This two part series details the best metrics for measuring PR campaign efforts and provides useful tips on the best ways to frame your campaigns to better align with your company’s goals.
Be a Business Partner, not a PR Person
The hallmark of a leader is strategic, visionary thinking and planning. To measure the success of any communication campaign, you must include measurable goals when you create the campaign. To do that, ask these questions before you create your campaign’s strategy:
How does this connect to our overall goals?
What value will the business gain if this succeeds?
How do we measure results?
If you can determine an exact connection between the end goal of the campaign and the end goal of the business, it will better align the steps you take within the campaign.
Leaders also think holistically, encouraging the various departments and function in their companies to work together. As a communicator, you can adopt leadership thinking by collaborating with your peers in the marketing function.. You’ll be part of a great trend - a Global Communications report from 2017 stated that 47 percent of in-house PR professionals believe their PR team will become more closely aligned with marketing in the future.
Executives don’t want to see a win for PR, they want a win for the company. To get support for your integrated communication programs, you must show how the campaign will positively affect the organization. Engage the leaders of your organization by explaining your strategy at a high level, then giving them an idea of the timeline, budget, who’s in charge and a few specific tactical milestones. Give leaders roles in your campaign as they make sense – involvement breeds engagement, which breeds positive buy-in!
Andrew Bowins, Executive Director for Corporate Reputation and Digital Engagement at KPMG says “Don’t speak about PR metrics. Shift the conversation toward business discussions and insights and have the data to back your counsel. Insight is the new currency and the key to the C-Suite.”
The funnel chart is a good way to understand the impacts of a campaign to narrow down the direct advantages it will have on a business. It begins with brand impact, then moves into digital impact, and ends with bottom-line impact. This funnel is an easy way to measure progress within a campaign and is a useful tool when giving updates to leadership.
