In 2023, the World Communications Forum Association named Jason Mudd as North America’s Best PR Leader for 2022. He is CEO of Axia PR.
Measuring the impact of PR work isn’t the standard—to the detriment of companies.
Whether they’re working in-house at a company or alongside outside PR firms, public relations, communication and marketing professionals don’t tend to measure or inquire about measuring the impact of PR work for several reasons.
For one, there’s a common misperception that PR isn’t measurable. Additionally, some professionals might be aware that PR is measurable, but they don’t know how to approach it‚ or simply don’t want to because they think it’s too much trouble. And some understand the importance of measuring PR but take little to no effective action.
The reality is that PR is measurable. Communication leaders may have to work to accurately measure the impact of the strategic initiatives they and their teams spearhead, but by taking the right steps, they can do so.
Measuring The Impact Of PR Is Critical
Given today’s competitive landscape, it’s becoming increasingly important for stakeholders to know the numbers behind their PR initiatives. According to Muck Rack’s report, The State of PR 2022, 49% of PR professionals at agencies and 45% of those at brands indicated that “producing measurable results” would help them “increase PR’s value within their organization.” It’s clear that many PR professionals believe in the power of communicating results. They just need to effectively gather the right metrics to show the value they bring to the table.
Whether stakeholders manage PR efforts in-house or through an outside public relations agency, having a clear understanding of exactly what outcomes PR programs drive for their companies can secure greater organizational buy-in and support for their work (including gaining larger corporate budgets) and point them to the most strategic next steps.
Moving Away From Vanity Metrics
For every dollar a company spends, executives will want to know what they will get from it.
Often, when PR practitioners attempt to measure their work, they focus on their activities and outputs, using vanity metrics to get a pulse on their performance.
Vanity metrics include the number of media clips, media impressions and advertising value equivalents (AVEs). While these metrics might offer some insights, they don’t provide substantial value. Why? Because they don’t tell the whole story. Exposure is only one facet of the PR funnel.
Say, for example, a social post doesn’t get a lot of engagement (likes, comments and shares), but it gets several conversions. If a marketing professional doesn’t dig deeper, they won’t be able to find and communicate the real impact of their work. That social post led to revenue, and dollars earned is a more valuable figure for a client to know than the number of likes and comments—shareholders find dollars, not impressions, important.
AVEs are another vanity metric losing ground in the industry. Some PR and marketing professionals use this metric to try to pinpoint the value of earned media coverage. They look at what it would have cost them to purchase paid media of the same length and often multiply that times some variable of 1.5 to 10. But this is a false equivalency. Earned and paid media coverage are two completely different things. You can, for instance, earn four minutes of coverage on a morning news show, but you can’t always buy a four-minute ad to air during the same show. From a brand reputation standpoint, earned media has more weight. And by focusing on AVE, there’s a risk of downplaying or overpaying the true impact of that earned media coverage.
Approaching PR Measurement Effectively
In fact, moving away from using AVEs as a metric is one of the seven tenets of the AMEC’s Barcelona Principles 3.0, a set of best practices developed in 2020 by leading communication organizations. Our firm uses these principles to guide us as we measure how our work impacts our clients.
At the core, these principles are about results, not just activities and outputs. Effectively measuring PR comes down to understanding an organization’s goals (such as increasing awareness or attracting supporters by a certain percentage) and then consistently measuring the results generated in pursuit of those goals rather than the outputs produced.
To get started with effective measurement, PR professionals should ask these fundamental questions:
- What are our organization’s goals?
- Did our outputs reach the right audience with the right message?
- How did that impact our organization?
The exact metrics PR professionals should use will vary depending on the company and its goals. But regardless of which metrics communication leaders opt for, they should have a clear idea of how often they’ll measure results and how often they’ll evaluate those results. If they work with a PR firm, they should gain a clear understanding of that firm’s approach to tracking and measurement before signing a contract. For instance, an outside PR firm could measure a particular output daily and analyze the bigger picture quarterly for clients. PR has ebbs and flows, and evaluating results quarterly and annually, in my experience, will give stakeholders a more accurate picture of the progress made.
Ultimately, when PR leaders can show strong results regularly, they’ll make a case for why they’re a valuable partner to have on board—and open the door to more opportunities for themselves and their organizations and clients.
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