What Are the Essential Metrics to Evaluate PR Success?

PR has traditionally found it difficult to find the numbers that justify their work to management, measure their contribution to the bottom line and gauge the effectiveness of their various strategies. Measuring PR efforts is now mandatory if PR is to protect its credibility, budgets and business influence. PR measurement is more important than ever because of the spread of digital media and its focus on analytics. The first challenge is to identify the absolutely, positively essential metrics to use for analyzing PR success.

These are some of the essential PR metrics.

Although basic, general metrics such as website visitors can be viewed in Google Analytics, more sophisticated metrics specific to PR purposes require a media monitoring service. Some services, such as Glean.info (formerly CyberAlert LLC), display analytics in a PR measurement dashboard that can integrate earned media (print, digital, broadcast), owned media (corporate, brand and consumer education websites) and social media (mentions on blogs and the major social media platforms) into a single visual display that allows organizations to easily assess overall PR strategies and specific projects. It also enables PR to create custom metrics for other departments, product managers or country managers.

Share of Voice

Share of voice is the percentage of media coverage and conversations about your company, compared against those of your competitors. A media measurement vendor gathers all earned news mentions and social media posts that include your brand or your competitors and creates a chart or pie graph that shows your slice of all media mentions.

The graphic can be based on number of mentions, reach based on circulation/readership, or based on positive/negative sentiment. Share of voice quantifies how PR stacks up against competitors and reveals PR’s strengths and weaknesses. Digging deeper into the data can reveal what types of announcements or activities gain media coverage.

Brand Sentiment

Sentiment analysis grades brand mentions on a positive-to-negative scale. A spike in negative sentiment can indicate an impending PR crisis, while improving brand sentiment over time can demonstrate the effectiveness of PR and marketing. Changes in sentiment is especially useful for examining a brand’s PR responses during and after a PR crisis.

Automated sentiment analysis can analyze an enormous number of brand mentions quickly and affordably. Although the software programs have improved in recent years, reviews by trained human analysts are more accurate and are more appropriated for organizations with a small or moderate number of brand mentions. Experienced human analysts are more likely to deliver useful insights. Some media monitoring and measurement services can combine automated analysis with human analysts for a hybrid approach.

Net Increase in Share of Desirable Media Coverage.

Share of coverage measures your organization against peers and competitors. Measure all conversations about your brand, products, or organization and rate them either desirable or undesirable — in other words, if the reader is more or less likely to support your business. Then measure how changes in favorable conversations compare against competitors.

“The operative word in this metric is share, which means you need to be tracking your peers and/or competitors.” stresses Katie Paine, PR measurement expert and CEO of Paine Publishing, in her post on data to include in a PR measurement dashboard. “This metric tells you how you’re doing in the marketplace, not in isolation.”

Net Quality Score

To create a net quality score, also called an optimal content score or media quality index, first determine what messages are most likely to persuade people to buy your product, Paine explains. You may need to talk to your sales or marketing team.

Then assign a weighting to each media mention based on the relative impact it would have on the success of your organization. Make sure the total for the perfect story adds up to 10. Then do the same to negative elements, making sure they add up to -10. Evaluate all stories in the media most likely to influence key stakeholders and score them based on the index you’ve developed, and compute the average score for all stories in a given month. Ideally, the score will improve over time.

Web Traffic

PR pros can examine referral traffic under the acquisition section of Google Analytics to learn how PR placements in online media outlets, blogs and other websites increased traffic to the company’s website. To improve PR measurement, it’s recommended to set up goals in Google Analytics, such as ebook downloads or online demo requests, and to add UTM codes to backlinks. PR pros can learn the ins and outs of the tool by completing Google Analytics Certification through Google Analytics Academy.

Creating an advanced segment can track referral traffic from PR placements in a central location, says Katie Donabedian at Walker Sands Communications. Enter the URLs of media placements in the segment. Once the segment is set up and turned on, click on the referrals report to view how many visits PR placements sent to the site and the percentage of traffic from placements.

“The most important metrics to track are how much traffic a story sent to your site and what those people did once they got there,” says Gini Dietrich, CEO of Arment Dietrich. “Did they download a piece of content or subscribe to your blog (so now you have their email address) or did they come and leave immediately?”

Bottom Line: Selecting appropriate PR metrics is the first and most critical step in PR measurement. These advanced PR metrics can prove the value of PR and contribution to the organization’s goals.

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