A powerful PR campaign begins by creating a playbook that includes your goals for the campaign, the messages to convey, the audiences to reach and how to reach them. Results should be measured by setting achievable objectives and evaluating those objectives through the campaign.
Every PR investment decision-maker deserves to know whether the program met or beat its goal. That requires setting reasonable and measurable objectives such as:
- Did We Outperform Competitors? In a media-driven pro-gram, for example, you might consider a way to compare share-of-voice to market-share; if share-of-voice is the greater of the two, you’ve probably generated more than your fair share versus competitors.
- Did We Deliver Key Messages? Was There Interference? It’s more common to track the delivery of intended messages, but negative or off-topic themes can neutralize or overwhelm what’s intended.
- Was the Coverage Prominent? Was It Seen? / Did We Reach Our Target Audiences? Frequency and content are important, but there are other factors that can increase the likelihood for awareness and recall, including: the name of your company or program in headlines; visuals; and the size or length of the news item, not to mention comments, likes, page views and shares.
- Are We Generating a Positive ROI? Is PR Driving Revenue? It is difficult to connect PR to sales. PR is all about generating awareness, establishing credibility and driving traffic to your company.
- Did We Exceed Relative Efficiency When Compared to Other Marketing Disciplines? Improved efficiency over past performance is an important gauge of continual improvement. Comparing PR’s efficiency against other marketing agents can provide helpful context. It’s common for PR to deliver the best ROI within the marketing mix, but if you want to benchmark internally, gain the buy-in of those you’ll be referencing (and the measures by which you’ll be compared).
- What Worked, What Didn’t? How Do We Improve? What’s Next? Beyond telling you what happened and how you performed, your measurement system should tell you something about your marketing strategy, the messages that resonate and the best channels to reach your targeted audience.
A successful PR effort is one that meets or exceeds your original expectations. It begins, however, with setting reasonable objectives and finding the right strategy to meaningfully reach your audience. Results should not be based on quantity as much as you should look at quality.
*Content adopted from Research Data Insights
