How Efficient Is Your PR Work?
Like many other industries, PR work is becoming increasingly data-driven. Today, the value of public relations can be measured much more effectively than in the past. There are numerous tools, methods, and KPIs available to evaluate PR effectiveness. But how do you know which ones are best suited for your communication strategy?
Raphael, one of aclipp's founders, answered this question in our first webinar. Here, we have summarized the key results for you:
Asking the Right Questions to Find the Right KPIs
To ensure that capturing and analyzing KPIs has the desired effect and that the success of your PR can be meaningfully measured, the metrics must align closely with the set goals. It is not enough to simply think of various KPIs and capture them.
Additionally, it must be defined what actions the KPIs should trigger later. What happens when certain values are reached? How will PR be adjusted? Only when it is clearly defined what the metrics mean for your communication and how they are to be interpreted, is data-based optimization possible.
So, how can you best define KPIs?
Ideally, this is done top-down. This means you take the vision of your company or your client's company and derive specific communication goals from it. You then consider how targeted PR can support achieving the vision.
Once you have set appropriate goals, it is necessary to think about which measures can achieve them. Based on these two considerations, you can then define individual KPIs. These will show you exactly how close you are to achieving your goals.
Which KPIs Are Best for PR Work?
As mentioned earlier, the KPIs depend heavily on a company's communication goals and planned measures. Additionally, clients or supervisors must fully understand why certain metrics are meaningful and what they specifically indicate. Only then can data-based and well-founded decisions be made, making the data collection truly valuable.
However, you can generally follow these guidelines:
- Choose a balanced mix of qualitative and quantitative KPIs
- Align the KPIs precisely with your goals and regularly consider whether the data helps you understand how to optimize your PR
- Always provide guidance to your supervisors or clients when defining KPIs, as you are the expert in this field
Examples Could Include
Engagement per Topic/Format: What engages your target audience the most? Where have you been able to generate the most attention? You can then incorporate these topics and formats more into your content plan.
Delivery of Core Messages: Did the desired messages reach the target audience correctly? Do I need to highlight and place the messages more prominently in the content in the future?
Target Audience Reach: How many people from my target audience were reached through the PR measures across various channels and formats? Did I receive many mentions but in the wrong media? Am I sufficiently recognized within the target audience?
Tone: Are authors and consumers more positive or critical of the company?
How Can the Results Be Presented?
PR reports or graphical dashboards are particularly suitable for making the measured data more understandable and visually appealing for clients or supervisors. You can read here how a PR report should ideally be structured and designed.
Dashboards have the advantage of always being up-to-date and presenting the results graphically and meaningfully without much manual effort. Furthermore, the timeframe and type of representations can be adjusted at any time. Additionally, companies are already familiar with dashboards from many other areas, such as performance marketing. Thus, they offer the opportunity to show that the impact of PR can also be represented and optimized based on data at any time.
We asked the 70 participants of the webinar which method they use to present the results of their analyses:
If you want to learn all the details, insightful explanations, and great practical examples on the topic, feel free to watch the video of Raphael's presentation! He goes through each phase in detail and provides you with many useful tips.
We hope you enjoy watching 😊
Sarah Amler
Digital Process & Marketing Manager
Sarah was responsible for performance marketing, social media activities and digital onboarding in our software at aclipp.