How can you measure your PR results and why PR?
Our industry is saying PR measurement is all the rage right now. Everyone is talking about results, ROI, why, how etc.
Impending financial doom and budget fear is driving a need to ensure that every penny counts but we have always talked about objectives, results and measurement. Otherwise why exactly are we doing PR in the first place?
PR is deemed the ‘fluffy’ soft art of marketing. It’s not fluffy. It’s generally hard nosed and extremely competitive. It’s allegedly famously ‘hard to measure’ results too.
It’s not though. Not if you know what you are doing, why you are doing it and do it right.
The biggest downfall is when clients or agencies don’t actually know why they are in fact doing PR other than because they have always done so…
The ‘why are we doing PR’ should come from the client and if the client doesn’t know, it‘s down to the agency to help them work it out and set some parameters for measurement, to evaluate whether the campaign has been successful or not.
We, as an agency, are just as guilty as anyone else of not always holding firm to this need and not pushing back when there isn’t a clear objective in mind. This pretty much always ends badly.
We get briefs that talk about how the agency should tell the client how they will measure success, but the brief doesn’t actually say what success looks like to the client’s business or organisation.
At this point all agencies should stop. This is a conversation that MUST be had and an outcome must be agreed or you are just setting yourself up for failure.
Do they want more website traffic? To be famous? To reach customers in a certain town or city? Do they want to launch a new gin and sell 20k bottles? Why did they pick up the phone or send that email? What do they want to achieve?
If they want to generate five pieces of coverage even - fine. That’s not an actual business outcome though - we want to drive real change in your business so we need to talk about generating five pieces of coverage that will lead to results like driving website traffic or sales?
If your aim is fame we can go to town on the measurement. Google search volume, search engine position, coverage, reach, website traffic, hashtags, mentions, shares.
Once you have a clear, precise answer to this question we can build you a plan and set some sensible, measured and achievable KPIs but we can't tell you what you want to achieve. Well, we can but we can almost 100% guarantee that at the end of the contract you will probably tell us it’s not what you really wanted or that you aren't happy with the results.
This might be why digital PR is very popular at the moment. Generally digital PR campaigns are commissioned by savvy marketing people who focus on SEO which means they understand all of this measurement ‘stuff’ and they know which outcomes they want - generally good quality links that improve search engine position and drive traffic. Everyone is on the same page from day one and they know what they need to track.
We can, and will, take this approach with our traditional campaigns too. We just need clients to come along for the ride - and we need access to your google analytics. We aren’t going to steal your data, we are going to help you grow in an intelligent way and show you how we did it. Maybe even learn something along the way for the next campaign that you will want once you see the results in black and white.
Want help formulating your PR and marketing objectives for the next 12 months? You can book a strategy workshop with us or just ring for a chat and we will help you set some measurable KPIs that will contribute to real change and growth within your business.
