Opinion: The importance of measurement in PR

This is a topic that has paean written towards it. How do you measure a PR campaign? What is the value of earned media and how do we define a successful effort? Across the world, agencies work hard on reports and structures that justify the hard work, long hours, and absolute pains they take to garner visibility for their clients. At the end of each campaign, there is an endeavour across corporate communication and agencies to justify the ROI and the success of each campaign. 

 

So why is PR measurement so difficult?

 

There are multiple reasons for the same. To begin with the standard AVE (Advertising Value Equivalent) is no longer working as a successful tool. PR is not advertising. You cannot put down a quantification to an article about your company or brand in square inches and column centimetres. The reason for this goes back to the fact that this is an ‘earned’ space. It brings a different value to the equation as opposed to the amount of space you have bought or booked for a creative. Another huge factor in the change is the decline of print and increase in digitisation. As newspapers shrink older AVE valuations hold no value. Blogs, social media platforms, podcasts and new media have been replacing traditional media across the world. These cannot have the older standard of measurement and depend heavily on analytics. All this has led to a greater divide and confusion across the world of marketing and public relations as everyone struggles to find a common ground. 

 

Then how do we measure success?

 

Remember why you engage with public relations: Ultimately public relations is about reputation management and needs focused, well-defined goals. The Barcelona Principles have placed goal setting as the number one aspect of public relations. Ideally these goals need to be defined by both macro and micro-objectives. Similarly, they also need to be defined by quantitative and qualitative goals that can be used to measure tangibles. These goals should also have some distinct aspects, such as:

 

Timelines: Goals need to be set within timelines that work in tandem with the organisation’s business timelines. If you want to hire more resources, then it’s imperative to have a framework prepared for employer branding

 

Outcome: Have you been able to tap into critical industry events and media stories? Is there an instant surge in business sales post a social media or influencer campaign? Have business or investor queries come in? Do people recall some of your bigger initiatives? These are outcomes that can help you define the impact of PR on real time business goals. 

 

Sentiment and tonality: The first word of Public Relations is ‘Public’, which means ultimately you are dealing with humans reacting to your public outreach program. We often measure quantity, but how many of us measure quality? Fifty negative articles about a brand could show up in quantitative metrics as a bombastic media savings, but the tonality would be detrimental to the organisation. What is the kind of sentiment associated with your brand? Is the tonality positive or negative? These are very key factors for the brand, overall. 

 

Messaging: In today’s times of cluttered messaging, it is critical to evaluate the reach of your campaign. If you are a lipstick brand, are you even reaching the demographic you have in mind. Will traditional media work better for your new product launch, or would a set of beauty bloggers work better? These are the kind of questions you need to ask yourself when you plan your campaigns across various product lines. An investor brand may need to figure out a better way to reach stakeholders, while a start-up would need to share business growth figures the most. Is this the correct time in your brand’s life cycle to even discuss numbers? Or should you wait. 

 

Reach: Hallelujah for digital media! If there is one thing it has brought to the table, it is the sheer ability to measure each impression, and blog visit to give us a real time analysis in reach. These are numbers that matter. Traffic to your own website through news portals, blogs and social media can help you define what is working better and what is not. Reach can and should be used in the best possible manner to measure the success of digital heavy campaigns. 

 

In summation, measurement will remain the elephant in the room, in such a fragmented and cluttered media environment. True measurement is not just the business of the corporate communication, but of the entire team to see it as an end to end process for fruitful results. 

 

(The author is co-founder, PRPOI, and founder, Intelliquo.This is the second of a three-part series by PRPOI on the PR industry in India.)