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March 2016 ROI of PR

The ROI of PR from Critical Mention and Upstream Analysis

www.criticalmention.com

March 2016

02 What do you want to measure, and why? 03 What do you consider a return on your investment in PR?

ROI of PR

01 Contents

04 Determining your measurement options 05 Budget for Measurement 06 Tools of the Trade 07 PR Plan: Be Prepared 08 Contact Information


Common reasons to measure ROI of PR:

Right-size your PR budget Measurement of ROI lets you know what tactics are working and should be reinforced, and what tactics – while sounding compelling on paper – may not actually be doing what they were designed to do. Measurement lets you budget accordingly.

ROI of PR

March 2016

02 What do you want to measure, and why?

Show how PR supports business goals Marketing and Sales have many ways of drawing a straight line from expenditures on advertising and sales calls to your organization’s bottom line. PR has always has challenges in making the same case. Measurement that ties directly back to business goals, objectives and mission statement helps to demonstrate that PR is not just feel-good window dressing, but in fact is elemental to your organization’s success. Get a seat at the table The ability of Marketing and Sales tie themselves directly to the organization’s profit & loss statement gives them legitimacy and credibility with upper management. The more that PR can demonstrate the same kind of value, the more PR can stand on equal footing with those other departments when it comes to directing corporate strategy. Hold PR agency or Communications team accountable/incentivize performance How do you know if your PR or communications team is performing? One way is to measure output and outcomes through a mix of measurement tools. One of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world used a measurement of its share of voice in the media relative to its competitors to trigger bonus awards for its communications staff. But keep in mind that while “that which is not measured cannot be managed,” the great social scientist and management expert W. Edwards Deming sagely noted that, “The most important things are unknown or unknowable.” Wise counsel, a steady hand during a crisis...these are also returns on your PR investment. www.criticalmention.com

Quantitative Measurements Anything that can be reduced to a number is considered a quantitative measurement. This category includes: The number of news clips, getting lots of eyeballs, i.e., TV viewership, website click-throughs; Good value for money in terms of advertising equivalency, the amount of money one would need to buy the same air time or column inches as earned media; Competitive share of voice in target media such as trade publications, top tier newspapers, editorial discussion, etc. Qualitative measurements Just because something can’t be boiled down to a dollar figure or number doesn’t mean it isn’t measureable. The good image of your organization, pick-up of your key messages by influencers or policy-makers, people’s shifting opinions – these are all qualitative measurements. Attitudinal/Behavioral changes of target audience Marketing and Sales measure behavioral changes in terms of increase in customers. PR can use the same measurement, but also has the luxury of measuring other changes in behavior. For example, marketing and sales for a company that sells smoking cessation products may measure ROI in terms of packs of nicotine gum sold, but PR can also measure its success in terms of calls to quit-smoking hotlines, anti-smoking regulations, increase in number of smokers who say they want to quit, or other behaviors. www.criticalmention.com

ROI of PR

March 2016

03 What do you consider a return on your investment in PR?

Quantitative Measurements A good platform like Critical Mention will gather clips, give reach and ad equivalency. Critical Mention allows users to search global TV, Radio & Online News, watch video, edit and share coverage, receive real-time email alerts, build reports, and analyze coverage through word clouds and graphs. Qualitative measurements Qualitative measurements usually require a mix of automated technologies and human input. For example, the technology to determine tone or sentiment in media coverage has advanced greatly in the past five years or so, but no technology is foolproof. Always, human input is required to ensure accuracy. Similarly, a sophisticated Boolean search can generally gather a wide swath of media clips that are likely to contain your organization’s key messages. But without a human filter to actually read to coverage, you are likely to get a lot of false positives – clips that have all the right keywords but aren’t actually relevant to your organization. For this reason, qualitative measurements tent to be more expensive than quantitative measurements, but they often yield far more valuable insights that can help guide strategy going forward. Attitudinal/Behavioral changes of target audience Look to match PR tactics with upticks in sales, leads, website hits, tweets or whatever your desired behavior. This means syncing up your data with marketing, web and sales teams. (It also helps build alliance across departments, since you are helping them justify their existence just as much as your own.) If the desired behavior change is attitudinal, this may require a series of surveys or focus groups to measure changes in attitudes over time.


ROI of PR

March 2016

04 Determining your measurement options:

March 2016

Your PR Plan

A good rule of thumb is to set aside 15% of your PR budget for measurement. If you’re planning a $100,000 PR initiative, earmark $15,000 for measurement.

ROI of PR

05 Budget for Measurement

Measurement Monitoring, Content, Targeting, Distribution, Events, etc.


March 2016

Know what you want to measure, why you want to measure it, and how you’re going to measure it BEFORE launching your PR program. Measurement Tools Often, you will need to put the proper tools in place prior to launch so that you can gather coverage as you go. Many times, if you wait until after the launch to turn your attention to measurement, there will be coverage or other data that cannot be captured retroactively. Many media aggregation platforms, for example, can only track broadcast coverage retroactively for the past 30 days. Tracking Twitter posts may require setting up searches for specific hashtags, keywords and handles in advance, since oftentimes aggregation of tweets can only be tracked going forward (not retroactively). Critical Mention’s Analysis Tool


ROI of PR

06 Tools of the Trade

March 2016

Benchmarks You might need to establish a benchmark – a baseline level of media coverage, sales leads, site visits, consumer attitudes, etc. – prior to launching your PR campaign. Sometimes it is possible to go back to Accounting, Marketing or other departments after the fact to gather such information. But some measurements like shifts in public attitude practically demand a baseline survey or focus group prior to launching your PR initiative. You need to know what your starting point is in order to see how much you moved the ball. “Know before you go” is a good rule of thumb for travel, and a best practice for PR. Knowing your desired outcomes clearly can help crystallize the PR plan itself. Sometimes, it turns out that a really clever PR idea doesn’t actually result in outcomes that align with business objectives. Back at the turn of the 21st century, the road to the dotcom graveyard was paved with high-flying gimmicks that were brilliantly conceived and beautifully executed. One of my favorites was the “herding cats” Superbowl ad by EDS from 2000. But if it doesn’t line up with business goals, why do it? Alternatively, if a PR initiative is clearly a smart move for the company, but it doesn’t show up on the ROI balance sheet, maybe you need to rethink how you measure success. As previously mentioned, not all results can be reduced to a number on a ledger sheet, but that doesn’t make them any less important. This can be especially useful during a crisis. By building your PR ROI program into your organization’s crisis communications plan (you DO have a crisis communications, right?!), you’ll have the tools in place to monitor, measure and analyze quickly enough to adjust your strategy “on the fly.” Click here to watch Critical Mention’s Crisis Preparedness Video


ROI of PR

07 PR Plan: Be Prepared

March 2016 ROI of PR

08 Contact Information

www.criticalmention.com 212.398.1141 @criticalmention [email protected]

Upstream Analysis Janet Harris President www.upstreamanalysis.com 202.291.5876 @thinkupstream [email protected]
