Public relations (PR) is all about getting your brand noticed and keeping a good public image, but the media world is always shifting, and with more and more ways to communicate, figuring out how well your PR campaigns are working can be pretty challenging.
This is probably why 75% of comms professionals admit they could do a better job of measuring PR. Yet despite the challenges it brings, it’s crucial to measure and understand the impact of PR to show its worth, fine-tune strategies, and ensure long-term success. So, how do we go about it?
Whether you’re a seasoned PR professional or new to the field, the information in this blog article should equip you with the tools and knowledge needed to effectively measure and optimise your PR efforts.
What’s in this article:
- Why is it important to measure PR impact?
- Key metrics for measuring PR impact
- Tools and technologies for PR measurement
- Challenges in measuring PR impact
- Key takeaways
.jpg)
Why is it important to measure PR impact?
Measuring PR impact goes beyond proving its value – it’s about optimising strategies and driving meaningful outcomes that work towards overall business success. Here are nine reasons why it’s important to effectively measure PR impact:
1. Improve strategy and tactics
By analysing various PR metrics, you can identify what strategies and tactics are most effective in reaching your target audience and achieving desired outcomes. This insight enables you to continually improve and optimise your PR efforts going forward.
2. Align with business objectives
PR activities should align closely with broader organisational goals such as increasing brand visibility, driving sales, or improving reputation. By measuring PR impact, you can be sure that your strategy is aligned with and contributing to success at a broader organisational level. This is no mean feat however, as 67% of PR professionals say connecting PR metrics to business outcomes is their biggest measurement challenge.
3. Build credibility and trust
Solid data and metrics enhance the credibility of your PR efforts, both internally with stakeholders and externally with clients, partners, and the public. This transparency builds trust and reinforces the value of PR within your organisation.
4. Justify budget and resources
Clear measurement of PR impact provides evidence of its effectiveness and helps justify budget allocations and resource needs. When you can prove how successful a PR campaign has been, it enables client teams to make a compelling case for continued investment in PR activities.
5. Identify areas for improvement
Measuring PR impact allows you to identify strengths and weaknesses in your PR strategies, which then enables you to be proactive in making relevant adjustments and improvements.
6. Enhance accountability
Accurate and ongoing measurement fosters accountability within the PR team, ensuring that everyone’s efforts are aligned with objectives and delivering measurable results. It also encourages the culture of performance and continuous improvement that we’re so proud of at Motive PR.
7. Keep up to date with industry standards
Adopting robust PR measurement practices ensures that your organisation remains competitive and relevant in an increasingly data-driven and competitive PR landscape. It allows you to benchmark against industry standards and best practices so you can stay ahead of the curve.
8. Demonstrate ROI (kind of!)
Proving the return on investment (ROI) with PR can be challenging, but setting measurable goals and reporting on your results does help to demonstrate what your brand or client has got for its money. When it’s considered alongside the other points above, providing a rough idea of ROI goes towards justifying campaign spend and maintaining good client-agency relationships.
Key metrics for measuring PR impact
While the outcomes of good PR can sometimes seem intangible, focusing on specific metrics can provide a clearer picture of its value and influence. There isn’t one specific metric to quantify how well a campaign performs, and this is because ultimately it comes down to the type of campaign and its aims, but there are a few key factors that play a big role in evaluating the success of your PR efforts. Here are some key metrics to consider when assessing your PR impact:
1. Media coverage
One of the easiest ways to track the impact of a PR campaign is to look at the number of coverage items it achieves. In fact, 96% of PR professionals measure coverage/stories placed. Having press releases published in established media publications raises brand awareness and makes the company appear more credible. If the press releases secure good coverage numbers, then it means that you’re moving in the right direction with the campaign. If your press releases and pitches are missing the mark, then it might be time to rethink the campaign strategy.
2. Backlinks
One of the most important elements of digital PR is link building. Gaining high quality backlinks to a company’s website plays a big part in improving SEO and helping the website rank high in Google search results (SERPS). This will give you a huge advantage over your competitors. PR companies earn links for their clients by pitching editorial content to relevant publications and including links to the company’s website to the release. Therefore by totting up the number of backlinks your campaign achieves, you’ll have a good idea of its efficacy.
3. Domain authority of received links
As mentioned before, securing links has a major impact on a company's success. The number of received links is a useful metric to measure PR efforts, but it’s also important to look at where these links are coming from. Domain authority shows how authoritative the website is ranked by search engines. In your PR strategy, you should target websites that have a high domain authority score, because they’re most valuable for SEO and website rankings.
4. Domain authority of your website
If digital PR is most important for your business, at the start of a campaign, check domain authority and monitor it throughout. A website’s DA is calculated by evaluating multiple factors, including linking domains and total number of links. Your website’s DA should increase over time if digital PR activity is successful.
5. Social media followers and engagement
Track your followers and social media engagement before, during and after the campaign to gauge its impact on your brand presence. A lot of companies collect thousands of followers with competitions and giveaways, for example, but if your account’s following continues to grow organically after a PR initiative, then there’s a good chance that amongst the followers are people who are genuinely interested in your brand.
6. Website traffic
If your company is struggling with driving traffic to the website, then a well thought-out PR strategy can have a massive impact. As Digital PR experts, it’s our job to use press releases, content marketing campaigns, and media pitching to acquire backlinks to our clients’ websites, which can boost both organic and referral traffic stats. If you compare your website’s traffic before and after a campaign, you’ll likely notice a spike in the number of site visitors, which is a good way to gauge the effectiveness of your PR efforts.
7. Brand mentions
Monitoring the growth of a company’s online presence can be done by tracking how much their brand is being mentioned in different online channels, like social media, blogs and forums. It’s a good way to get insight about what people are saying about your product of service and it helps to improve SEO rankings. Both Google and Bing have also historically indicated that brand mentions provide similar value to backlinks, with Google filling multiple patents mentioning “implied links”. Google Analyst Gary Illyes also stated that “Basically, if you publish high quality content that is highly cited on the internet – and I’m not talking about just links, but also mentions on social networks and people talking about your branding… Then you are doing great.”
8. Increased sales numbers
One of the main purposes of PR is raising brand awareness, which drives potential customers to the company’s website and essentially increases the sales figures over time. One of the main interests of business owners is sales and although PR does not automatically equal skyrocketing sales numbers (most of the time), it definitely plays a big part in the company’s success by helping to build a good reputation, credibility and visibility for the brand.
Tools and technologies for PR measurement
There are a huge range of tools with a number of features and capabilities that can help PR professionals in the UK. From monitoring media coverage and analysing brand sentiment to measuring reach and demonstrating the overall impact of PR activities, here are some tools and technologies that can help PR measurement.
Meltwater
Meltwater offers comprehensive media monitoring and analysis services. It tracks online news, social media, blogs, and forums, providing insights into media mentions, sentiment analysis, and reach. Meltwater also offers reporting tools to help demonstrate PR impact.
Vuelio
Vuelio is a comprehensive PR and communications software widely used in the UK. It provides a suite of tools designed to help PR professionals manage media relations, monitor media coverage, and measure the impact of their PR activities. It offers an extensive database of journalists, bloggers, and influencers, making it easier to find the right contacts for PR campaigns. Vuelio also allows users to distribute press releases to tailored lists of media contacts, ensuring your news reaches the most relevant audience.
Talkwalker
Talkwalker offers social media analytics and monitoring, providing insights into brand mentions, sentiment, and engagement. It also includes image recognition technology, allowing you to track your brand’s logo across social media and the web.
Google Analytics
While not a PR-specific tool, Google Analytics can be incredibly useful for measuring the impact of PR on website traffic. By tracking referral traffic from media coverage and analysing user behaviour on your site, you can gauge the effectiveness of your PR efforts in driving web traffic and conversions.
Buzzstream
BuzzStream is an outreach and relationship management tool designed for PR, marketing, and SEO professionals. It helps users research influencers, manage outreach campaigns, and track communications efficiently. With features like contact management, automated email outreach, and link-building tracking, BuzzStream streamlines the process of building and maintaining relationships with media contacts, bloggers, and influencers. It also offers detailed analytics and reporting to measure the success of outreach efforts.
Challenges in measuring PR impact
Despite having the best tools and techniques at our disposal, measuring PR impact can still be difficult for a few different reasons. First off, PR benefits are often intangible. Things like brand awareness, reputation, and customer trust are crucial to understand but hard to put a number on. Unlike direct sales and other marketing disciplines, you can’t always see immediate, clear-cut results from PR efforts.
Another issue is the long-term nature of PR. The impact of a good PR campaign might take months or even years to manifest. This delay makes it tricky to link PR activities directly to business outcomes right away.
Then there’s the sheer number of communication channels we use today – traditional media like newspapers and magazines, social media, blogs, podcasts, the list goes on! Each of these platforms needs different metrics and tools for measurement, making it a complex task to capture the overall PR impact across the board.
Lastly, there’s no standard set of metrics for PR. Unlike digital ads, where you have clear metrics like click-through rates, PR lacks universally agreed benchmarks. For example, although it’s not included in our list, 27% of PR professionals choose to measure the number of pitches they’ve sent. This makes it harder to compare and evaluate PR performance consistently.
Key takeaways
- Understanding how well your PR campaigns are performing isn’t just about proving their worth. It’s about fine-tuning your strategies, aligning with business objectives, and ensuring long-term success.
- While PR outcomes can seem intangible, focusing on specific metrics like media coverage, backlinks, domain authority, social media engagement, website traffic, and brand mentions can give you a clearer picture of your campaign’s success.
- Leveraging the best tools is essential. Meltwater, Vuelio, Talkwalker, Google Analytics, and BuzzStream are some of the heavy hitters that can help you manage outreach, monitor media coveragen and track your PR activity’s impact.
- Measuring PR isn’t a walk in the park and it’s important to remember that some PR benefits take time to manifest. Unlike direct sales or marketing, PR results aren’t always immediate. It might take months or even years to see the full impact of your efforts, so patience is key.
If you’d like to discuss how we can help you create impactful and measurable PR campaigns, get in touch with us for a no obligation chat.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
