Achieving Value From PR

With companies spending on average ten per cent of their marketing budget on public relations, ensuring value for money and measuring return on investment is understandably at the top of the marketing manager’s agenda. But evaluating the success of a PR campaign should be a two-way street and not just the responsibility of your agency. Chris Hewitt, CEO at Berkeley PR, challenges companies to become more involved in achieving and measuring the success of PR.

The age old question

As PR professionals, it is inevitable that we will be asked to analyse how the coverage we generate has influenced buying behaviour. This is always a very difficult question to answer. There are numerous ways to measure the input and output achieved from a campaign but identifying the outcomes, i.e. if PR has influenced the buying decision, is a tougher nut to crack. If you want to prove the value of PR you, the client, have to be part of the solution.

Laying Down the Gauntlet

Believe in it

If you don’t believe you can achieve any value from PR then why do it? A lack of understanding about how PR works and fits into the whole marketing mix will mean that you are less likely to put in the time required to achieve the best result. PR is a two-way street and in order to get the most out you need to spend some time putting something in.

Be involved

Evaluating the success of a PR campaign is not the sole responsibility of your PR agency. One of the difficulties in assessing the impact of PR on sales is that it is virtually impossible to isolate its impact from other marketing efforts, such as advertising, direct mail, search engine marketing and point of sale offers. That is because it is rare for an individual or a business to make a purchase based on editorial coverage alone, whether it’s a bottle of shampoo, a digital camera or a software package. The trick is to make sure you are gathering information from your customers, your sales people and your web site so that you can combine that with the coverage evaluation to gain an overall picture of what is influencing people.

Share your objectives

Keep your agency up to date with business changes and new strategies for the coming months so that they can put PR campaigns in place which will fit with your objectives. Don’t be afraid to seek advice from your agency on areas of focus or help with fine tuning objectives. If all marketing efforts are aligned, the combined output is more likely to result in a sale or call from a potential customer who has read an article by your company or received a flyer for a discount.

Making a return on your investment

It is very rare that a sale can be directly attributed to media coverage alone (although it can often tip the balance in generating a valuable sales lead). Evaluating coverage (where it appeared, what it said, who might have read it) helps highlight the effectiveness of your PR and can be very sophisticated. But the answer to the question “Am I getting good value from my investment in PR?” can only truly be found when you put PR, and your working relationship with your PR agency, into the wider context of your marketing activity.