How to Measure your PR Success?
PR professionals have long back faced the challenges of measuring the success of a campaign and effectively reporting earned media results. It can be difficult to understand how to measure PR’s contribution and to justify your hard work to the client.
Traditional PR agencies will put together a coverage report whereas savvy PR professionals will look for ways to demonstrate how their work in media relations impacts the sales of the company.
With a variety of measurement categories available, we have outlined three metrics for measuring how PR results directly impact a client’s sales.
Message resonance
This one is fairly straightforward and is helpful in determining the media’s understanding of the key points of a launch, a new company direction or corporate strategy. Select the 1-2 key messages that each article should hit on. During coverage monitoring, identify the percentage of articles that included the key points you selected.
Backlinks from coverage
Use Google Analytics to determine which outlets are driving more web traffic from earned media coverage. In addition to tracking web traffic, measure potential SEO (Search Engine Optimization) impact through backlinks obtained from coverage. Higher the backlinks, the more likely the client’s page is going to rank higher.
Conversion rates
Google Analytics is a great tool to track conversion rates. Work closely with clients to understand their business goals, determine which they had like to highlight and align it with your PR conversion goals. It can include targeting visitors from a new industry to grow market share or can be an increase in whitepaper downloads to improve sales.
The ability to put a value on earned media coverage is the truest measure of PR success. Ultimately, you should measure it by addressing what really matters to the client. Working together and tracking against the PR success on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis ensures that everyone is aligned and working toward the same goals.
