How to measure your use of PR

The days of advertising value equivalents (AVE) are long gone.

But how else are you to measure your PR and communications activity? The key is in better planning and integration. Many only consider measurement at the end of a PR campaign. In fact, the best results will be achieved if measurement plays a pivotal role at the very beginning of the planning process – in the setting of objectives.

Any PR objectives should be integrally linked to your corporate strategy. What does your business want to achieve as a whole and how can PR support those goals?

At this point you need to stay strategic and think about what K PI swill indicate whether or not you are on track to achieve your objectives. Don’t jump straight onto looking at the tactics and channels you can use.

Select KPIs that will help you achieve your strategy. Avoid choosing KPIs because they are the standard for a particular channel or simply widely used in the industry. These will be meaningless to your strategy.

There are a huge number of KPIs you could use, with an even bigger pool of data to delve into to measure those KPIs. But not all of them will help guide your activity in line with your strategy.

For example, if your corporate objective is to expand into a new market, your communications objective maybe to raise awareness amongst target audiences within that market.

Consider KPIs that clearly link to both communications and corporate objectives and stick to those. When it comes to the measurement of those KPIs, it’s important to remember that communications channels rarely sit in silo any more. PR activity will inevitably be supported with social media campaigns and online PR mentions will in turn benefit SEO. Everything will be supported by advertising and your website will be a hub of information for people who have become aware of your brand thanks to PR.

So if PR is integrated with other communications channels, then why shouldn’t its measurement be too? Google Analytics can show a correlation between a PR campaign and website traffic. Social media mentions could track brand sentiment. A PR stunt could be measured depending on the popularity of a hash tag. Remember, measurement doesn’t stop at the gathering of data. It’s the human interpretation of data that will help guide you to achieve your objectives. Contrast, compare, mix and dissect data to reveal useful insights into how well your PR and communications activity is working.