Romanian clients – willing to pay Euro 1,000-2,500 fees for PR services

Confident Communications, marketing and PR boutique, released a study made in January-February 2013, via interviews with 50 entrepreneurs (small and medium entreprises – IMM). The entrepreneurs that participated in the study are working in fields such as management consulting, law, fashion, HR, European funds, executive search, hospitality, education, medical services and tourism, have 20-100 employees and business turnovers of Euro 1-2M.

The study found out that most IMMs are willing to pay for PR services a monthly PR fee of Euro 1,000 -2,500 (65%), with 25% saying the fee they would pay is Euro 500 -1,000 and 10% would allocate monthly for PR Euro 3,000 – 4,000.

We think entrepreneurs with small and medium businesses are a niche not enough exploited by communication agencies and we initiated this qualitative study to find out directly from them which are their perception and knowledge on specialized communication services. In the same time, the study came as a consequence of some entrepreneurs vision that consider that, to worth the investment, PR must mean immediate sales or that PR has an important role in growing a business that reached to a stable position on the market only as a result of entrepreneur’s efforts

Mara Gojgar,

Managing Partner Confident Communications.

When it comes of communication, 60% of the respondents have a communication plan and only 30% used specialized services, with 70% making themselves their plans to promote their business. In spite of that, 90% consider that specialized PR services could help their businesses grow.

The communication channels entrepreneurs consider the most useful are website, blog, social media (40%), followed by media relations (35%) and strategical and cross marketing partnerships (25%).

Entrepreneurs consider that the main role of PR is to increase notoriety (45%) and company’s reputation and credibility(30%), while 25% expect PR to have a direct impact in sales.

The main criteria entrepreneurs are using to chose their communication agencies are personal references (40%), agency’s portfolio (35%), personal meetings (20%) and provided services (5%).

The ideal client-agency relation must include: agency sharing client’s entrepreneurial spirit and support company’s development and established objectives (35%), agency has to be oriented towards product and client (30%), agency to be focused and credible (25%), 10% want a realist and long term relationship oriented agency.

The study was made at Confident Communications’ initiative and implemented together with the B2B research company Trendelligent .