What Have You Done for Me Lately?

All clients want to know if they are realizing a return on their investment in public relations and marketing communications. Are the activities and programs that we are implementing on their behalf doing what they need to do.

We tell them that our communications success is based solely on our ability to capture their mission and the key messages and place them in communications channels that reach their intended target audiences.

After all, the dollars you spend on public relations should be considered an investment in your brand and a revenue generator. At the outset of our relationship, we ask our clients to define success and to tell us how they will know when we’ve reached it.

A study a few years ago asked communications professionals in North America to identify practices in monitoring and measuring the results of public relations and corporate communications efforts. Among the many notable findings were the following:

• Most respondents think public relations measurement is important;
• Most respondents think the tone of a story has become more important than the number of eyes that see, read or hear a story – it is about quality over quantity in many cases, as well as engagement with an eager, enthusiastic audience; and
• Nearly 65 percent of respondents indicated that the most regularly evaluated and reported qualitative metric used for public relations outcomes is the quality/tone of coverage.

Our team couldn’t agree more.  Thank goodness the days of getting out your ruler and measuring column inches are far behind us.  This is an antiquated equation where a story placed via public relations efforts is converted into advertising dollars to determine how much the story may have been worth, based on how many people read, watch or listen to the media outlet.

This is a thing of the past for many reasons. Public Relations is NOT advertising. While advertising is a call to action (buy tickets now, come to this event, etc.) public relations is about branding and engagement with audiences. Using this ad equivalency method is like comparing apples to oranges.

Instead, we follow the guidelines of the Barcelona Principles — seven principles that provide PR practitioners with voluntarily guidelines to follow for effective public relations and communication measurement.

Want to know more about aligning your investment in public relations with your company’s business goals.  Reach out, we’re here to help.