Bruce Jeffries-Fox, EVP with InsightFarm, offers PR NEWS readers an exclusive look at specific, practical ways to increase effectiveness in measuring communications campaigns.
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Increasingly, PR people are being asked to demonstrate their effectiveness. A simple approach that media relations people can use is to compare coverage in targeted and non-
targeted media, and attribute differences to the efforts of the media relations team. Here's how:
1. Identify a set of media that you will be targeting over the coming year.
2. Select an equal number of media of roughly the same types that you will not be particularly targeting.
3. Keep track of your news coverage in the targeted vs. non-targeted groups.
4. At the end of the year, total the stories appearing in each group.
5. If you achieved more coverage in the targeted vs. non-targeted media, the media relations team can claim credit for the difference.
For example, you may find that without media relations efforts your company received only X stories. By having such a crack MR team you gained 100 more stories in the targeted
media.
And here is where the old phrase "truth...well told" comes in!
- If your management likes to see percentages, you can say that these 100 stories represent 25 percent more coverage.
- If management likes impressions figures, talk about how your efforts produced 2.5 million additional impressions.
- If they want to see dollars, talk about the "bonus" advertising value dollars created by media relations.
Finally, talk about next year. Set a goal--which is both realistic for you and satisfying for your management--for what you will achieve over the next 12 months.