is supposed to be able to index Flash now, but I’ve yet to see the evidence).

However, Just to ensure the article isn’t 100pc tirade, Kent ends with a few tips:

1. Understand your keywords. Do keyword analysis, don’t assume. I always tell people to spend a few bucks and get Wordtracker, spend a few hours, dig around, and do it properly.

2. It’s interesting to hear that people are obsessed with abbreviations. They think it’s important but when they do proper keyword research they often find that the same abbreviation means something different to a different group of people.

Certainly agree on point 1 – never make assumptions about keywords (or anything for that matter. Point 2 has particular relevance to the tech sector which has always been riddled with acronyms and abbreviations.

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General PR tech pr Technology PR

Most PR people believe print coverage is more valuable than online: an exercise in cognitive dissonance?

Gordon Macmillan at Brand Republic reports on a new survey which claims that “most PR professionals still favour offline media coverage over digital despite recent consumer research identifying online as the more influential medium.”

He continues: “More than half, or 53%, see it as more valuable, but the real story is that it’s their clients who are still deeply attached to print. Apparently nearly two-thirds or 64% of PRs believe their stakeholders prefer print coverage more than online, television or radio and more than half or 53% believe their stakeholders are more influenced by print coverage than television, online or radio.”

He rightly picks up on the word “believe” and asks: “I mean, don’t they ask? Apparently not according to the Parker, Wayne & Kent survey. It seems to be all about the permanence of print. The fact you can hold it in your hand and turn the page (maybe they never heard to the printer?).” If you examine PWK’s own press release on it, the whole thing is predicated on the “belief” of PRs.

I continue to be fascinated by what appears to a widespread cognitive dissonance in the PR industry (an uncomfortable feeling or stress caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. Or to keep with the Orwellian sub theme of this blog, doublethink).

In this case, the two contradictory attitudes are: the belief that print media continues to be the dominant media influence and the fact that most of the real data on the subject seems to suggest the opposite.

Why is this happening? Here’s my theory.

In spite of claims to the contrary, the main reason clients still hire PR firms is for “media relations” (although as PR Week has previously reported, clients are spending most of their budget on account management, admin and reporting). And media relations still tends to be geared around getting print based coverage – because that is the skill set (inventory) that most PR firms still have to sell.

So you can see the temptation to try and justify what you have to sell by implying there is still a need for it. And I don’t deny that there is still a large education job to be done client side regarding what are the most effective techniques today. Some cynics might argue that if clients want print coverage lets sell what they ask for – even though we know it isn’t best solution. However, you get the sense from the PWK survey that no one is really asking the questions clients really want answering – namely, how can you help me understand how my target audiences behave, what really does influence them and what is the most effective means of delivering a measurable impact on those audiences?

Over the last 18 months I’ve tried not to miss the opportunity to quiz people about their media consumption habits. On a number of occasions, I’ve asked people to try a little test – basically, to write down what they think their average media consumption is over a week – and then to actually write down what they really do. Most of the time, people are very surprised about the divergence between their belief and reality. The most common is to over-estimate the time they spend reading newspapers and magazines and to underestimate the amount of time they spend online – as well as how online influences their decision making process.

However, before I get accused of being some kind of online obsessive, let’s be clear – I’m not saying print media is completely irrelevant. That’s patent nonsense – and my own recent experience bears out the role it can play in a purchase decision. However, to automatically assume that print is the most influential medium is more an act of faith than rational judgment. And don’t forget the shelf life of print coverage is a few hours.

The starting point has to be the data and evidence that justify an approach. When you actually start to gather real information about how people really do consume media – both on and offline – you build a picture of a very different world to the one that PRs in PWK’s survey seem to inhabit (the emphasis placed on buyer personas by search marketing agencies is an example of how PR could and should be helping their clients).

It’s a bit like when a relationship is going down the tube. Although logically he may know its over, he still clings to the belief that “she still loves him really.” Surely better to face reality and move on – the heartbreak will be more painful the longer you refuse to face facts.

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tech pr Technology PR Web/Tech Weblogs

How freelance journalists and writers can use Google’s Keyword Tool to get work

I’ve already blogged about Google’s Keyword Tool now displaying absolute search volumes. I thought it would be worth looking at a practical example. I keep hearing from various freelance journalist and writer friends that it is tough finding commissions these days – not just journalistic work but also PR and general copywriting. It occurred to me that perhaps they could put their writing talents to good effect by testing the water with some PPC advertising (this presumes of course that they have a blog or website – and that it is properly set up to capture and convert traffic).

Here’s a quick look at some fairly obvious keyword terms – the first figure shows the search volume in the UK for June 2008 and the second figure the expected cost per click for a 1 – 3 ad position.

Copywriting 33,100 £1.29
Copywriter 14,800 £1.02
Media training 8,100 £2.01
SEO copywriting 1300 £2.76
Web copywriting 1,000 £1.85

Clearly not all of these searches will be from people seeking paid-for copywriting work – but surely some of them will be. Even gaining a tiny percentage of response from some of the more popular terms would hopefully convert into work that would justify the ad spend (I’d certainly suggest setting a nominal initial budget and test from there).

The media training result was also interesting. I know a number of journalists offer media training services – over 8000 searches in the UK last month suggests there is clearly a lot of interest in it – and surely a percentage of that must come from people seeking to buy media training?

On a different tack, I looked at a few phrases containing “How to start a (insert company type)”

The results below are the searches for last month along with the trend:

How to start a publishing company (73) Falling
How to start a record company (46) Falling
How to start a clothing company (36) Rising

I wonder who those 73 people are out there dreaming of starting their own publishing company? I wonder how many journalists are in that number? However, it would seem the current trend is down – as is starting a record company (no surprise there I guess). Though rag trade interest seems to be rising – albeit from a very small base.

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General PR tech pr Technology PR Web/Tech

Google reveals keyword search volumes – and why you should care

Don’t know how I missed this one, but last week – and without much fanfare – Google announced that it would now reveal approximate search volumes from within its Keyword Tool.

The excellent Jason Baer at the Convince and Convert blog makes some very good observations as to why this is going to have a big impact on digital marketing. In particular when he says:

“If Google makes the marketing and advertising business as transparent as travel planning and stock purchases, the only agencies that will be able to survive are those that can add real value in messaging, creative, and integrating data into actionable tactics.”

I would of course include PR in the above too. So why should the availability of search volumes bother the PR community? (Or at least the tech/B-to-B world?).

If you accept that 95pc of B-to-B purchase decisions involve search, then you can now put a real figure on just how many people are actually searching on terms that you believe they find important – and are relevant to your business.

Let’s take an imaginary example. The Borked Corporation makes dilithium consoles. Av. profit on a console is $20. The company is aiming to make an additional $1m in profit over the next 12 months. That means selling an extra 50,000 consoles – or just over 4000 consoles a month. All marketing to date has been based around the key term “dilithium consoles”. The company has invested a lot in PR-ing the term dilithium console. Their digital agency has persuaded them to invest heavily in PPC. As of last week, Borked Corporation can see actual search volumes on “dilithium console” – a mere 1000 for the month and an average of 1500 for the last 6 months. It doesn’t take much to work out that Borked needs to answer some major questions – what terms ARE our potential purchasers searching on? How we can understand and influence the non-line buying process and incorporate the most relevant and impactful content at the appropriate juncture? Or more fundamental, is there a big enough market for our products at the current price/profit point?

Let’s not forget that Google’s Keyword Tool can be segmented by geography. For example, here’s the results for the UK last month on the terms digital PR and online PR.

It makes for interesting reading. For example, the keyword term digital PR was searched for in the UK 480 times last month. Online PR got 2400. Exactly 5 times the volume. Or thought of another way, a total of 2880 searches for combined digital/online PR. Or around 100 times a day. And how many of those searches are from people looking to buy digital/online PR services? This is the kind of thinking that helps to bring a forceful clarity to all PR and marketing activity.

Why not see how many times your company/product name was searched on last month? The results may surprise you.