By: Arleigh Galant Vasconcellos, Principal at The Agency | @ArleighGV
Public Relations is a service. For most industries, services can be measured and therefore ROI can be easily quantified. This is not the case with PR. PR measurement has become a point of contention even to those within our industry.
Continuing on from my article last week – Let me be VERY clear. AVE isn’t the end-all, be-all metric of our work.
You need to look at shares, social engagement, page views (if the publication offers it), etc. to see if it was effective: if not, then you need to tweak your messaging. You also MUST read all of your coverage and audience engagement messages to see if they are positive or negative to again ensure the story you are telling is accurate and that it resonates with your target audience.
Finally, my post from last week only covers media relations. As most of us industry professionals know, media relations is only a small part of the equation in the greater scheme of a public relations and communications strategy. Now that most media is consumed online, and especially via social media, we have even more chances for coverage and therefore more avenues to measure. AVE is applicable to relevant online media, but not to social media. But if you aren’t measuring social media, you would be ignoring a big part of your outcomes – which is why it has been included in the Barcelona Principles.
The most important aspect to remember about measuring PR is that there is no one-size-fits-all method out there. You need to find that hybrid that works for specific clients or projects. For example, in-house PRs working with product developers may value user engagement and feedback more than media coverage. But then maybe they value media coverage more because it will lead new users to their product.
There have been startups touting how they have been able to measure PR based solely on their algorithms. I believe the reason why there haven’t been any true winners in this field is because PR measurement isn’t as black-and-white as they claim. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good PR measurement startups that are doing an effective job at providing data on a specific part of PR engagement, especially in the social media and social sharing spaces. But I haven’t seen one clear algorithm that’s found a one-stop all-encompassing PR measurement yet.
One place that actually offered solid, doable advice for PR measurement was the latest white paper from Cision called ‘How to Replace AVE for Modern PR Measurement.’ While the title is a bit sensationalist, the tip sheet offers a good overview of what you can do to “implement a metrics-driven program,” which PR professionals can use and tailor to their specific projects and clients.
In PR, you need to have a targeted engagement strategy for each client/project; therefore your measurement should change accordingly. For example, we can’t measure our PR efforts for our oil and gas clients in the exact same way that we measure our efforts for our ICT clients. The true measure of a successful PR program is: have you reached your targeted audience with your key messaging, and are they engaging positively with you and your brand? If you can answer this question with a ‘yes’ then congratulations, you’ve not only put together and run a solid strategic PR campaign, you’ve figured out the right hybrid mix of tools to effectively measure your successes.
What are your thoughts on measuring PR efforts? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter at @PRTheAgency.
