Leading independent, performance-based marketing agency, CBR Marketing and strategic, 27-year-old, PR agency, Headlines, have entered into a strategic partnership to deliver through-the-line communications services to existing and future clients.
While both companies will continue to operate independently, the mutually beneficial alliance will allow CBR Marketing to benefit from a broader offering to clients with expert PR Strategy and execution across the company’s digital marketing services and solutions. While Headlines will be empowered to deliver deeper and more strategic social media and digital integration into PR campaigns.
“Clear synergies exist between our respective areas of expertise and core competencies based on evolving industry trends and the growing importance of online community management and engagement,” explains Ben Swartz, CEO of CBR Marketing.
As such, the partnership seeks to create new opportunities for both businesses to expand into new markets to drive growth.
Beyond broadening the social media services currently offered by Headlines, the strategic partnership with CBR Marketing will transform how the PR company measures campaign impact.
CBR is a Premier Google partner that delivers top performing targeted digital marketing campaigns and is a market leader in performance-based marketing.
“Effectively applying this complex methodology in the PR landscape can have a transformative impact on the value we deliver to clients,” explains Simone Lipshitz, managing director at Headlines.
Specifically, accessing and applying these capabilities aligns with a growing industry trend to move away from the archaic advertising value equivalence, or AVE measure.
“There is a concerted drive to change the way the PR industry measures, evaluates and reports on coverage, particularly following the explosion in online and social media content,” continues Lipshitz.
The South African PR Landscape Report 2022 by media monitoring agency Ornico affirms this tectonic industry shift.
The report highlights a divergence from face-value metrics, such as AVE, impressions, likes, hits, or audience size that only measure outputs to more mature practices that offer better interpretation and insight-based accounts to measure successful PR efforts and quantify return on investment (ROI) more accurately.
According to the report, 72% of PR practitioners are now measuring tone and sentiment in media placements rather than basic outcome-level measurements like placement, and 57% are measuring social media activities with all other media channels.
“Leading thinkers in the PR industry recognise the importance of setting clear, measurable goals for campaigns in order to make PR efforts more strategic, insightful, and valuable for clients and agencies,” says Oresti Patricios, CEO of Ornico. “Without such goal-setting, PR activities risk becoming wasteful and ineffective.”
Headlines will integrate the tried and tested performance-based tools already used by CBR Marketing to effectively and transparently report against key performance indicators and strategic business objectives,” elaborates Ben Swartz, CEO at CBR Marketing.
“These tools will transform how the agency measures and evaluates PR and delivers quantifiable ROI to clients across the board.”
The reciprocal value in the partnership for CBR Marketing lies in the potential to shape online perception and generate more leads through strategic PR efforts.
According to Swartz, in today’s digital-first marketplace, most stakeholder engagement and content consumption now takes place online.
“Just as PR agencies need to evolve to engage stakeholders and target audiences online, digital marketing agencies must take control of the online conversation to drive messaging, shape perceptions and control the brand narrative to achieve strategic objectives, which is best achieved with PR expertise and experience,” he elaborates.
In this regard, a positive brand perception makes it easier to generate leads, which can lower the cost per acquisition of digital marketing campaigns.
“Advances in data analytics and online activity tracking are making it possible for us to track activities and ensure PR efforts are measurable, deliver ROI and are in line with brand objectives.” says Swartz.
“As such, we are excited about the new dynamic that the Headlines team brings to our business and the opportunities the partnership will create to manage more of the communication mix on behalf of our clients moving forward,” he concludes.