Tag Archives: measurement

The Value of PR Measurement – Part 1

I intend this to be the first of a series of posts about the challenge of PR Measurement.

The transparency of the Online Media World has brought with it greater opportunities to observe and measure the impact of PR, and often at a much lower cost than the equivalent offline measurement.

At Measurement Camp last week (which was great by the way, just wish it wasn’t a 600 mile round trip!) I was struck by the fact that though there was some *very* good work presented there were no pound notes in any of the resulting measures.

In my experience (and for those real experts out there please correct me if I am wrong!) PR measurement often seems to focus on the following four areas: activities, qualification, indicators and actions.

Measure

Examples

Description

Activity

Relevant coverage on publications, tweets about your announcement/brand, YouTube views, downloads.

Indicate that PR activity has made an impact.

Qualification

Twitter followers, readership of publication, authority of blog, Page Rank. These can then be further distilled into overall measures.

Assess potential influence of these activities.

Indicator

Referrals to your website from a particular piece of coverage or Twitter activity; increased positive sentiment compared to the position prior to the PR campaign; relative impact compared to other campaigns.

Indicate the likelihood that the activities measured will result in a desired response of some kind either now or in the future

Action

Lead generation, sign ups, attendance at an event, sales.

Actual desired responses that resulted.

These are all important and useful measures of performance and they allow us to build models to further refine our evaluation, but the one thing they still don’t “measure” (or perhaps quantify is a better word?) is Value.

Value needs to be stated in pounds – or dollars, euros etc depending on your country of origin :-)  It is only in doing this that actual return on investment can be calculated and PR’s true worth to an organisation estimated.

Actions should in theory be relatively straightforward to value. Take the simple example of lead generation. If a campaign has resulted in X number of leads the client should (hopefully – tracking depending) be able to supply the PR professional (agency or inhouse) with relevant information about resulting conversion rates and sales values as well as the cost of generating equivalent sales from other means.

This would allow the PR professional to calculate both the sales return on investment generated as well as the relative cost of generating sales from this type of activity.

More sophisticated measurement can also use data from some of the first three sources to help to correlate the observed activities and indicators with resulting actions when the linkage is not as direct as say a website referral.

But what about the situation where the desired response is less tangible and is more about improving relationships and reputation rather than something as direct as lead generation? The first three measures can be used to assist with this but are harder to give a monetary value to.

People try/have tried to value these Activity based measures e.g. Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE), but such valuations aren’t measuring the value that the PR has created for the organisation, rather they are trying to measure the value of the activities that have occurred. These two things are not the same. Also the way that online advertising and publishing works makes any online AVE calculation even more spurious IMHO.

I think some of the answers to valuing these “softer” areas may lie in the world of accountancy and this will be the subject of my next post.

Dublin, Guinness and your website analytics

I had a great time last week speaking at the Net Imperative Digital Roadshow in Dublin. Apart from enjoying a great pint of Guinness :-) I found out that Twitter is alive and well in Ireland with over 20 active users in the audience.

As part of my presentation I covered using your website statistics to help you plan and measure the success of your online PR activities. For those of you who aren’t yet active in the online world the following is a (slightly) edited version of an article from my latest Fresh Business Thinking online PR newsletter which covered this topic.

How your website analytics can help your online PR

One of the great things about the Online Media World is that nearly everything you want to monitor or measure is there to be found. In the “real” world it is almost impossible to know what people are saying about you to their friends or colleagues in the pub or round the water cooler. Online there is a vast array of tools which allow you to track what people are saying about you including RSS, social bookmarking and Twitter.

But one of the less obvious PR tools in your armoury is your website statistics package. If you aren’t using a website statistics package yet to track activity on your site then if you only do one thing after reading this article make it signing up for such a service. Google Analytics for example is free, links to their AdWords system and can track multiple websites from one simple to use dashboard.

Why is this relevant to Online PR? Because amongst other things it tells you a number of significant pieces of information about your public relations activity.

1.Referring sites No.1 – You can use your analytics package to tell you if articles that have been written about you in response to, for instance, a news release, subsequently send traffic to your website. Assuming they included a link to your site in the article of course.

2.Referring sites No.2 – What about other news sites that are sending visitors to your website? These sites must be talking about you and by tracking these referrals you can then visit these sites and see what they said and potentially start a dialogue with them if you think you have more information they might find of interest.

3.Referring sites No.3 – Are you getting visits from social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, social networking sites such as Facebook or microblogging sites such as Twitter? If you are then it could be worth your while investing time in finding out what the relevant members of these communities think is interesting enough to spend time sharing, commenting or talking about you.

4.Keywords – The keywords that are driving traffic to your website also gives you an indication of what people find interesting about you. This could be useful when thinking about what stories might be of relevant as part of your online PR activities.

5.Visitor information – Are you getting visits from particular geographic locations? If so are they markets you currently operate in and try and target from a promotional perspective? If not then perhaps it is worth considering engaging these visitors to understand why they find your organisation relevant.

These are just a few examples of how your website statistics can give you an insight into what people find interesting about you and help you to craft a much more effective online PR strategy that is based around starting conversations with people who are relevant to you and about topics they want to talk about.

A starter for 10

Well after much umming and aarhing I am finally writing my first blog post. I could list a batch of excuses as to why it has taken me until now to start a blog, but that seems like a glass is half empty approach to a first post. So instead I thought I’d start with what this blog is all about.

With a love of maths at school (I know what a geek!), a degree in economics and a chartered accountancy qualification it will come as no surprise that I love numbers. I have done for as long as I can remember. I love them not in a static one dimensional way, but because, like words, numbers can tell stories and paint pictures.

When I was trying to come up with a title for this blog I wanted something that had some personal element, related to numbers in some way and set the scene for the things I want to talk about. Oh and the domain had to be available too! I thought and thought without any luck. It was my incredible*** wife, Rebecca who came up with an inspired suggestion “Show me numbers”. The words come from one of my favourite TV shows, The West Wing. In the episode “Two Cathedrals” at the end of Season Two the President uses the phrase in a flashback when he is at school:

“If you want to convince me of something, show me numbers!”

The phrase highlights the (fictional – aah if only…) President’s desire for fact and measurement when making decisions rather than anecdote and opinion. This will be my aim with this blog. To try and provide analysis, quantification and evidence to base opinions on and I invite you to join the debate and provide your own evidence and show me, and the other one or two readers who may frequent this place, why apparent “fact” should be questioned.

***Just a selection of Rebecca’s many talents and qualities
– Natural leader and transformation change agent
– Fellow of the Association of Certfied Accountants.
– Creates amazing interior design schemes with a Distinction in her Interior Design degree.
– Fantastic sense of fun and humour engendering the same in our children.
– Blue sky innovative thinker with a stunning ability to spot opportunities.
– Calm in a crisis.
– Self taught in Revit CAD to professional standard.
– Inspires me to be a better man.
– Energetic and passionate in everything she does.
– Can quickly size up people and situations, identifying what’s most important
– Amazing at DIY and craftwork.
– Empowers the teams she leads.
– Makes the most amazing Christmas dinner.
– Capable of insightful financial analysis.
– Prince 2 Practitioner.
– Sings to an operatic standard and has a tone of voice you never tire of.
– Incredible eye for detail, can spot things no one else can see.
– Prodigious capacity to listen and be patient.
– Astute commercial judgement.
– The best friend anyone could ever have, would walk through fire for them.
– With an inner strength that can take your breath away.