ANA finds that 75% of marketers plan to increase spending on PR over the next five years
Marketers plan to increase internal staffing and overall spending over the next five years on public relations, according to a recent ANA survey.
According to the ANA, 62% of the 100 client-side marketers that participated in the survey indicated that they plan to increase internal staffing to support public relations over the next five years, while 75% said that they intend to increase overall spending.
The report, which was conducted earlier this year in partnership with the USC Center for Public Relations at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, also found that the three most important trends that will affect the future of public relations are social listening, digital storytelling and real-time marketing.
“Public relations as a discipline is clearly evolving and becoming more important to marketers,” said ANA group EVP Bill Duggan in a statement. “And PR is being fueled by the rise and omnipresence of digital communications. Digital has put PR front and center, as it allows immediate outbound communication and inbound feedback.”
Another insight gleaned from the report is that many marketers believe that public relations is converging with marketing. According to the ANA, 72% of respondents said that public relations will either become more closely aligned with marketing or become a subset of it.
While the report’s findings could prove to be a boon for those who work in-house, it may be less so for external partners: according to the report, 44% of respondents said that the number of overall agencies that their organization will work with over the next five years will stay the same, while 31% said that the amount will decrease slightly.