By Rebecca B. Anderson
While there's no question today that using metrics to track, quantify and improve public relations ROI is essential, many questions do remain about how, exactly, to go about
it.
Should we use the advertising value equivalency (AVE) model or return on impressions? What about media content analysis or competitive tracking? For those without a multi-
million dollar budget or a large staff, is it even possible to tackle measurement effectively?
Despite the obvious limitations, measuring PR outputs such as the number of total media impressions or the penetration of our "stature" media list can, at least, help us to set
annual benchmarks to see if we're improving year over year.
Of course, measuring outputs does not equate to the ability to show a direct connection to business results, which is the ultimate goal. Unfortunately, in the specific case of
consumer products and services companies that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on broad-reach advertising campaigns, the question of how to assign value to PR when
advertising is ubiquitous remains unresolved. The trick is to isolate PR from those other factors to infer causality, and despite many efforts to do so, I'm unconvinced that
we've cracked that code quite yet.
Thus, there's no silver bullet answer for public and media relations measurement. No single table or tool will tell us all that we need to know. The best solution for now is
to construct a "measurement equation" that uses a variety of metrics most relevant to your business. Consider the following a launch pad:
- Total number of clips/stories: This is relatively fast and easy, but doesn't consider the issue of quality over quantity. It's a foundation upon which to grow,
but it is meaningless in and of itself.
- Audience impressions: This looks at total circulation, viewership, listening audience and/or online eyeballs. It assumes that all recipients actually read, saw or
heard your particular story, and doesn't account for the reputation or influence of any particular media outlet. However, with all its flaws, this metric provides a useful
baseline for improvement year over year and provides a foundation for deeper understanding.
- Cost per impression: By taking the total impressions and dividing them by the cost of your PR initiatives, you can determine cost per impression, which is helpful for
understanding the efficiency of your programs. Did it cost you more or less money this year to achieve the same impressions as last?
- Tonality: A basic three-tiered designation of positive, neutral or negative is a decent place to start, though the more sophisticated and time-consuming approach uses
sliding scales (like zero to ten, or -100 to 100, for instance) that give weight to such elements as headline, story length, number of competing voices or sources, etc. The
insight comes from the patterns that emerge, and the goal over time is to reduce the negative and increase the positive.
- Stature media penetration and frequency: Most organizations have a core target media list that represents its most important and effective media channels and
reporters. Tracking year-over-year penetration of your "short list" can help determine the effectiveness of your pitches, your messages and your spokespeople.
- Message pullthrough: This looks at whether the messages you need to deliver actually survive the media funnel.
- Earned media share of voice vs. competitors: This is one of the more meaningful measurement tools available today, but it requires a fairly rigorous approach to media
content analysis. Compare the total volume of your brand references to those of your competitive set and a picture of your leadership presence will begin to emerge. The goal
here, of course, is to increase your earned media share of voice or share of discussion over time.
- Brand tracking: If you believe that positive brand recall impacts your business, tacking a few questions on to an existing brand tracker study can be an easy and cost
effective way to measure whether PR is affecting public perception.
- Spokesperson penetration vs. competitors: If offering up expert spokespeople is part of your PR strategy, looking at how often your experts provide commentary
(compared to your competitors) can be a great way to see if you've gained status as a "go to source" for the media.
A universal truth in business is "that which gets measured improves." While today's metrics are not always precise and certainly don't tell the whole story, they can and do
help us improve our results over time. Only by looking at a smorgasbord of measurement tools can we begin to understand what kind of impact our PR programs are having on our
businesses.
Contact: Rebecca B. Anderson is the vice president of corporate communications for LendingTree, LLC. She can be reached at 704.943.8019 or [email protected].