How can you tell if your PR is working, and what is your return on investment (“ROI”) for the money you spend on PR? ROI on PR is not as easy to measure as many of the metrics and analytics you find on social media sites, but you can still measure certain aspects of the effectiveness of your PR efforts.
New Leads
When you run a PR campaign in social media and other areas such as print newspapers, magazines, and trade journals, you should see a bump in the active consumer leads your company receives. One place where this is easier to monitor is your website. When you run a major PR campaign, you should see where many of the leads were generated with ads, articles, and such.
After you subtract the impact of any SEO, PPC, and paid advertising, the remaining progress will be primarily from PR efforts. You may also see growth in the number of followers you have on social media sites.
Stronger Contacts
If your PR campaign is having a positive impact on your target customers, your sales people will be having a more positive experience from the first conversations. Customers will feel more at ease in asking questions that can lead to sales, rather than being wary of asking such questions. They will also feel more comfortable in trusting your company’s products and personnel if the PR has left them with a positive impression.
Faster Sales
If the PR campaign is successful, you can cut 10% or more off the time from first contact to payment for your product or service. In turn, that allows your sales staff to spend that extra time working with other potential customers. As the trust continues to grow, online keyword searches will incorporate your company name rather than the type of service and a location.
When that happens, you can see it from search engine analytics.
Crisis Management
Another area where you can measure the impact of PR is when the worst happens. When the only way to deal with the problem is with a well-planned campaign to maintain market share and protect your company’s good name, you will see how effective your PR campaign is.
There are other ways you can measure the effectiveness of your PR campaign. But it is important to be aware of what is working, what needs to be changed to get better results, and what is not helping your company grow. Until you know how well the plan is working, you are just throwing money and hoping for a good outcome.
Make sure you know what is happening and what can be done to improve your growth potential through PR.
About Ronn Torossian
Ronn Torossian is the Founder and CEO of 5W Public Relations. He is an experienced leader in the public relations industry with over 20 years of experience. Ronn Torossian has been named as Public Relations executive of the year by the American Business Awards, and has run countless award-winning Public Relations programs.