Search Marketing For PR Companies

One of the original benefits of search marketing was that it was offered more of a level playing field than the more ‘traditional’ marketing methods, in that it was possible for smaller PR agencies to readily afford to run a PPC campaigns on the likes of Google and Yahoo! alongside much larger rivals. For a while this presented an amazing opportunity to do some great, inexpensive marketing.

This situation no longer exists. Today, the cost of appearing across the main PPC search channels on an ongoing basis is just too expensive for most PR agencies to afford - it’s a bit like asking them to take out ads in glossy business mags or national newspapers. Yes, PPC services allow users to spend only the amount they can afford, but the marketing budgets of most small to medium PR agencies don’t stretch to £1,000+ per month. Spending £10 a day on a Google campaign will run out quickly and will not create a huge amount of visibility unless you are very targeted in your selection of search terms. Go for anything big and broad like ‘PR’ or ‘public relations’ and small budgets get burned.

That’s not to say it’s not a good idea - it’s brilliant to appear on the major SEs all the time as long as you have the budget available and are prepared to receive diverse interest from people with a whole range of motivations. But it’s important to go into a search marketing with your eyes open. Your spend is going to yield a certain amount of hits to your site, which will be a percentage of your total page impressions. Of this group, a smaller percentage will contact you.

Among these inquiries you will get the following:

spam (all the usual nonsense, really)
sales leads (some of which will be of interest to you, some of which won’t)
requests for work from students
requests for work from PR people
suppliers who want to meet you (photographers, designers, web companies, etc)
Other miscellaneous questions/offers/etc

In PR measurement terms, the ‘opportunity to see’ will always be distilled to a smaller number of very valuable sales leads that you would like to turn into clients. Maximising this element is where the effort needs to be placed. One of the big challenges is relevance. A UK search on Google for ‘PR agency’ returns ‘About 1,310,000 results’, plus all the sponsored links people as well. That’s from one search phrase, remember. There are several hundred PR related search phrases that get used with any kind of volume, so the total number is massive. Focus your efforts, especially when your marketing budget won’t allow you to do absolutely everything, and it could be the best marketing money you’ve ever spent.