Marketing and Earned Media Statistics
Brand Relationships
- Only 23 percent of millennial consumers say they have a relationship with brands, more than half say that they have brand complaints that aren’t addressed. (Inc., August 2017)
- 56 percent of millennials say they interact with brands weekly, if you aren’t listening, you’ll miss them! (Astound Commerce Global Brand Survey, August 2017)
- Audiences view earned media as the most authentic form of marketing. (Cision The Earned Media Opportunity, June 2016)
Marketing Communications Challenges
- 63 percent of comms pros cited the inability to measure impact effectively as one of the three most difficult challenges they face. (PRWeek/Cision 2017 Global Comms Report, November 2017)
- 65 percent of communications leaders said the tightening of budgets is one of their other top three challenges. (PRWeek/Cision 2017 Global Comms Report, November 2017)
- 75 percent of brands say identifying the right influencers is their biggest challenge to paid media campaigns. (emarketer, July 2015)
- 72 percent of marketers rate “Difficulty identifying and engaging with right prospects at the right time” as a problem and barrier toward achieving their marketing objectives. (Cision The Earned Media Opportunity, June 2016)
- When asked to identify the top three biggest challenges in implementing an earned media strategy, 60 percent of marketing/communications professionals chose identifying and connecting with key influencers, 52 percent chose measuring financial impact of programs/prove ROI and 42 percent chose creating compelling content. (Cision Earned Media Influential in Performance Marketing)
- 52 percent of marketing/communications professionals say identifying and connecting with key influencers is the biggest challenge in implementing an earned media strategy. (Cision Earned Media Influential in Performance Marketing)
- 75 percent of comms pros feel the comms industry can do better at measuring and proving its impact on business objectives (PRWeek/Cision 2017 Global Comms Report, November 2017)
- When it comes to content, over half of comms pros (52 percent) said their biggest challenge is determining what content is most effective. (PRWeek/Cision 2017 Global Comms Report, November 2017)
- Most senior executives (58 percent) don’t have a good sense of what people do after they consume the brand’s content. (PRWeek/Cision 2017 Global Comms Report, November 2017)
- Most senior executives (55 percent) don’t know whether there was any digital or real-world behavior driven by content. (PRWeek/Cision 2017 Global Comms Report, November 2017)
- While tightening budgets are clearly a challenge globally — 26 percent of comms pros chose it as their top challenge — communicators the world over realize the need to more effectively measure their impact. (PRWeek/Cision 2017 Global Comms Report, November 2017)
Earned Media Strategy & Spending
- 75 percent of marketers plan to increase PR spend over the next five years. (THEDRUM, May 2017)
- 81 percent of senior marketers believe earned media is more effective than paid media.(Cision The Earned Media Opportunity, June 2016)
- Marketers rate owned media as their most effective use of marketing dollars. (Cision The Earned Media Opportunity, June 2016)
- Millennial marketers see earned media as more effective than do Baby Boomer marketers. (Cision The Earned Media Opportunity, June 2016)
- Public relations (a pull marketing tactic) is rated more effective by both B2B and B2C marketers for lead generation than push tactics such as print, TV and radio, as well as mobile and native advertising. (Cision The Earned Media Opportunity, June 2016)
- 87 percent to 96 percent of large firms use a variety of earned media methods. (Cision The Earned Media Opportunity, June 2016)
- 96 percent of large firms regularly use press releases. (Cision The Earned Media Opportunity, June 2016)
- 96 percent of large firms pursue speaking opportunities. (Cision The Earned Media Opportunity, June 2016)
- 72 percent of large firms monitor social channels for earned media opportunities. (Cision The Earned Media Opportunity, June 2016)
- 70 percent of marketing/communications professionals said they’d use earned media more if it was directly attributed back to financial impact and ROI. (Cision Earned Media Influential in Performance Marketing)
- On average, marketing/communications professionals spend 24 percent of their budget on earned media. (Cision Earned Media Influential in Performance Marketing)
- 61 percent of marketing/communications professionals have expanded their use of earned media as part of overall demand generation efforts. (Cision Earned Media Influential in Performance Marketing)
- 85 percent of marketing/communications professionals now prioritize earned media due to a need to supplement traditional outbound marketing programs. (Cision Earned Media Influential in Performance Marketing)
- 89 percent of marketing/communications professionals say they use earned media to support the demand generation goal of drive brand awareness. (Cision Earned Media Influential in Performance Marketing)
- 66 percent of communications pros ranked content creation as one of their three most important activities — with 32 percent ranking it most important. (PRWeek/Cision 2017 Global Comms Report, November 2017)
- 47 percent of comms leaders spend between one and 10 percent of their budget on collecting data to understand the impact of comms programs. (PRWeek/Cision 2017 Global Comms Report, November 2017)
- Globally, 57 percent of comms pros feel they are always able to effectively identify the right influencers to target with initiatives and, in turn, impact customer behavior. (PRWeek/Cision 2017 Global Comms Report, November 2017)
- Globally, 53 percent of comms pros said end-consumer data either plays a small role or no role at all in helping them determine what influencers to choose for their programs. (PRWeek/Cision 2017 Global Comms Report, November 2017)
- 48 percent of comms pros globally said paying influencers is an important part of their influencer strategy (PRWeek/Cision 2017 Global Comms Report, November 2017)
Media Relations Statistics
State of Journalism
- Between 1994 and 2014, newsrooms have shed over 20,000 jobs, representing a 39 percent decline. (Pew Research, June 2016)
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91 percent of journalists feel like they’ve lost trust. (Cision State of the Media Report, March 2017)
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60 percent of reporters believe the public values facts over opinions or feelings. (Cision State of the Media Report, March 2017)
- The largest proportion of media, 63 percent, said their reliance on PR professionals has not changed in 2017. (Cision State of the Media Report, March 2017)
- Journalists said they “always” or “often” use multimedia elements 70.5 percent of the time. (Cision State of the Media Report, March 2017)
- Journalists use data rated at 56 percent of “always” or “often” usage. (Cision State of the Media Report, March 2017)
- 51 percent of journalists feel “fake news” is a serious problem. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- Only 36 percent of journalists reported that they use user-generated content regularly in their work. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- The public has not become a key source of information with only 14 percent of journalists saying it was one of their two key sources of information, suggesting U.S. journalists are cautious about using the public for gathering stories. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- 39 percent of journalists reported that they use analytics daily to understand the effectiveness of their content, an additional 22 percent do that weekly and a further 19 percent monthly. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- 63 percent of journalists in the 18-27 age group agreed that fake news was a serious problem in their area of journalism, while the figure for the 28-45 age group was 49 percent and for the 46-64 age group 52 percent. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
Media Outreach
- Journalists continue to prefer email as the primary means of contact, with more than 90 percent indicating it as the best way to directly pitch a story idea. (Cision State of the Media Report, March 2017)
- 58 percent of influencers and journalists said displaying knowledge of past work, interests and beats is what drove them to pursue a story. (Cision State of the Media Report, March 2017)
- 82 percent of journalists say PR professionals can improve by researching and understanding their media outlet. (Cision State of the Media Report, March 2017)
- 72 percent of journalists say PR professionals can improve by tailoring the pitch to suit their beats/coverage. (Cision State of the Media Report, March 2017)
Social Media
- Forty-one and a half percent of journalists, bloggers and influencers chose Facebook as the most valuable channel for audience engagement. (Cision State of the Media Report, March 2017)
- Only 44 percent of journalists feel that social media is a reliable source of information. (Cision State of the Media Report, March 2017)
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41 percent of journalists who use video features on social platforms prefer Facebook Live. (Cision State of the Media Report, March 2017)
- 27 percent of journalists us live video services like Facebook Live at least weekly. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
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49 percent of journalists do not use new video features of existing social platforms. (Cision State of the Media Report, March 2017)
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Social networks are the most used platforms and 42 percent of journalists use five or more types of social media regularly. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
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Audience interaction is an important activity for many journalists on social media, with 19 percent engaging with their audience via social media every hour and a further 47 percent daily. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
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Nearly half (48 percent) of journalists feel they could not carry out their work without social media, which is a higher figure than the 37 percent who said the same in 2012. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
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In 2012, 83 percent of journalists said they were using social networks for work at least once a week compared to 90 percent in 2017. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
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77 percent of journalists said that they used microblogs regularly for their work in 2012, that figure dropped to 67 percent in 2017. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
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42 percent of journalists reported that they use more than five types of social media at least once a week for work, 80 percent used more than three kinds of platforms and only five percent worked with only one type of social media. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- 14 percent of journalists use messaging services weekly, such as WhatsApp and VChat. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- 73 percent of journalists reported using social media for their work daily, with 31 percent saying that they use the tools for three hours or more a day. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- News, politics and current affairs journalists emerged as the ones spending the longest time on social media with 43 percent staying on the platforms for three hours or longer a day. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- The majority (68 percent) of business and industry specialist journalists use social platforms daily, but only 20 percent of them stayed longer than three or more hours a day. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- Younger journalists (those between the age of 18 and 27) were more likely to use social media for three or more hours a day than their older counterparts (53 percent as opposed to 22 percent for those aged between 46 and 64). (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- 67 percent of journalists thought that social media was very important for publishing and promoting their work. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- 60 percent of journalists think that social media is very important for interacting with their audience. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- 46 percent of journalists think that social media is very important for monitoring other media/what’s going on. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- Social networking and microblogging sites are used more regularly by journalists in 2017 to post comments daily (59 percent) compared to 2012 (47 percent). (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- Audience interaction is an important activity for many journalists on social media, with 19 percent engaging with their audience via social media every hour and a further 47 percent daily. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- In 2017, 80 percent of respondents thought that they were more engaged with their audience because of social media. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- Many journalists frequently interact with their audience on social with 66 percent reporting they do it daily. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- Only seven percent of journalists said that they never interact with their audience on social media. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- One in four (25 percent) journalists felt that they relied completely on social media for engagement with their audience. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- 47 percent of journalists said they were reliant on social media for engagement with their audience to a large extent. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- Only three percent of journalists think that they do not need social media for engagement with their audience. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- Full-time employed journalists were more likely to interact with their audience daily or hourly on social media (72 percent) compared to freelance journalists (66 percent). (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- Unsurprisingly more than half (57 percent) of journalists stated that social media was the first choice of communication with the public – it affords journalists a unique method of communication with their audience. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- Only 27 percent of journalists prefer social media as the first choice of communication with PR sources. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- 71 percent of journalists agreed that social media has fundamentally changed their role as a journalist, while in 2016 the figure was 65 percent. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- Less than half of journalists agreed that overall social media has had a positive impact on journalism (42 percent agreed, 26 percent disagreed and a relatively high 31 percent was undecided). (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- 57 percent of journalists agreed or strongly agreed that social media was undermining traditional values such as objectivity (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)
- The majority of journalists also thought (77 percent agreed or strongly agreed) that social media was encouraging journalists to focus on speed rather than analysis. (Cision 2017 Global Social Journalism Study, September 2017)