April 24, 2003

Measuring Results in Public Relations

"In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of effort is the measure of the results." - James Allen

At the largest conference of public relations professionals last year, the best-attended seminar was "Measuring the Success of Your PR Program." Interviewing colleagues who attended this talk, I heard one dominant theme. In this tough economic climate, many people will only spend money on PR efforts that generate profits.

When it comes to measuring success, the PR industry has developed various tools with each one offering real insights but none alone being sufficient. To measure the success of a PR effort, you will need to use a combination of measurements.

Advertising Equivalency (AE): This method calculates the value of PR by analyzing how much it would cost to purchase a similar amount of advertising space. For instance, if you landed a half-page profile about your company in the San Francisco Chronicle, how much would it cost to buy that space? Or, if your spokesperson were interviewed for 20 minutes on KGO Radio, how much would it cost to buy a similar block of time on that same program?

AE dollars add up quickly. Working with Hansine Pedersen Goran, a talented designer of amazing contemporary carpets (check out her web site at http://www.currentcarpets.com), we quickly generated $110,791 in AE dollars with just three placements in significant publications.

While AE is relatively easy to calculate, it often underrepresents the true value of PR because people tend to trust "news" much more than paid advertising. A recent study (Edelman, 2002) showed that consumers trust news approximately four times more than advertising. Thus, when comparing a PR placement to a similarly sized advertisement, the value of the former should actually far exceed the latter. Unfortunately, there is no exact way to determine the relative value of PR vs. advertising.

Media Impressions (MI): Another metric that the PR industry commonly uses is how many people see a PR message. For years, our industry has used the common multiplier of 2.5 for calculating the pass-along rate of the typical newspaper or magazine. For instance, if your story appears in a newspaper with a circulation of 300,000, about 750,000 people will see it (2.5 readers x 300,000).

Unfortunately, there is scant empirical evidence that this 2.5 multiplier is valid, and most likely it varies quite a bit across the media. Chances are that the rise in specialized publications and increased recycling habits decreases the likelihood that somebody will pass on a publication after reading it. Also, few people read any publication from cover to cover.

Also, MI shares a similar problem with AE. A MI measurement fails to consider the varying degree to which people trust news stories compared to advertising. Thus, MI tends to understate the relative value of PR vs. advertising.

Counting "message points" has become popular as a PR measurement tool. Some pundits argue that PR coverage should be evaluated as a success only if essential ideas are communicated. For instance, if you decide before launching your PR campaign that you want to emphasize that your line of cookies is both inexpensive and full of chocolate chips, you count the time each media placement mentions these two characteristics. In this model, a media placement that mentions these key message points with greater frequency is far more valuable than one that doesn't.

Fortunately, if the objective of your PR campaign is to generate immediate customer leads or sales, you can oftentimes measure this. Most web sites, for instance, allow you to track visitors quite easily. We've found that significant media coverage generated through a PR campaign can increase web traffic 10 to 20 times the normal amount for a week following the placement.

When there is a direct response or opportunity to buy, PR can generate some truly impressive results. For instance, Adrienne Zoble undertook her own PR effort for a book she wrote called The Do-Able Marketing Plan. A one-sixth of a page article about her book in Inc Magazine that included a phone number for placing orders resulted in $32,305 worth of orders.

Regardless of the combination of measurements used to evaluate a well-executed PR campaign, number crunching reveals that PR spending is an incredibly profitable use of marketing dollars.

Best wishes,
Patrick Galvin