R&Co Communications
It’s one of the most common questions we get asked at R&Co Communications when talking about PR campaigns: How do you measure PR impact? It might feel like a complex question, but the art of PR measurement and evaluation can be simpler than it might appear.
Ian Gallagher, account director, shares his advice for businesses that want to measure the real impact of their PR campaigns.
Data, data and more data
To understand how to measure PR value, first we need to answer the question ‘what is PR coverage?’. Put simply, it’s content you gain editorial coverage for without paying for it. This could be online, print, TV, podcast or social media.
For years, the only real measurement assigned to PR coverage was advertising value equivalency, or AVE PR measurement.
What is advertising value equivalency?
AVE takes the cost of placing a similarly-sized advert in a print publication and multiplying that value by 2.5. This is because earned PR coverage always has a greater value than advertising as it represents third-party endorsement.
However, using AVE to measure the success of a PR campaign is unlikely to impress anyone – so much so that the Chartered Institute of Public Relations now disqualifies any award entries which mention AVE.
Fortunately, tools have moved on in line with the growing expectations of clients to understand exactly what ROI they are getting.
PR measurement tools
The volume or quality of the coverage achieved is no longer a strong enough argument on its own to justify PR spend. However, if you can demonstrate the following to a client, then you can have a very different conversation:
How many organic backlinks that coverage has earned
How many people are estimated to have viewed it
How much traction it’s gained on social media
The quality of the websites it’s appeared on
At R&Co we recommend using CoverageBook. It’s vital for agencies to answer the question of how to measure PR impact, particularly when budgets are being scrutinised, and tools like CoverageBook do this very well.
Why measure a PR campaign?
If you’re using PR measurement tools which gives you estimated views for a piece of coverage, you can combine the data using this CPM calculator. This calculates your spend per 1,000 views generated based on the total cost of your PR activity.
The benefit of measuring your PR efforts in this way is they can sit alongside other spends such as marketing campaigns, advertising, paid social and PPC and you can see the cost per 1,000 views for all activity.
Conclusion
When you are running digital marketing activities, such as SEO, paid social or PPC campaigns, you measure website traffic, reach, engagements and conversions. If you’re running a newsletter campaign, you’ll analyse opens, click-throughs and purchases.
PR campaigns shouldn’t be any different. If you’re taking the time to earn coverage and spending money on PR activity, you need to see the value of that coverage across multiple metrics and platforms.
Do you need a communications agency to help you deliver and measure PR campaigns? Contact R&Co Communications for support.
