thabitPR agencies have evolved. Once dedicated to media relations and crisis communication, PR agencies have adapted and re-adapted to the changing times. Perhaps no better example of this evolution can be found today than agencies’ adoption of content marketing.

When social broke onto the scene, PR agencies took control of their clients’ community management. As affordable technologies and the understanding of the importance of an authentic brand voice became mainstream, businesses brought social media in-house. Again, agencies adapted, this time focusing on developing their clients’ social strategies.

Another key change in recent years? Agencies have made content marketing a core piece of their offerings. Considering PR firms’ roots in helping brands tell their story, content marketing is a natural offshoot.

The PR industry is in the midst of a new challenge, and it’s time again for agencies to evolve. Just as clients’ social media needs changed, their content needs are changing as well.

Though many businesses will continue to rely on outside support for content creation, the ability to combine earned and paid media services will become a key market differentiator among agencies in the coming years. The time for PR agencies to evolve is now.

The need for content syndication

As recently as the turn of the century, sharing a brand’s voice was unpredictable and out of the company’s control. PR agencies took a brand’s best stories and tailored them to particular publications’ tastes, hoping that a couple would bite.

Even if they did, the story didn’t necessarily reflect the brand’s voice. The media outlets would make a brand’s story their own, often washing out the unique perspective of the brand.

Today, sharing a brand’s perspective with target audiences is easy for companies of any size. They can use internal writers or outsource content creation to share their stories through press releases and on owned media platforms, such as blogs and social channels.

With about nine in 10 businesses investing in content marketing, the challenge becomes standing out from the masses and getting the right content to reach the right audiences at the right time.

Many brands have turned to a pay-to-play model, grabbing visibility by investing in native advertising, advertorials, content syndication and direct media buys for digital marketing.

More than half — 55% — of marketers increased native ad spending in 2014, and 63% said they would spend more in 2015.

Though skepticism about native ads among consumers exists, they actually prefer them to pop ups and banners. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, 60 percent of consumers are more open to ads that tell a story than ones that simply sell. Native ads also help shape brands as more trustworthy and more of an authority in consumers’ eyes.

However, many PR agencies, and of course exceptions exist, haven’t developed paid media programs to support their earned and owned content creation efforts.

Why have many PR agencies stood on the sidelines of such an important game? PR’s focus on content creation and storytelling has left many PR departments and agencies ill-prepared to take advantage of distribution services.

Without money and experience, PR teams don’t have the right model or resources to show performance of digital ad buys, native advertising and content syndication the way digital agencies do.

At Cision, we shifted more of our content marketing budget to syndication through services like Taboola, while our digital advertising spend has declined. These decisions reflect the fact that widely sharing our thought leadership produced better results than having more digital ads.

Our results are fairly typical as consumers have become banner ad blind. Fifty-four percent of Internet users don’t see banner ads, and 50% of banner ad clicks are accidental.

Solving tomorrow’s problem

The problem that PR agencies face hasn’t fully come to a head. It will soon, though, and steps need to be taken today.

Most PR practitioners don’t have budget responsibility for paid media. In most places, the content syndication and native advertising budget still sits with digital marketing and demand generation teams.

If PR agencies can show the benefit of connecting paid and earned media, the budget authority could shift, giving agencies more opportunity to help clients.

Digital agencies have both PR and paid media acquisition capabilities. As customer needs move toward visibility, the risk of clients fleeing PR agencies not prepared to support them (and heading to ones that can accommodate their distribution needs) increases.

If a PR agency doesn’t have and cannot grab control of earned media spending, it needs to find a way to bring the department that does to the table and have a conversation about where to allocate spending.

Gaining a seat at the table and having a discussion shouldn’t be a difficult sell. Having the extra intelligence and insights of a PR agency will only better serve the brand that it represents.

After all, each party involved in the conversation has a stake in the success of the brand’s efforts to generate awareness, reach its target audiences, distribute its message, and, ultimately, become more profitable.

Demanding better analytics

In addition to joining the conversation, PR agencies should fight for access to clients’ analytics and data from the paid media channels, including metrics that show conversion rates. Even if PR is shut out of the conversation about strategy, they should still ask for this valuable data.

This information illuminates the topics and media that lead to success, providing a blueprint for how to optimize the stories they craft. Even agencies uninvolved in the content creation process can benefit from seeing the data. Agencies are brand advocates, and anything that impacts the top of the funnel should fall under their microscope.

The need for PR agencies to make a change is absolute. The question that remains is should PR agencies encourage clients and core constituents to take control of content syndication budgets and analyze effectiveness of spend, or should they simply be prepared for when their clients make internal shifts?

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Mark Thabit is CMO of Cision.