Ways To Measure Return On PR Investments

Business leaders and executive routinely rely on public relations tactics to get their messages or brands out to the general public. As a result, PR and business growth are closely connected. Even though there is such a close connection, few business executives have a solid sense of exactly what they’re getting from their investment in a PR firm or public relations individual. Sometimes the result of this is that business execs don’t fully understand the importance of PR.

One can’t expect company leaders to simply take the word of a PR firm that tactics are working. While the companies may see the results of the tactics in the sales or a gradual increase in brand awareness, they often want something more concrete to work with. This can pose a challenge for the PR professional.

The Return on Investment with other investments are often a whole lot easier to quantify than those from a PR angle. An Ifbyphone marketing measurement survey revealed that more than 80 percent of marketers have no way to evaluate that they’re getting a good (or any) ROI from PR. PR campaigns are difficult to measure.

Other investments can more easily be measured with standard measurement tools and turnkey tracking solutions. In order to analyze the ROI on PR strategies, both business leaders and the PR team themselves will need to take a broader look and non-traditional ways to measure the effectiveness of a strategy.

The first thing to remember about Public relations measurement and PR ROI is that the results are never going to be as neat and tidy and reports from other areas of the organization. But there are some key indicators that can help with determining ROI.

1/ The Efficiency of the Sales Cycle

If a PR strategy is doing what it should be doing, it should reduce the length of a company’s sales cycle. Statistics show that carefully selected media placements and properly used leadership materials reduce the sales cycle by at least 10 percent. An efficient (and effective) sales cycle means that resources can be allocated to other areas like increasing the volume of leads of the current sales team.

It works this way. Good PR placement elevates a brand. It positions a company as an industry expert which means that more keyword searches will be connected to a company known as an industry expert. Consumers will associate a certain company with a specific product or service which will also shorten their time completing research. It can sometimes eliminate the competitive process.

2/ Market Visibilities

Market visibility is difficult to measure, at least the percentage that’s a result of public relations versus paid-for advertisement placements. If you want to measure market visibility, try a comparison approach. How would your competitor’s visibility or piece of the market share increase if it outpaced the PR efforts in your organization? This can give an indication how PR investments protect the market share of your company from the competition and is an effective type of public relations measurement.

I write on many diffrent topics. Follow me to read all great articles.