One of the topics PR pros love to discuss is measurement. In fact if you look at any PR award or conference agenda you will notice the emphasis the industry places on this subject.

The PR industry has conferences just on measurement – pre-campaign measurement, post-campaign measurement, number of media hits, quality of media hits primary research, secondary research and so on.

I remember spending $4K a month of Iomega’s $2M-plus annual PR budget just providing them with analysis on each and every media hit, based on the type of media outlet, the positive or negative slant of the article and how many key messages were included.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe in measuring results. I provide all clients with a monthly list of media hits as a basic form of measurement. But, I have never had a CEO ask me about how many media hits came from a press release. However, I am regularly asked how many investors called because of a story or how many new sales leads came through the website.

In my view, PR today is much more about directly driving business than building reputation. We track leads to conversion rates with our clients and look at the cost of sale and whether it’s increasing or decreasing. We analyze movement on the website to insure we are driving prospects through the buying cycle. And, we proudly tout how many customers or sales came directly from our PR campaigns.

This approach may not win us any awards but it certainly keeps management happy, which means a long and meaningful relationship with the client.

Posted in Marketing Mentor |

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Trackback from your own site.