The Most Captivating Path to PR-ROI: Making the PR-to-Sales Connection

Mark Weiner, IPR Measurement Commission, Chief Insights Officer, Cision 

The most alluring PR-ROI option is quantifying PR’s influence on sales. To illustrate, we examine how Ford Motor Company’s launch of the Ford Mustang Mach-E generated media coverage, awareness and sales.

The Ford Mustang Mach-E was unveiled in November 2019. It is Ford’s first vehicle designed from the ground up as an electric vehicle and marked the first time in 55 years that Ford expanded its Mustang family beyond sports coupes. It also represented another milestone: customers could reserve their Mach-E on Ford.com. The business put a premium on driving customers to Ford’s website and converting visits into reservations for car orders.

In addition to conversion, it was crucial to protect the Mustang brand with its fans. It was vital for the car’s performance figures, green credentials and innovative technology to appear across targeted earned and social media.

Ford’s Insights team–global manager Michael Young and analyst Ben Kocsis–collaborated with the communication team to craft a number of measurable objectives.
Campaign objectives
Business outcomes included driving demand (online reservations) and attaining an earned media conversion rate of 0.7 percent or higher, via attribution analysis.