Measuring PR effectiveness
Regular monitoring and evaluation of media relations and other PR activity and the production of pithy evaluation reports with facts and figures should be allowed for in your PR budget. They show whether your PR is working and what’s been achieved against the objectives. Measurement will also provide insights that help with forward planning.
The ability to report accurately and consistently on PR outcomes will help you to justify your investment and demonstrate the contribution which PR is making to your business or organisational goals.
To be able to measure your PR effectively, you need clear aims and objectives. You then need to agree how the PR will be measured. It’s helpful to know where you are starting from – so set benchmarks before you begin.
PR measurement can include both quantitative measurements (evaluating your media coverage for example) and qualitative, for example where you survey perceptions about your company or brand amongst your target stakeholders.
Five top tips
• Try and establish some benchmarks before you begin. Do you know what the current perceptions are? Look at the levels of enquiries you receive (and where people have heard about you from), the numbers of monthly hits/unique visitors to your website, your sales activity etc
• For media monitoring, the most useful services provide electronic alerts (as well as a raft of reporting options) which are also an early warning indicator of any issues.
• Be specific about the audiences you need to reach and define the categories of media that are going to help you achieve this. Then write your key messages for each audience. You can then analyse media items by ‘favourable’ or ‘unfavourable’ for your key messages.
• Decide what other metrics you will use to monitor outputs – for example brand mentions, calls to action, Opportunities to See.
• For establishing your outcomes a Return on Investment (ROI) is a good figure to calculate, but you need to clearly define what is meant by the ‘return’ – for example sales, number of visitors or enquiries.
For further advice, please feel free to call us on 01473 326400 or just drop us a line at hello@genesispr.co.uk.
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