Our metrics are a mess: Why PR must rethink measurement
Weber Shandwick’s Brian Keenan argues that ever-tightening marketing budgets and the expectation of airtight ROI are leaving PR agencies with no choice but to sharpen up their metrics.
Ice cream. Massages. Flowers. Public relations. What do these things have in common? Once upon a time, they were all goods/ services bought solely because they made someone feel good.
In the case of public relations, our discipline existed for many years solely to make clients feel good when they opened their paper and saw themselves or their company in the headlines. For all the clippings counted, press releases written, media packs sent or samples distributed, the one metric that mattered was the client feeling good about coverage secured.
This is still true in whole for some PRs and clients, and in part for many others. A positive volume of earned media relations is and will remain a core part of the raison d’être for public relations agencies.
However, the ever-increasing integration of agency disciplines and fragmentation of content channels is forcing a much different expectation for measurement upon PR consultancies.
Agree.
..but this can be time consuming/expensive.
Clients can say they want to do this, but they don’t want to spend any money to do it properly (in light of shrinking budgets).
I am also consistently shocked at the lack of sophistication at the client end in keeping track of basic metrics/outcomes, such as web traffic and enquiries.
MOO
Sigh. I left PR in 2001, when the industry said exactly the same thing.
Just like ‘nobody ever got fired for buying ibm, no women ever got fired for talking about gender diversity in the workplace, in fact if you are vocal enough about mythical unconscious bias (you know, talk about your interest in inspiring the next wave of young females, be part of the usual diversity groups launched by your company…..), you eliminate roughly 50 % of your competition when it comes to getting that promotion.
What we find is that agencies aren’t going to change things until they are forced to, especially something that takes the team away from DOING. We, as an industry, are so used to “measuring” by reporting activity – vs outcomes. Several mindshifts must take place:
1) Stop reporting only on activity (something that stems from the hourly cost model around which retainers are built), and start reporting on resulting ROI
2) Measure outcomes beyond media hits, analyst briefings, etc. What else is PR doing? What happened as a result of these efforts? How much did they cost and what was the return?
You can set up an entire media tour, meet with 30 journalists and have no coverage as a result. Or, you get 10 articles as a result but what did they do for the company? Did they increase traffic to the site, increase butts in seats at an event? Fill the funnel with MQLs? PR has moved beyond just brand awareness, so it’s essential to capture those returns.
3) Stop avoiding conversations about what isn’t working. This is a crucial step in PR measurement. Instead of waiting for a campaign to end and then grading it, track what’s happening during the campaign, and if results are not meeting expectations, pivot mid campaign. That way, you have an opportunity to still meet goals.
Too many PR executives are afraid of measurement. For too long we’ve been able to dance around what’s working, we’ve based our strategies on experience hunches, and we haven’t used data to inform and structure strategies. Data is now. Data is the future. Those who do not embrace it are going to lose business to the firms that do.
More and more, brands expect analytics and data across all marketing disciplines. With the technology available today, there is no excuse to not truly measure PR.
Christine Perkett
SeeDepth
PR analytics software for brands and agencies
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