The biggest problem PR faces is that when it “works” clients often  think it “fails.”

The conundrum has to do with the definition of “works.”  Too often in  the insular PR community, “works” means the story was placed and  there is a clip, a tearsheet, to show for it.

But from the client’s perspective, this is only a midway point.   It’s like an ad agency saying we created the commercial and it ran on  NBC. Our job is done.

No. From the client’s view, whether it is PR or advertising, qualified  leads and/or customers is what they are looking for. Clips and commercials mean nothing but expense unless revenue grows. PR is not  an exercise unto itself, but conducted correctly and effectively, is  a true driver of growth.

One can help to drive this growth through traditional PR, of course, but digi PR in the mix provides a powerful advantage. As consumers are exposed to the PR message online, they can click immediately to  the client’s site and take measurable action.

Using Web analytics, we can trace the site visitor’s movement from a story in an online publication to the client’s site to the deposit of an email address or even more gloriously to the client and the wheels  of commerce: a sale!

PR,  as a profession,  suffers from a lack of high respect in the  CEO’s suite when compared to finance, operations and R&D. But it need not be this way.  The concept of demonstrating that wisely conceived and effectively executed PR may produce a clip book but more  important, produces sales, can and should be applied to all of public  relations. Digi PR provides the playbook for how to make it work and  prove it.

For now, toss out the clip book and replace it with a sales graph.
When the arrow climbs, PR wins because the client does!