How to Measure PR
With any marketing tactic, you want to be able to evaluate your results. You want to know if your efforts are paying off, if they need to be adjusted, or if they’re just not working and it’s time to let go and move on. Some marketing tactics are easier to measure than others.
For example: It is easier to measure a list building tactic than social media engagement.
That said, with the right strategy, it is possible to measure just about every action online. That includes PR.
Let’s look at how to measure PR:
Mentions
One way to measure your PR is to count the number of mentions you have online after a story breaks or after you’ve published something online. It’s important to create a baseline and measure your mentions over time. You might begin counting mentions today and count them daily a few weeks prior to coverage. Then you would count them during and after the coverage to see if there is an increase in online mentions.
Traffic
Measure your website traffic over time. In addition to measuring basic traffic numbers, also look at where the traffic is coming from. Evaluate your PR efforts. Optimize on the proven things that impact your traffic.traffic.
Sales
Like traffic, sales can increase based on any one of your ongoing marketing tactics. It’s important to measure sales on a regular basis and to put steps in place so you can evaluate where the sales are coming from. Creating unique links and URLs is one easy way to know where the traffic and sales are coming from, and which PR piece is creating the result.
Social Media Followers & Engagement
As awareness of your brand increases, you will likely see an increase in social media engagement. You may also experience an increase in followers. This is a bit more difficult to measure. If you pay close attention to timing on social media, you will better understand how to increase traction and gain following. Additionally, you can thank new followers for following you and ask them how they heard about you.
Finally, with any PR efforts, it’s important that you set goals. What do you want to accomplish and how will you accomplish it? With PR, the results and the goals will be both quantitative (measurable) and qualitative. Set goals for both and put systems in place to assess your data. Look at traffic, sales, engagement, mentions and other relevant metrics that demonstrate PR success.
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