Last Updated September 30, 2024
18 minutes read

PR Measurement: Which KPIs to track in 2024 (and how!)

Ever wondered how to measure PR effectively? Here’s HOW to measure your efforts and the specific KPIs to track.

If you’re like most PR professionals, you love what you do but hate how much time you have to spend justifying it. We get it. Unfortunately, we live in a dystopian world where your bosses and clients want to know they’re getting something for your hard-earned monthly retainer.

Join us on the following journey while we answer important questions like:

  • Why do PR measurement anyway?
  • What should you track (and what should you not track)?
  • What key metrics should all PR professionals keep an eye on?
  • What tools can you use to measure PR?

Alright, first things first, a hard truth:

The CFO is no longer accepting "good vibes" as a reliable PR evaluation method.

PR can be expensive. And unlike many tangible expensive things, you can't hold it in your hands and say, "Yes, this expense was worth it because I can feel how expensive it is." No, PR is ethereal and based on ideas like reach and impressions and "Share of Voice" (whatever that is).

I'm kidding, I know what it is but I'm not going to say.

So, how do you know that your PR is effective? How can you tell that you've provided value and put your budget to good use? Well, that's where PR measurement comes in. PR measurement is taking the intangible, and creating solid proof that your campaigns and efforts are, in fact, as amazing as you claim.

Measurement is a key component of good PR strategy, which is why we offer the detailed campaign analytics that we do. But with so much talk of measurement and so many tools out there, it’s easy to get lost in a rabbit hole of clickthroughs, trackbacks, mentions, views, likes, engagement, [insert your favorite metric here].

Before you know it, you’ve spent hours wading through data and aren’t any closer to knowing whether you’ve really succeeded, much less what you should do next.

If you’re measuring everything in sight but don’t know what to do with the information, you’ve got it backwards.

First you need to make a strategy of what you want to achieve, decide what success will look like, and then keep measuring. Here's how you do that.

What is PR measurement, anyway?

PR measurement aims to answer one simple question: how effectively are we communicating the brand's message to the public?

This would be simple if each campaign only had one element or method, but this is rarely the case. Most PR combines SEO, press outreach, influencer marketing, advertising, and more.

So, to evaluate your PR across myriad platforms and mediums, you will need the tools to aggregate and showcase the various metrics and analytics related to your strategic initiatives. This is a lot of jargon-y buzzwords: show evidence that your actions are progressing towards the goals you (and the client/business) want to accomplish.PR evaluation is part of, but different from, a PR report. PR reporting is the over-arching and comprehensive document to showcase your PR initiatives. PR evaluation tracks those initiatives. So, similar, but different.

Why is measurement important in PR?

Before we go wading into the weeds, let's establish why we're bothering to measure anything. Wouldn't it be better to just focus on connecting with audiences, putting out communications, implementing campaigns, and building networks? Measurements, evaluation metrics, and other number-y things seem like a time sink that distracts from the real goal: communications and long, leisurely lunch breaks. 💅

Well, this used to be true.

Before everything went online, every move was tracked, and every click was monitored (thanks, Big Brother!), you could only measure efficacy by output. Whether or not your campaign converted to sales or increased brand recognition was, frankly, none of your business. Now, this simply isn’t enough, which brings us to why measurement is so dang critical:

1. Because PR measurement data is plentiful

Having access to the numbers is no longer the problem – working out how to turn them into something valuable and actionable? Yeah, it's a little more tricky. But 100% worth the time and energy it takes to get it right.

That's because tracking and analyzing the right data can help you achieve marvelous things.

Data – it helps you:

  • Demonstrate the value of your work
  • Get better results
  • Know what tasks are worth spending your time on
  • Stop clients from derailing your work
  • Advance in your public relations career

There are now approximately gazillions of analytics tools to add quantitative analysis to your laudable PR initiatives. And with this power comes great responsibility.Evaluation and measurement are important because they substantiate your efforts. It's one thing to say, "We felt really good about this campaign." And it's another to say, "We reached 4,500 people from this one email."

2. Because we measure PR to show our efforts are working

Hoping your PR initiatives speak for themselves is no longer enough when we have a bajillion tools to track that work and turn it into pie charts (and other charts too). Analytics and attribution are not perfect (yet), but if done right, they can speak meaningfully to your work.

Another reason evaluating your PR work is important? It helps you know whether your efforts are working. Maybe the tone of your Twitter account is off and isn't quite landing with the youths like you expected. Maybe your new ad campaign came across as embarrassingly tone-deaf and weird.

Without evaluation, it can be easy to stay the course and keep making the same mistakes that harm the brand's reputation and waste a ton of money. Proper PR evaluation techniques allow you to take a step back and look at the campaign from an analytical standpoint to ask the age-old question, "Was this a terrible idea? Or are we actually... brilliant geniuses?"

3. Because your PR measurement should advance the goals of your agency

The things you should be measuring are directly related to the goals of the organization you're working with. And the PR metrics you should focus on are an immediate reflection of what your agency finds important.

For example, if the overall goal of your campaign is to increase the number of sales, then hey, the number of sales that are happening is something you should be tracking. On the flip side of the coin, if your goal is to increase awareness or to educate, success is unlikely to be reflected in the sales figures.

Okay, we know the ultimate goal of measurement: to understand whether we are delivering on the (hopefully) aligned goals of the company. This doesn't tell us what we should be measuring specifically.

We're in communications. We're not data analysts.

It's super tempting for us to want that one right PR metric, that one perfect number to report on so that we can move about our day without engaging in statistical calculations, pie graphs, and circle charts (that last one doesn't exist).

Sadly, it just doesn't work that way.

Happily, you can figure out the important metrics by doing what PR folk do best: making mimosas! 🥂

I'm kidding.

You can do it by ✨ communicating

More specifically, what you need is to speak with your stakeholders (that's c-suite if you're in-house, your client's c-suite if you're agency or freelance) and understand the end goal of what they're trying to achieve.

Bear in mind that what they think they want you to do and what they actually need you to do may very well be two vastly dissonant things. Since when have people made things easy for you?

And if your client doesn't have a system for measuring the value of your PR? Create one.

Most importantly, make sure your goals align with those of the company as a whole. You need to do research, internally and likely client side. You need to work out the tactics you will use to achieve your goals. You need to decide what PR evaluation metrics will change if your tactics are successful and bring you closer to your goal, and you need to track those figures from the beginning, not just when your campaign is done and dusted.

I know, it's a whole lot.

Important KPIs To Track

Obviously, your exact KPIs will vary wildly based on the type of campaign, the kind of content you’re working on, and the type of agency or client you’re working with. However, these five metrics are pretty reliably important for most PR folks, regardless of the campaign.

KPI #1. Sales

Can you find a way to reasonably attribute sales to the work you’re doing? Can you show the C-suite a bump in sales after a successful piece of coverage or a particularly effective email campaign? If so, shout it from the rooftops. Nothing makes a business want to invest in more PR quite like dollar signs.

KPI #2. Reach

How far did your campaign go across the interwebs and beyond? The ability to show how effective your efforts have been in terms of eyes on your brand is a powerful indication of the efficacy of your button mashing.

KPI #3. Social engagement

Did your campaign start some buzz? Was it liked, retweeted, and shared with thousands of people? The ability to show tangible progress through social engagement is more powerful than ever.

KPI #4. Traffic

Can you attribute a bump in site traffic to your campaign? Even if you aren’t converting, the ability to show that your campaign is moving hearts and minds can be a powerful metric. People may not convert or purchase during their first or even second exposure to the brand, but building up that relationship is super important.

KPI #5. Domain Authority

It’s an SEO world; we’re all just living in it. Your campaigns will likely hit a bunch of different kinds of coverage. Still, getting quality backlinks and increasing the power of your agency’s or client’s website is massive and cannot be overstated. If you land your client in a huge publication like Forbes or CNN, you’ll likely see a bump in DA, which is incredibly helpful when so many businesses rely on SEO for their strategy.

What You Shouldn’t Measure In PR?

So when we talk about PR measurement, we know there’s a lot of data, the data should mean something, and the data should inform and reflect the agency's goals. But what shouldn’t we measure?

Element #1: Activity (aka buttons pushed)

We know what we specifically do not want to measure, and that's activity. Activity is just the things that we do, not what we accomplish. Here, Richard explains it much better:

So, when planning how to measure your PR performance, reporting on what you do is not enough. You need to analyze the impact.

Element #2: Pitches sent

I know that you care about how much pitching you’re doing. I mean, you were the one doing it. You poured your heart, soul, and carpal tunnel into drafting personalized, clever pitches for journalists, publications, and collaborators.

But you know who doesn’t really care? Everyone else.

I know that sounds harsh, but it’s best to hear it from a friend.

You can send 100 emails, but what's the open rate?

You can pitch 1,000 stories, but how much coverage did you get?

Element #3: Anything that isn’t relevant to your stated goals

If the agency has decided that brand visibility is the most important thing, do you really need to track sales? Inversely, if sales are the goal, do you really need to track social media mentions?

We’re not here to judge what you and your agency consider important. Simply to point out that the goal should inform the KPI. Everything else is just distracting, a waste of precious time, and a bit of fluff (and trust us, we love fluff. Just not in our PR).

The PR Measurement Process: (PR Measurement Starts With a Plan)

Checking piecemeal data points after a campaign is much less impactful than going into your campaign with an effective outreach strategy. Why is this? Well, when you track analytics after a campaign, it limits what data you're able to obtain, and you focus more on activity versus outcome.

PR professionals who come onto our PR Roundtable love strategy. Rand loves strategy. Chris loves strategy. Gini and Laura love strategy. With all these heavy hitters raving about the importance of a strategic approach to PR and measurement, there has to be something to it.

The simple fact is, there's too much data out there to not be strategic. But with so much data out there, so many analytics and feeds, and socials and metrics to track, what should you (yes, you) focus on?

These seven steps will help you along the way.

4 PR measurement steps

1. Ask a lot of questions

"Why am I doing this?" sounds like a basic question, but don’t underestimate the importance of knowing exactly why you’re doing what you’re doing.

From a business standpoint, this question will help you clarify your ultimate goal for any new initiative. It probably has something to do with earning more money, gaining a bigger following, retaining happy customers, and generally moving your business forward.

2. Determine your goals (and stick to them)

If you don’t know what your goals for a given campaign are before you launch that campaign, you’re already dead in the water. Do you want to catch the attention of a market niche? See your brand all over the media? Decide in advance what you want to accomplish.

3. Establish your KPIs

Once you’ve identified your goals, decide how you will know when you’ve achieved them. If your goal is a strong social media community, you might measure things like mentions and shares. If you want coverage from top influencers, decide what kind of coverage to use and by whom.

For example, if your goal is to increase membership, decide how much an increase spells success. Say you spend $10,000 and get 100 new members. Is it a success or not? The answer is, it depends. If every new member is worth $5,000 in new business, then probably yes. If every new member is worth $5, probably not. You can’t know unless you’ve decided in advance what success looks like for your business.

Decide which metrics to pay attention to, and which metrics to ignore. You can find an extensive list of PR metrics here.

Or, what numbers should you track so the CEO doesn't fire you? So, you’ve spent months developing content for your latest client, and now it’s time to run a digital (content) campaign. But after the campaign is finished, how do you measure its success?

Keeping with our example of increasing members, you obviously want to measure new memberships, but there are many related metrics that will also be helpful to you. If you’re driving traffic to a sign-up page, you probably want to know where the most traffic is coming from, how many people leave without signing up, and how many people begin the sign-up process but don’t complete it (to name just a few). Conversely, know which metrics you can ignore – this will vary widely based on your specific situation, but remember that just because you can measure something doesn’t mean you should.

4. Put your measurements and tracking tools into place

Once (and only once) you’ve answered these three questions, you can get down to the actual business of measuring and reporting. Measurement itself is a tactic, and numbers won’t tell you anything if you don’t already know what you’re looking for.

How do you build your PR measurement and evaluation strategy? What metrics are important to you, which ones do you ignore, and how do you decide what it means to be successful?

5. Re-evaluate at identified benchmarks

After you’ve outlined your high-level success metrics, break them down into smaller milestones so you can measure your progress against them.

If your goal is a strong Facebook presence and one of your metrics is 10,000 fans in three months, you might set benchmarks for 1,000 fans at the end of the first month, 5,000 after the second month, etc.

Identify benchmarks within your campaign where you can stop, look at the data, and adjust accordingly. Often, PR folks get caught up in the weeds of their campaigns and fail to introspect at various points along the way. This can often mean you end up at the end of a campaign that completely derailed part of the way through, and nobody caught it because everybody simply assumed things were going as planned.

[It’s a journey gif]

6. Iterate as you go

If you find that you aren’t hitting the benchmarks you set in step 5 above, don’t panic. Take it as a sign that you need to adjust your strategic and tactical approaches, or that perhaps your original benchmarks were unrealistic.

As a team, take some time to reevaluate, course correct, and ensure you're on track for your goals. If you're not, try something new, adjust your approach, and get creative. There's no point in continuing to do something that isn't working.

Measure your progress against your goals, success metrics, and milestones as you go, and you’ll always know if your approach is working or if you need to make mid-course adjustments in order to meet your goals.

7. Learn and reflect

After your campaign, take some time to really dig into the data and see what you can learn from it. What worked, and what really, really didn't? Think of the Pareto principle: what 20% of your efforts produced 80% of the success? How can your team learn, grow, and do things better next time?

5 Best Tools To Measure Your PR Efforts

Tool #1. Prezly

We would be remiss not to mention our favorite PR tool, Prezly. Prezly is an all-in-one public relations powerhouse that lets you create beautiful newsrooms and press releases, send campaigns, and analyze analytics from one intuitive, collaborative tool.

You don't need 45 different software subscriptions to do what Prezly can from one streamlined platform. You can track, pull, and analyze your stats on the same platform where you work. This includes important KPIs like newsroom and press release views and campaign reports, all in real time. What's easier than that?

Tool #2. Brand24

If social is part of your PR strategy (and it should be, this is 2024), Brand24 is a great tool for tracking social mentions and online engagement. Reputation is incredibly important, and you don't want yours to get tarnished while you're blissfully unaware. Social listening tools like Brand24 can help you avoid any potential scandals, find amazing coverage highlighting your brand’s awesomeness, and connect with current and future fans.

Tool #3. Plausible

Are you looking for site analytics software that doesn’t creep out your friends and family? Plausible Analytics is a privacy-first open-source website analytics tool. We like how easy and intuitive it is to use without dragging your site down with a bunch of bloated code.

In fact, we love it so much, we incorporated Plausible's newsroom analytics into our software. That’s a pretty glowing endorsement.

Tool #4. Ahrefs

Backlinking, Domain Authority, and the ability to track your brand’s internet presence is Ahref’s bread and butter. Ahrefs is arguably the biggest name in the game, and that’s for good reason. They do everything you’ll need to track and analyze your website analytics (probably more than you’ll ever need, to be perfectly honest).

Ahrefs also has plenty of educational resources as well, to help you become the SEO powerhouse your mom always knew you could be.

Tool #5. CoverageBook

If you need a dedicated tool to showcase your beautiful media mentions, CoverageBook might be the one for you. You can show off your impressive PR efforts without having to format a single PDF or, God forbid, a Canva document. CoverageBook does a lot of the work for you, all you have to do is paste the URL of your coverage and they pull all sorts of cool and interesting metrics and visuals.If you’re itching to fill your PR toolbox with even more awesome services, check out our full list of the best PR analytics tools.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this was a helpful crash course in learning how to measure your PR efforts. If you're interested in learning even more about the power of measurement and KPIs in PR, read this fantastic article to further your evaluation education.

Or, want to see how Prezly can support your team's PR measurement methods? Sign up for a free 14-day trial now! (Good vibes included.)

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