News and Insights
5 Tips for Measuring PR
July 19, 2024
When planning PR campaigns and executing strategies, it is important to be clear on how outcomes will be measured. PR measurement evolves over time but it should always begin with a deep and clear understanding of aims, objectives and desired outcomes. It is easy to get distracted by the array of measurement tools on offer and lose sight of the goal.
With that in mind, here are five tips to consider as you make decisions, or seek guidance, on how and what to measure in your PR initiatives:
- Determine ‘what’ and ‘why’ before ‘how’
Start at the beginning with your business goals, so you can be clear on the aims of your PR campaign. This will make setting PR measures more straightforward and meaningful.
For example, if the goal is to increase sales leads, the objective may be to drive more traffic to the website, and the tactics may include publishing valued content and engaging audiences through social media to generate click-throughs. Measurement should be at each stage – sales leads, website traffic, content consumption, social media engagement and click-throughs.
To help with this, it’s useful to consider the following questions:
- What makes a difference to our prospecting?
- Where do we want to achieve coverage?
- Who do we need to influence and interact with on social media?
- Measure outcomes as well as outputs
Clear key performance indicators (KPIs) should enable outcomes, not just outputs, to be measured, according to the PR objectives. Is your objective to generate leads? Perhaps you want to shift perception? The precise measures, and methods of evaluation, will vary accordingly.
For example, if the target outcome is sales leads and the supporting objective is to positively influence buying decisions, consider where your brand needs to be to raise awareness. Then think about what it will take to inspire your targets to consider your brand. Couple this with an understanding of the media landscape, and the media consumed by your target audiences, and this will help you determine ‘what success looks like’ in measuring media relations.
- Use both quantitative and qualitative measures
Quantitative PR measurement provides something concrete to compare against. It can feed into other quantitative KPIs in the business and enable progress tracking over time. Such measures include coverage (such as number of articles or percentage uplift), share of voice, media and social engagement and website traffic.
Qualitative approaches help measure the impact of PR on audience perception. A range of approaches here include in-person focus groups, self-completion surveys, telephone/video conferencing interviews and sentiment analysis. For quantitative and qualitative analyses, specialists in intelligence and insights will be able to help.
- Take advantage of digital measurement tools
Digital tools can help create a more direct line of sight from campaign activity to reaction and action, to help arrive at an understanding of where lead generation has come from. Search engine performance and social media interactions are numbers-driven, but they can also demonstrate an achieved outcome, for example, someone within a target group not only read a tweet but was inspired to retweet it, indicating an achieved level of engagement. In a similar way, a link can be made between fresh and tailored content that helped with website performance.
There are many digital measurement tools to assist in this endeavour, from ones that measure website visits to brand perception analysis, search engine ranking and keyword monitoring. Specialists in digital marketing will be able to recommend an optimal approach.
- Use results to re-evaluate campaign tactics
It is important to report consistently and at regular intervals once goals and measurement methods are in place. That way, you can see the progress of your activity and assess results over time. Effective measurement supports you in continually re-evaluating campaign tactics based on results, adjusting as required to optimise outcomes. A post-campaign review of objectives, results and outcomes is also essential to inform subsequent campaigns.
When measuring PR success, it is important to start at the beginning, understanding ‘what’ and ‘why’ before looking at ‘how’. The range of tools now available can be overwhelming – it helps to keep objectives always in mind to avoid over-complicating your measurement approach. Discuss what you want to achieve with your PR service partner. For further information, take a look at our recently updated white paper on PR measurement – How do you measure PR?
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