“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” Peter Drucker preached as he blazed a pioneering trail for the management consultant industry.
It isn’t just production and manufacturing that need to measure up. It counts for PR too. We don’t pour resources into PR in the vague hope that there is a warm fuzzy response from someone out there.
Measuring PR’s impact has never been easy. Establishing perceptions before and after campaigns, or even rand awareness, can be complicated and costly to set up.
One of digital media’s advantages is that people leave ‘digital breadcrumbs’ when they’re interacting online. Following their traces tells the story of their journey. What path they followed to your website; and what they did when they got there. In the digital environment you can also amplify your media coverage, with minimal effort.
Tracking Impact tells a story
So, what metrics can we look at to measure the impact of a PR campaign?
As the core of your business online, website traffic should increase.
The volume of traffic to your site should pick up, but also look at the quality of referrals and their sources.
Follow the crumbs to see users’ journey on your site. Were the visits from a particular article or media more likely to fill in an enquiry form and spend more time thoroughly investigating your services? Where did they leave your site?
If your coverage resonated with your market, there should also be some social media activity.
Who engaged with the content and how? Was it shared, liked, commented on? Did it get retweets? What was the quality of engagement? Is there anything you can pick up from the reaction to the article which you should be taking onboard in your business, or following up with further marketing communication?
Listening and learning provides valuable insight for future activities.
How can you amplify media coverage?
Maximise the exposure you get. Consider your owned media channels and how you can extend any coverage across these.
Share it across all platforms – your company social media, personal social media (especially Linked In). If you don’t already have one, add a media section to your website.
If prospective customers or clients haven’t seen the coverage, how can you share it with them. Add a segment in your next newsletter or send out a newsflash on email or WhatsApp.
There might also be a way you could leverage coverage for future PR. Media stories tend to build on each other once there’s momentum.
Why does this matter?
Because perceptions influence human behaviour as well as SEO scores. Reputations and brand awareness aren’t built overnight, it’s a long-term process. Depending on your industry’s purchase cycle, decisions can be made over long periods. When your customers and clients sit down to do their research, you need to be there.
Volume and recency of website traffic, as well as backlinks to busy popular sites boost your chances of moving up the search rankings.
If you’d like to chat more about any of these concepts, or get your stories published reply to this mailer and I’ll be in touch.
