A PR campaign is made up of planned actions that have communication as their goal. To achieve this objective, you need to take into account what you want to convey, i.e. the message, and who you want to reach, i.e. the target audience.
Of course, as with a marketing campaign, the results of a PR campaign (often developed together with the former, for greater impact)) should be measurable. Clients seek a return on their investment, and the results must be made available for assessment.
Traditional Public Relations campaigns work through the medium of Publicity: carving out space in the media using interesting corporate content. Determining R.O.I means finding the equivalence of this space’s worth, in terms of advertising. Although this system of measurement is effective, only the monetary value is taken into account, offering a strictly quantitative analysis.
Can results be measured using ROI alone?
Companies should know that a PR campaign can contribute much more than just measurable ROI. It seeks to enhance a brand’s impact on the public, turning it into a trusted household name as a result. The company should come across as relevant to consumers of the media in which the message will be broadcast. These are fully qualitative results, which can be difficult to measure.
It is also necessary to take into account the variables that make a publication valuable. Items such as tone, scope, location, mentions of the company name, quotes from company executives, revenue, social network activity, number of followers and engagement rate are key to determining the performance of a PR campaign.
Engagement is the level of interaction that takes place between a brand and its audience after a communication is published. Evaluating engagement is easily done these days, since effectively all media has moved online. News is consumed via the websites or social media channels of media outlets. The level of engagement and its quality can be measured exhaustively to gauge acceptance of the PR campaign’s message.
A message’s repercussions impact directly on a brand’s image so, while they may not be measurable in terms of monetary value, they have an inherent value, since a brand’s image is just another asset. Positive mentions, online prominence and shares on social media all provide significant qualitative information, over and above economic results.
The purposes of measuring a PR campaign’s results range from reporting and analyzing the results of the action, to rectifying or updating the message being broadcast.
A true “visualization” of results, both in terms of the quantity of repercussions and the quality of the responses and content, is decisive in evaluating the success of a campaign. Ideally, operatives should follow up on each phase of the campaign, adapting the methodology and content where required.
In order to make an assessment, it is necessary to ascertain how the company was communicating prior to the campaign and what the results were, as well as the desired objectives, the actions taken, the means-objective, evolution over time and, of course, the results to date. Having analyzed each of these elements, we can accurately qualify the campaign.
This publication is part of our quick PR guide. Check out our blog or follow us on social media (@sherlockcomms) to learn more, and read new content written by our team.
