Professionals in PR and communications are under increasing pressure to justify the value their work provides to a company and its brand. Discrepancies and contradictions in the way we measure the value and success of PR campaigns have long been an issue in the industry.

Measuring the success of PR takes more than just combining basic earned media metrics, and then attempting to link them to business outcomes. If PR is to be taken seriously and compete against other sister communications disciplines such as paid search and advertising for significant budgets, we must rethink the ways in which we define success. 

The question remains: what’s the best way to measure campaign success in the world of PR? 

Setting PR objectives from the outset

Before beginning any new initiative, it’s important to set goals and measurable objectives.

This will help you to determine the best PR metrics for measuring success and refining your approach. 

The way you’ll determine the success of a PR campaign launching an art gallery is going to be remarkably different from the way you’ll measure the success of a crisis communication campaign involving an organisation’s CEO. It is always best to have a deep sense of what the business objectives are before defining what the PR objectives will be, and how PR will help in achieving these business goals. 

Showing how PR is helping your client’s business grow as part of a larger and integrated strategy is more valuable than measuring the specific impact of a single PR effort. Build your measurement framework and set expectations accordingly.

Say no to vanity metrics

Traditional and old-school PR metrics like circulation, ad value, and the number of clippings and press releases are no longer considered acceptable measures of PR success when considered in isolation. In fact, the concept of measurement called PR Value —also called AVE, was hotly debated more than a decade ago. AVE, or advertising value equivalent, is a monetary value attributed to PR coverage that estimates how much the piece would be worth if it was paid for. 

The International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) is the world’s largest media intelligence and insights professional organisation, representing organisations and practitioners who provide media evaluation and communication research. 

This group of industry experts got together in Barcelona in 2010 to talk about the dismissal of using AVE. They came up with what’s called the Barcelona Principles, which is now largely considered a universal standard in the industry when it comes to PR measurements. The Barcelona Principles outline 7 general guidelines PR pros should follow when measuring success. These guidelines were further updated in 2020.

Some useful PR measures of value 

Brand recommendations: Is your PR campaign resulting in third-party recommendations for the company or brand? Is there a greater awareness among influencers, analysts, and key media? How do the recommendations for your brand compare to that of your competitors?

Key message amplification and on-target coverage: What are the most strategic channels you deploy for your PR campaign and why? How often has your brand appeared with the right messaging and storyline in these targeted channels?   

Share of voice: How much attention and visibility do you generate compared to your competitors? Stacking your media results against a competitor’s is a useful tactic for evaluating the overall effectiveness of your efforts.

Lead generation and buyer actions: How many marketing and sales actions (downloads, logins, registrations, demo requests, and so on) come from the PR campaign?

Social/email marketing engagement: How much engagement does your social media coverage and email marketing campaigns generate?  You can access these social metrics from the backend of each platform. For instance, on Twitter, you can track Tweet impressions, profile visits, mentions and follower counts. You can also see your top Tweets and replies. 

Email remains a popular way to gain brand exposure. When it comes to tracking email performance, you’ll want to look at the open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. 

Website data: Whether you’re examining website visitors to a native blog post on your website or tracking the number of referrals from target media publications, measuring unique visitors and unique pageviews on your website or blog is an effective way to determine the success of your PR and marketing efforts.

The SEO impact: What is the domain authority of the media outlets that you generate coverage on? Do your articles receive backlinks from other websites and rank on Google News? 

While PR measurement is undoubtedly complex, there’s no shortage of useful values to track. Your PR campaign probably won’t track all of these measures, but always think about your intended outcome first, and then prioritise the PR metrics most valuable in achieving that outcome. Prioritisation breeds clarity.

Be realistic about what’s possible, and try to measure PR quarterly, as the week-to-week and month-to-month fluctuations in the news cycle create too much volatility. Ultimately the best PR campaigns are those that directly help address a business problem.

Curzon PR is a London-based PR firm working with clients globally. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our Business Development Team [email protected]