Measurement provides communicators with pertinent data to prove their worth (and PR’s worth) to leadership. Whether it’s looking at numbers of impressions, audience sentiment in regards to a new campaign or referral traffic to a website, tracking metrics serves as an important part of every PR pro’s strategy.
And yet, communicators’ conflicted relationship with measurement revealed itself in Muck Rack’s fourth annual State of PR Measurement. For example, 89 percent of survey respondents said demonstrating the impact of their work is the main purpose of measurement. However, half of those surveyed said they are only “somewhat confident” in the metrics they typically report to stakeholders.
Clarification of Data Processes
So what does this mean for measurement as a whole? How can PR professionals measure the value of their work and tell that story to their stakeholders if they don’t fully trust the systems they are working with to do that?
Some of the questions that may come up for communicators who are trying to prove the effectiveness of PR with measurement could include:
- What is the value of a crisis that’s been averted due to a PR professional’s ability to stop misinformation from spreading online?
- How do you measure a conversation with a reporter that may not immediately generate coverage but could inform opportunities in the future?
- What do you do when you generate millions of impressions in outlets that don’t reach your core audience?
Gregory Galant, CEO of Muck Rack, says that because PR reporting metrics are traditionally less concrete than marketing metrics it makes it more difficult to show the impact of PR on business outcomes. It comes down to a simple question: How do you measure the value of reputation and trust?
“Measurement companies can help improve trust in their systems by creating tools that better clarify this process,” Galant says.
Muck Rack, for example, has a proprietary metric called the PR Hit Score, which helps users understand which mentions are most important to their coverage based on a set of customizable values, including the outlet's importance, journalist influence and article engagement and influence.
“PR pros can use this metric to understand the value of each individual piece of coverage not just for reporting but to inform their strategy to know which journalists and outlets to focus on for the most impact,” he adds.
The Least Accurate Metrics
Yes, measurement can be complicated. In fact, two percent of those surveyed said they did not even track their work, and more than one-third find it difficult to track their work—something you don’t hear every day in a world where performance numbers and data power most industries.
Survey respondents pointed out which metrics they felt least accurately tracked their efforts. Those included pitch performance (32%), sentiment (24%) and revenue impact (24%)—areas of utmost importance to most campaigns.
And while Muck Rack does not ask survey takers why they rated these metrics lower in accuracy, Galant says a few factors may be at play.
“Sentiment is a historically inaccurate metric, because most tools measure the sentiment of an entire article rather than the specific brand or product mentioned within the article,” he says.
He also noted how pitch performance is open to interpretation.
“While it’s useful to know if your pitch was opened or clicked on, those actions aren’t always a direct indication of coverage,” he says.
And revenue impact? Well, there’s not always a clear, measurable line between media relations and revenue.
“It goes back to building trust and brand loyalty which are difficult to measure in terms of impact on the bottom line,” he says.
Practitioners may want to focus on other indicators to tell a bigger story, such as share of voice to track performance against competitors and website impact—measured by traffic, SEO and conversion.
Measurement and Budgets
The most impactful part of this survey comes down to the allocation of resources and budgets for the PR team. Money is on the line, and communicators need reliable ways to report worth to their C-suite.
About half of PR pros surveyed say their budgets are affected by whether they reach their goals, translated through data and metrics, of course. And if they can’t tell the story in a reliable way of how their work made an impact, resources can be reallocated.
However, Galant says, communicators can work to strategize for this and against this by managing the expectations of stakeholders from the outset of a campaign—a tactic that may not come from a measurement dashboard.
“Describe the actual function of PR and outline a mix of reporting metrics that include both qualitative and quantitative measurements of efforts,” he says. “This allows for more flexibility in interpretation of impact.”
Check out Muck Rack’s complete State of PR Measurement 2024 with even more industry insights here.
Nicole Schuman is Managing Editor at PRNEWS.