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Most PR professionals agree that measurement is critical. After all, without it, you can never truly proclaim that your efforts have been successful. However, even though there are standard methods of measurement (public impression, media hits, dollar value of coverage space, etc.), practitioners are often left grasping for ways to justify the importance of their communications to prospective and current clients. Most often, PR pros become preoccupied with achieving a certain number of press clippings rather than measuring PR efforts against a client’s actual goals. In order to ensure the most effective results and the likelihood of a happy and successful client, you should ask two simple questions:
- What are the client’s overall business goals, and how do they relate to PR?
- What kind of PR efforts will be most effective in helping the client reach those goals?
Understanding client goals and aligning PR efforts
Any PR relationship should begin with establishing a client’s general short- and long-term business goals. Is the company trying to drive traffic to its blog? Does it want to become a highly regarded expert in the industry? Is boosting sales revenue the major focus? Each client may have unique needs and expectations for their business. It is up to the PR practitioner to uncover those goals as they relate to the PR practice and to create a plan that reflects them.
Additionally, client goals may change and evolve over the course of a relationship or campaign. Again, it is the PR practitioner’s responsibility to keep on top of any changes in direction. An open and frequent dialogue with clients will ensure that any changes in a company’s goals can be reflected in PR efforts.
Once you have a comprehensive understanding of a client’s goals in mind, you can draft a PR plan that will deliver effective results. For example, if a client has the goal of attracting a youth demographic to generate sales, it makes sense to expend PR efforts on online outreach versus more traditional media channels, since most young people consume media or information online.
PR measurement in practice
For Tyler Wright, owner of Megawatt PR in Vancouver, British Columbia, measuring PR success entails understanding the varying definitions of success for every client. Even if the number of press clippings is the main form of PR measurement used, the number and kinds of press clippings considered “successful” can vary dramatically from client to client. Consequently, gauging your client’s expectations is crucial to determining which PR efforts to employ.
There are several ways to gauge a client’s expectations. For example, you could have the client create a “wish list” of media outlets they would like to see coverage in. Take the list further by asking what the client’s ideal piece of coverage would look like. While some clients may be happy with a quote in an article, others may expect full-length profile features. As Wright explains, “Some [clients] are ecstatic at a small newspaper article while others barely flinch at huge TV spots. It’s a constant game of reading their varied expectations and adjusting my work load accordingly.”
A client’s expectations of what business objectives media exposure should fulfill can vary dramatically as well. As Sara Pereira, founder and president of Pereira PR in Vancouver, British Columbia, explains, “It’s not only about the amount of coverage we are able to get, but how clients expect that garnered coverage to translate into business results. Do they want media exposure to drive web site traffic? Do they want media coverage to create sales leads?” Pereira goes on to explain, “When we are able to understand client expectations based on business goals, and make them measurable, we create PR strategies that are much more focused, rather than just driving hard to get as many press hits as possible.”
Business goals can be measured in a multitude of ways—some more obvious than others. For example, if a business goal is to drive traffic to an organization’s web site, an analysis of traffic on a day that a press release or article was published is an effective way to measure whether the PR strategy is working. If a client has a business goal of generating sales leads, assessing the number of phone calls or e-mail inquiries that come in after a PR initiative is another valuable way to measure the effectiveness of a PR strategy.
By measuring PR success against specific client expectations, you can develop a well-rounded approach to exposure rather than just media coverage. A comprehensive approach might include profile-enhancing activities such as entering awards programs, seeking out speaking opportunities and building an online presence through social media.
Any conversation about PR measurement can’t ignore the ballooning importance of new media, such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook, in shifting perceptions of PR success and measurement. Erin McConnell, president of Wilcox Group, points out that many clients now covet coverage on blogs more than coverage in major traditional publications. As a result, McConnell explains, “The type and amount of PR measurement we undertake for clients to demonstrate results has expanded considerably. We now track and analyze total media coverage based on a number of metrics including PR value, circulation, site visits, tone, blog comments, tweets, re-tweets, followers, fans and more.”
The ways to measure PR are endless. But in order to analyze whether a client’s goals were met, PR practitioners must begin to look beyond the number of press clippings to truly analyze the value behind each piece of media coverage. What good is a pile of press clippings if it does nothing to achieve a client’s specific goals? The key to any successful PR plan is to ensure that the client’s goals are fully integrated and reflected in all PR efforts. In this way, measurement must go beyond sheer quantity of media coverage to evaluate the effectiveness of PR efforts in relation to a client’s specific goals.
Tara Padidar is the resident wordsmith at Pereira PR, where she acts as an account coordinator. She can be reached via e-mail at
, or via Twitter: @pereirapr. |
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