How do you know PR is working? Spoiler alert: it's not a slam dunk
Overview
How do you know public relations is working? The question every PR leader faces and, frankly, struggles to answer. From our time working in-house and now advising clients big and small, we’ve contended with how to measure our media results. We decided to take this question to trusted PR leaders across the field – surveying them about the metrics they use, what they like, and what they wish existed to better measure success.
The results are unsatisfying. But they point to a big opening for a data savvy entrepreneur to create smarter measurement tools for the public relations field.
Who we surveyed
In Q4 2023, we sent out a comprehensive survey to a diverse group of PR leaders, tapping into our community of respected leaders and popular groups for communications executives (e.g., Mixing Board). We had 26 participants from across an array of industries – 86% of respondents had more than 10 years of experience and 40% more than 15 years of experience. And, they represented companies of varying sizes - 60% had more than 100 employees, 20% had more than 1,000 employees.
Key findings
PR leaders consider CEO satisfaction the most important PR metric.The second most important is landing stories in outlets that PR leaders have targeted and prioritized. At the bottom of the list of metrics is impressions – that very hard-to-believe, giant number of people who might have come across an article/post.
Most leaders aren’t satisfied with their measurement tools (and nearly half of PR leaders don’t bother using one since they find them ineffective).
PR leaders have to report out at least quarterly (40%) and some monthly (30%) on their metrics.
59% of respondents definitively reported using metrics to adjust their strategy throughout the year.
Lastly, 81% of leaders are asked to align PR goals with tangible business goals but admitted that these are hard to track directly. As PR leaders, what do we do with this (probably not surprising but still disheartening) information?
A few ideas:
On behalf of all PR leaders everywhere, stop tracking vanity metrics (i.e., impressions/the number of people who might have come across your news). This gives a false sense of reach and effectiveness. We understand the appeal of showing off a massive number to other leaders, but it’s misleading and doesn’t give you any indication of whether your message is pulling through. And, if you must provide them, be sure to provide some context. Compare current campaigns with ones of similar size and scope so you are able to provide directional performance.
Manage CEO expectations through education. CEO satisfaction ranked in the top spot for important metrics to track. We get it, CEO buy-in and happiness make the job so much easier, which is why it is critical to have honest and continuous conversations with all-company leadership about their media expectations – while reminding them PR is an imperfect art (i.e., we are working to control the uncontrollable). This involves stepping back at a high level and aligning on priority media outlets, goals for social reach (measured by likes/comments/reshares) and prioritizing the messages you want to pull through. Investing time to align with your CEO is time well spent.
Get ahead of aligning PR metrics with business outcomes. Based on the survey, this seems to be the direction most companies are heading. These metrics can be hard to track, so work with your business stakeholders to define success together, and design the best way to track the PR/business outcome. But don’t be afraid to push back in places where your business stakeholders are looking for PR and media wins to drive results that aren’t possible.
Successful PR can’t just look at data. In addition to quantitative metrics, include goals that touch on reporter relationships, quality of coverage, landing key messages in articles, and correcting false narratives. For example, sometimes media can lead to other positive outcomes, such as being invited to speak at an industry conference, cultivating future sources, etc. Without tracking these qualitative details, you miss out on critical information about how your PR strategy is landing.
The PR measurement tool landscape is bleak. Nobody is happy with what’s out there. Is there a data guru who can solve our problems – tying PR results to business and employee outcomes, calibrating their tools to understand if a message is landing, and understanding the full reach? If so, you’ve got a greenfield to land business.
Interested in digging deeper into the data?
Check out the full results
What kinds of PR metrics are considered the most effective on a scale of 1-10 ?
Other metrics PR leaders use to track the success of their team include
Affiliates
Answering “how you heard about us”
Spokesperson inclusion
Brand lift studies
Quality of relationships with reporters
Quality of coverage
In-depth social media metrics
Search Authority/SEO
Key message pull-through
We also wanted to know what communications leaders aren’t measuring and wish they could
Power of voice, combination of sentiment and other factors. Currently not measuring because it is difficult to track, especially manually.
Conversion/sales metrics. There’s not a consistent or clear way to track these.
Biggest customer pain points/hesitation with the product.
Social media conversation because it is difficult and noisy to track.
Amount of traffic to each website.
Consumption, how far into each article someone reads.
We asked communicators to share what they are asked to measure by their stakeholders that they wish they could drop.
47% of respondents said they’d drop measuring impressions. It is a vanity metric and only highlights the number of people who could have seen the piece.
Next, we wanted to know how valuable each PR leader found the following metrics.
Other metrics PR leaders value include: relationships with reporters, stakeholders reaching out/talking about the press, web traffic/conversions, realtime measures of trust, reputation, and satisfaction, PR awards/endorsements.
Do communications leaders use metrics to adjust their strategy throughout the year?
59% of respondents definitively reported using metrics to adjust their strategy throughout the year.
24% of respondents say they “somewhat” use metrics to adjust their strategy.
Respondents shared some interesting context for why they do not use metrics to adjust their strategy, including:
“I adjust, but generally not using metrics. Metrics show what has worked and not what will work.”
“We don’t think about metrics, we’re driven by results – not the spin of how to message them.”
Favorite PR measurement tool
The overwhelming theme here is that nobody has a PR measurement pool they like. In fact, 42% of respondents don’t bother using a tool because they don’t like their options. One-tenth of respondents manually run their own analysis and another tenth use an outside agency to track their metrics.
While none of the tools mentioned received glowing reviews, respondents reported using: Muckrack, Meltwater, Onclusive, Cision, Businesswire, Khoros, Sprout Social, BuzzSumo.
Do you have headcount dedicated to measurement?
72% of respondents do not have a dedicated headcount, it is a shared responsibility across the comms team.
16% have an external vendor/agency manage their measurement
12% have a dedicated analyst(s) on their team
Leaders are asked to present their PR metrics
Are comms leaders asked to align PR goals/ROI with tangible business goals?
81% of leaders are asked to align PR goals with tangible business goals but admitted that these are hard to track directly.