We, at CBC, are all about “measurable” PR campaigns.
It is an essential approach to any PR or Marketing campaign, whether it’s one that you pay an agency to undertake or one that you spend your own valuable time on. And you need to decide on “how” you are going to measure success before you start.
When we meet with our clients and agree on communication aims at the start of each campaign, we also discuss with them their perception of what their key publications are. These are the magazines, newspapers, TV or Radio shows that are read/watched by their target audience. We measure how often we communicate with our contacts from those publications and how often we get coverage in them, and the source of the press material issued (whether it be a PR, comment, case study or blog).
PR is not like Advertising, and with all the best will in the world, we can’t guarantee coverage in publications. At the end of the day, the journalists and editors decide what, who, and when they will cover a story. Our job is to make the press materials that we send to journalists and analysts, appropriate, newsworthy and of a high standard and to respect their editorial deadlines and last minute changes/cuts to space. This is when you need to set expectations with clients, as it sometimes might take between 2-3 months before the coverage of their story is actually out. That time however is well spent with research and preparing background material so we are ready to hit the ground running.
We measure our monthly performance on simple things like:
*Did the target number of Press Releases go out each month? depending on the client
*How many pieces of press coverage did I get in my clients key target publications?
*How many column inches did we get and what would the advertising cost of this space be?
*What messages are there in the text? Are the top two customer messages in there? If not Why not?
*Did correct contact details and logo /website appear on press material issued? That’s when you need to ensure that proofreading/fact checking needs to be done again after the piece is included , as corrections can be made by the editors, if you ask them nicely!
If you are interested to hear more about how a measurable PR campaign would look, just drop us a line: [email protected]
