Managing and Evaluating Your Public Relations

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Managing and Evaluating Your Public Relations
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This can sound like a daunting task, but try not to let it intimidate you.

The best thing to remember is that managing and evaluating your PR is an essential aspect to making it work and work effectively. In the past, advertisers evaluated the success of their advertising and PR investments by simply counting the number of media mentions or clips that were published on the company. With so much more going into PR efforts than simply wooing the media, there need to be some new ways to measure your PR ROI (Return on Investment).

Being able to measure your PR's success and the ROI it may generate is really dependent on the goals you and your company set for the PR plans in place. Once you've established goals you can more easily measure the success of your PR efforts. Evaluating the ROI can be very difficult and is often times measured in intangible characteristics like rapport, brand awareness, reputation, and loyalty.

Though it can be tricky to do, here are a few general ways to measure your PR ROI:

Measure effects. This can be done though monitoring WOM (word of mouth) online, or watching sales after a press release is sent out. Though measuring the effects of PR can be a bit difficult (and somewhat hard to attribute sales to a PR tactic) you can tell if there is more being said about you and your company, and whether or not your site is getting traffic. ( For more tips on measuring social media, click here. )
Measure your press coverage. While I mentioned above that this was a way to measure ROI "back-when", this is still a great tool to evaluate your work; are press outlets picking up your news? Are you press releases being published? Are influential bloggers writing about you? If so, I'd say your PR efforts are paying off. Keep in mind that if you don't make it to Business Week or the Wall Street Journal, a lot of other publications featuring your stories can be just as influential in your success.
Measure the impact. There are two types of impact that PR efforts can have on a company. BackBone, Inc. explain this perfectly:

Short-term
• Calls/e-mail: How many calls or e-mails have resulted from your specific PR initiative?

• Web site visits: An article appears in a prominent trade journal and lists your URL, but the question is, how many have visited your Web site as a result?

Long-term
Reputation, brand equity, market leadership…these are all critical measures of PR success. But it takes time to move the needle…it’s less about acceleration and more about gradual momentum. Indeed, it may take a year or more before you make discernable progress in burnishing your reputation, building your brand, and asserting market leadership. The best way of measuring success is by querying industry analysts and conducting surveys of customers and prospects.

Though a lot of the above can be a result of simply being a great company who provides amazing content, service, or products, there are some things in your business that need some pushing and assistance to get noticed, like the new board member or CEO. Also realize that PR and publicity will only get your company so much fame. That fame, recognition, and "mind share'" need to be reinforced with advertising.

Keep an eye on your PR plan, and keep it relevant; once you've put your PR plan into motion, it needs to be watched to ensure that it is still working and not working against your company. If the plan is no longer effective, revamp it and implement a new plan.