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Digital skills of the PR industry

To find out more about the insights that are available from the PRCA, contact Nicholas Dunn-McAfee.

The level of digital work carried out by the PR and communications industry is now on an equal level with what might be viewed as its more traditional work, and PR and communications has a wealth of skills across digital and social media. In particular, the Digital PR Report 2015 revealed:

 On the PR and communications agency side, 54% are now offering SEO services, 82% offer blogger outreach/ engagement; 47% offer online ads/PPC; and 76% offer online reputation management.

Web design and build is a huge growth area for PR and communications agencies as this service is increasingly combined with PR and communications activities. The biggest digital service offering for agencies remains to be content creation, which 91% of agencies provide. The biggest growth as a service offering is web design and build – up 12% since last year to 71%.

In the past year, we have also seen huge growth in in-house PR and communications departments expecting agencies to be able to deliver many digital service areas, with the biggest growth in expectation around SEO (20% growth); blogger outreach (18% growth); online advertising/PPC (14% growth); and online reputation management (14%).

The mean percentage of marketing budgets spent on digital and social media remains at 16%, the same as last year. Digital services as a percentage of agency revenue now stands at 22.9%.

In-house investment in blogger outreach/engagement has seen growth of 11% over the past two years – to 52% in 2015, and agencies are increasingly entrusted with this work.

The data is from the third annual PRCA Digital Report, produced in partnership with YouGov, which provides a benchmark of how the PR industry is performing with digital communications. To view the report, a Powerpoint presentation and other materials, please click here. To order a copy of the report, go to Resources.