Calculating ROI on PR

A lot of the time, when people discuss “return on investment” it might just sound like some fancy business buzzwords. However, talking about return on investment, or ROI, doesn’t always only mean profitability for the business. That’s especially true in the public relations field, where businesses are supposed to generate long-term benefits from investments in PR strategies and campaigns.

However, many times, calculating the precise return on investment in public relations isn’t easy. This is because not every PR effort can quickly generate a return that’s measurable; returns such as sales or an increase in revenue.  That’s why generally, the return on investment in public relations is split into two different categories.

The first category is the earned media returns, which are able to increase a company’s brand awareness, reputation, and credibility in the market and the industry. This category is able to indirectly contribute to a company’s financial returns such as sales revenue. Additionally, in this category are included promotions to the general public, the target audience, or interviews with relevant media outlets.

The second category is the financial returns for the company, such as an increase in the sales revenue which can be directly attributed to a PR campaign. In this category often fall strategies such as an email campaign that persuades consumers to make a purchase by providing them with some free yet valuable content.

These days, there’s a lot of debate on how companies should measure the returns on public relations investment, and there’s also not much consensus over what can actually be considered a valid metric. While there are plenty of measurement tools available across all promotional channels, if a company doesn’t have well-defined goals for its campaign, those numbers are going to be meaningless at the end of the day.

Earned Media

One of the great ways that companies can measure their PR ROI is through earned media, which is one of the key strategies for generating interest from the target audience for the company. This is because if a potential consumer sees a company’s name many times across different digital content pieces, they’re going to become more likely to open up the company’s website and start a relationship with the business.

Although that person might not become a buying customer immediately, they’re going to begin their buying journey as soon as they visit the website, which means they have the potential to invest in the company in the future.

Backlinks

Another great way that companies can measure their PR ROI is through backlinks because they’re essentially a link that directs a potential lead back to the business website. They’re a great way for a company to measure out its success on Google’s Search Engine Results pages SERPs), and to promote itself to brand new visitors and potentially new markets.

It’s important to remember that not all backlinks are valued in the same way, as sites that have a high domain authority will always be more valuable to the public and to search engines, as well as be more beneficial to PR companies .