63% of PR & Comms Agency CEOs are grappling with new ways to grow their businesses while 17% are preoccupied by staff churn according to our latest PR & Comms Growth Tracker.
One agency leader based in Asia said – “New ways to grow our agency’s business will always be our main concern, because if we don’t, we will be stuck as a ‘small PR agency that only does limited PR’. In this industry adding services that can be integrated into marketing and comms programs is the key to success. No longer are the days where clients only asked for media relations…”
Another Agency owner is feeling the heat with converting leads into sales – “Clients & prospects feel a bit hesitant. Identifying opportunities that are real & then converting them is even more of a challenge than ever.”
What is stopping clients from signing off on campaigns and budgets? Is this due to time pressure or simply poor etiquette?
This Strategic Comms Consultant shared this – “The PR industry continues to struggle with clients who don’t understand our value propositions, our ethics & our precise role in driving business success. Until the PR industry bodies achieve real traction in educating the larger global business sector of those principles, then agencies will continue churning / burning excessive, largely uncompensated energies in trying to educate clients about principles clients should already know.”
While in-house behaviour isn’t delighting some, the internal pressure of managing the inevitable departure of key team members & impact on clients & team structures is clear as one Managing Director observed – “This challenge is more about recovering from 2023. Our churn and overall change so far this year is minimal, but with pay freezes and general economic challenges last year, our staff churn was higher. Equally on the client-side, we have a lot of new clients where old clients were made redundant and we now report into CMOs etc. But what I would say is that on the agency side, some of the churn has been positive.”
Looking ahead, sleeves must be rolled up to deal with the market environment, especially in tech. With the General Election looming, who is to know where we will land. One CEO summed up – “The market is still a little depressed so the biggest challenge is how and when to invest to drive maximum growth as the economy recovers. Or realistically IF the economy recovers. With politicians focussed on the election and their personal futures, rather than the good of the country, it’s hard for businesses to have confidence in the near future.”