admin - 12/30/2024
Are you measuring the right KPIs to determine if your public relations strategy is supporting business goals? Focusing on brand mentions isn't enough. Learn about the metrics you should be tracking this year to prove value and improve your PR campaigns.
Public Relations has played a critical role in building brand awareness, shaping public perception, and effectively communicating a company’s key messages for decades. But measuring the value of PR has sparked much debate. Unlike paid advertising, the success of PR was not always easily calculable, making it more difficult to quantify and link directly to business goals. However, the digital evolution has provided PR professionals with more accurate ways of tracking PR success. In this blog, we’ll explore the public relations KPIs you should be using to determine success in 2025 and why they matter.
What Your PR Agency Should Measure
PR metrics are necessary for both an agency and its clients to demonstrate the effectiveness of a strategy and determine if adjustments need to be made. Objective evaluation can also help to identify patterns and trends that can be leveraged to achieve further success. The following are metrics your PR agency should be measuring monthly, as well as for specific campaigns.
Impressions – An impression represents a single instance of content being viewed or displayed, which is aimed at providing potential reach for PR. These all help indicate the reach and success of a campaign and discover whether a brand’s target audience is being reached. While strong impressions do not directly correlate with revenue or sales, they do indicate that a company’s message is being digested by the public and gaining visibility.
Domain Authority – A Domain Authority is a search engine ranking score that helps to predict how likely a website is to rank in search engine results. It helps to measure the website’s quality, which is a crucial aspect of a PR strategy. High domain authority links can boost credibility, as search engines like Google will establish trust and help with SEO. Consistent media coverage on websites with a strong domain authority can significantly help to improve your brand’s search results.
Sentiment – Sentiment involves analyzing how the public perceives a brand based on the media coverage and content generated by PR. This metric goes beyond reach and determines the emotional impact of a PR campaign. Sentiments can be positive, negative, or neutral. Positive sentiment proves that content is reaching and resonating with the target audience. In contrast, negative sentiment means that content is not resonating well and needs improvement. Measuring sentiment can help analyze the audience’s feelings, manage brand reputation, identify trends, and alter a brand’s media strategies. It aids agencies in understanding the tone of media coverage and whether that tone is working towards achieving a client’s goals
Share of Voice – Share of Voice (SOV) is the percentage of all online content and conversations about your company or brand, compared to those of your competitors. Share of Voice is one of the most important metrics in determining the effectiveness of a PR campaign, helping to determine whether business goals are being completed. Furthermore, it is a key indicator to see if your brand is standing out from the competition and gaining attention. It also can help provide insight in how to adjust your public relations strategy.
What Companies Should Measure
While it’s essential that PR agencies track these metrics to ensure ROI, companies, brands should also be taking a look at how PR success impacts internal KPIs. The metrics to measure will depend on the company structure and industry, but these are some common examples.
Sales/Leads – Although there isn’t a direct line between PR and sales or lead generation, there is certainly a dotted one. By tracking inquiries, conversions, and sales, companies can identify how well their brand visibility is doing and whether it’s resulting in organizational business goal completion. If brand awareness increases, so will product and service interest, which will ultimately lead to more leads and sales.
Market Surveys – Market Surveys provide direct feedback from a company’s target audience, which may provide additional insight into the opinions and emotions of a brand’s target audience. Market surveys also give insight into brand awareness and whether customers view a brand more favorably than the competition. Overall, this is a very helpful indicator of whether PR efforts are influencing public perception in a positive way.
Online Results – Web traffic, social media engagement, and mentions, all impact a brand’s online presence and success. Public relations has the potential to improve website traffic by driving more awareness about the brand and improving SEO. Social media engagement, such as likes, comments, shares, and tags, can also indicate if a PR campaign is successful. Comments are essential because they drive active audience participation, while shares extend the reach of the content. A high engagement rate helps to prove that brand loyalty is developing, and the audience is interacting with the content in the way that it was intended to be. These metrics are all important, as they only enhance proof of success and foster new possible strategies.
Tools to Measure Public Relations Results
Measuring PR is not always easy, but there are analytic platforms PR agencies use to help streamline reporting and improve accuracy. These tools help to prove ROI and ensure the effectiveness of PR strategies.
- Meltwater – Meltwater is a versatile monitoring tool that helps PR professionals track key metrics such as mentions, sentiment, and share of voice across print, broadcast and online media outlets, as well as podcasts. Meltwater also has social media monitoring capabilities, allowing agencies like 3E PR that handles both strategies to integrate seamlessly.
- Muck Rack – Muck Rack allows agencies to analyze media coverage and generate reports that show how PR is impacting a client’s business outcomes. Similar to Meltwater, Muck Rack offers the ability to monitor digital, broadcast, podcasts and print.
- Critical Mention – Critical Mention is another media monitoring tool that allows users to track mentions of their brand and provide detailed analytics on brand coverage, including reach and sentiment. Like the others, it provides real-time access to generated coverage.
When public relations agencies and companies work together to track PR impact, they can demonstrate ROI as well as uncover unique strategy opportunities. If you are currently investing in PR but are concerned you aren’t measuring the right KPIs email us to setup a consultation at mredzia@3epr.com.
Author
This guest blog was written by 3E PR intern Rena Lerner.