The Digital PR Summit 2025

With decades of combined experience under our belts at Catnip Comms, we can attest to the fact that the only constant in the digital media space is that things are always changing. That change can sometimes feel overwhelming, especially for our clients who may not have the bandwidth to stay up to date with the latest, but that’s where we come in. 

One of the ways we stay up to date with the changing tides in our industry is to attend summits, conferences, and webinars that bring together experts from around the world. It’s a chance to hear and speak about what’s happening now and learn how to prepare for what’s next. Earlier this month, I travelled to Manchester to attend the second annual Digital PR Summit, sponsored by Digitaloft. 

Spread across two stages with talks spanning from the art of public speaking, pitching, SEO, and email marketing, I spent a full day soaking in the insights - and I have a few takeaways to share. 

Good Ideas Are Only As Good as the Pitch 
Katy Powell of Bottled Imagination spoke about her many years of pitching grand ideas to clients and stressed that no matter how great the idea may be, it’s only as good as the pitch. When it comes to getting something across the finish line, I was reminded how important it is to remember that you only have one chance to present your idea in a compelling, clear way. 

Being clear means removing subjectivity from the presentation and, instead, focusing on practical pieces of data and a detailed explanation of the thought process that led to the final idea. By including definitions, explaining the ideation process, and selling it with the potential headlines it will inspire, you can really showcase the worth of what is being presented and avoid any confusion or misunderstandings. 

Don’t Mistake Activity for Strategy 
Mark Rofe of “finding love” billboards fame spoke about his journey to gaining press traction and what he learned from these activities. The core takeaway was: don’t mistake activity for strategy. In other words, a campaign or news item may get a lot of coverage, but if it isn’t a small part of a larger media strategy, that activity won’t count for anything in the long run. 

Becca Peel of Tank echoed this in her talk about internal data sources. She stressed that companies and organizations have a plethora of data at their fingertips that can be adequately anonymized to meet GDPR requirements and then shared to the press as part of a larger strategy. It’s key when aggregating data for a story that it is reliable, exclusive, and used to make a specific point that plays a part in a campaign. 

Whatever the means of getting there is, it’s vital that we think about the hook first then find the data to support it, and ensure when pitching that there is a timeliness to the story. Journalists are going to ask “why now?” and as media professionals we need to have a concise answer. 

Link Volume Doesn’t Always Mean Success
As time has gone on and search methods on the internet have shifted, it’s become clear to PR experts like Millie White of Digitaloft that coverage numbers are just vanity metrics. When it comes to measuring success in SEO, links should now be thought of as a means to an end, not the end goal in and of itself. This plays into the larger point I heard echoed through the entire summit: every effort in the digital space needs to be tied to a larger strategy and have a justification for its efforts. 

Another big point made throughout the summit was that the most important thing anyone can be investing in at this point in time is their “brand.” We’ll dig into this a bit more further down. 

Rather than showcase vanity metrics, Millie suggests focusing more on relevance and finding ways to measure the actual impact of a placed backlink. This impact could be donations, sales, or just more website conversions through a higher ranking in search as a result. As agency experts, it’s up to us to identify secondary KPIs that can show clients a world beyond links, that’s customized to their business and its goals. 

How AI Search Is Making an Impact
Of course there was mention of AI; in fact, there was a lot of chatter about AI and the impact it’s having on search. AI overviews are everywhere nowadays, with over 60% of search queries on Google triggering them. This has a direct impact on click through rates and therefore ad revenue for websites that have come to really rely on this structure. 

Charlie Clark of Minty Digital said that one of the key ways brands could continue to have success in search as AI takes more of a leading role is to focus on “entity signals” - which include things like brand reputation, popularity, and context. It’s not about hitting specific KPIs anymore, it’s about having an organic, holistic, big picture strategy to build a brand across all sorts of areas, using a variety of methods. 

Brand is King
Digital PR should be thought of as nothing but a brand-building strategy that is designed to answer the question: how can this move us closer to being the brand (organization, foundation, nonprofit, etc.) that owns this space? 

Matt Cayless of Bubblegum Search took on this topic and stressed that the only way to futureproof SEO is by increasing brand recognition. As CTRs fall at a dramatic rate across the board, it’s brands that have that existing recognition that are winning. “You don’t have to rank first to get the click, you just need to be familiar and relevant to the search.” 

To do this, we must build visibility and influence across trusted platforms. This can be done by researching the target audience, building outreach lists, executing an engagement strategy, and planning the resulting content. Measuring success can include keeping track of branded search volume, brand and keyword combos, as well as mentions in trusted media sources. 

Closing Thoughts
There’s been a lot of panic across the industry in the last year or so about the impact AI is having on the work we do across digital sectors, whether it’s organic social media, public relations, or SEO. As an agency, we work across all of these sectors and have been paying close attention to the developments being reported in these industries. 

Hearing firsthand from experts in the UK at the Digital PR Summit gave me a sense of camaraderie and also validation that we are doing everything we can to ensure our clients are ready for whatever comes next. By continuing to stress the importance of a large-scale, big picture strategy (an area of work we have years of experience in building), we are ensuring our clients are investing their budgets carefully, by only suggesting and taking actions that are backed up by the data and tied into their goals.