Do you measure the results of your PR campaigns? If yes, then congrats, you’re one of the few! According to Buffer, 82% of PR pros don’t know how to evaluate the ROI of their PR campaign. This article will help you determine how to measure the results of a PR campaign.
The term “measure PR” refers to the process of evaluating the impact and efficiency of public relations efforts. Measuring PR actions requires proper planning, understanding the metrics you should pay attention to, and using the right assessment tools. The goal is to measure how your PR efforts support improving your brand awareness & reputation and how they are enhancing your reach.
This blog post has everything you need to know about PR metrics and measurement. The text will answer both basic and more advanced questions – starting with why you should measure the results of a PR campaign and ending with which PR metrics you should follow and why.
The question is justified – before any company invests in a PR campaign, they have to estimate a ROI. They have to answer the question — what is the monetary value of public relations? How will measuring PR translate into business results? Are PR efforts worth the effort?
Back in the day, it was easy to assess the value of media coverage coming from traditional media. PR professionals determined campaign success by measuring the number of press clippings. The PR metrics one had to track were relatively easy to follow.
Digital marketing and PR help spread brand awareness and increase the reach of your PR messages and media impressions. However, digitalization has brought new challenges that PR experts have to cope with. How should they measure the results of their PR campaign? Which metrics and KPIs should they follow to get actionable insights? What is the impact of their work?
You crafted the perfect pitch, scored media coverage, and amplified your message But now it’s time for the big question – how do you measure the success of a PR campaign?
Evaluating results and ROI is key to quantifying your efforts. But with so many potential metrics to track it can get confusing.
Not to worry! In this guide, we’ll break down the 14 most important PR analytics to guide your measurement strategy. Read on to learn how to capture meaningful data and calculate your success.
Why Measuring PR Matters
PR teams often track vanity metrics like clip counts rather than business impact. But focusing on numbers that matter is the only way to understand your true ROI.
Here are some key reasons to prioritize measurement:
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Justify Spending: Prove the value of PR using concrete metrics tied to business goals.
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Spot Trends: Identify successes to repeat and shortcomings to improve.
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Refine Strategies: Quantify results to double down on what works and eliminate what doesn’t.
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Show Credibility: Valid metrics demonstrate expertise and underscore trustworthiness.
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Earn Respect: Measurement shows the c-suite you operate strategically, not just creatively.
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Guide Budgets: Numerical outcomes help secure adequate resources from company leaders.
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Boost Team Morale: Progress against benchmarks motivates and focuses your department.
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** Inspire Innovation:** Metrics reveal opportunities for new avenues to explore.
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Advance Careers: Documenting contributions prepares PR pros for leadership roles.
Don’t leave the impact of your genius ideas to chance. Proactively quantifying results guarantees insights to perfect future success.
14 Key Ways to Measure Public Relations Effectiveness
Now let’s explore the top 14 metrics to track and analyze for optimal PR measurement.
1. Press Clippings
Counting press clips provides a baseline indication of media coverage. Tally:
- Total number of stories
- Breakdown by media type and tier
- Share of voice vs. competitors
- Geographic spread
While not the most meaningful metric, clip quantity sets the stage to calculate other metrics using the content.
2. Media Impressions
Impressions reveal your potential audience reach by tallying:
- Circulation for print outlets
- Unique visitors for online articles
- Listeners/viewers for broadcast
Multiplying impressions quantifies possible exposures based on media placements. High numbers suggest broader message dissemination.
3. Content Analysis
Evaluate article content itself using:
- Sentiment tracking (positive/negative)
- Message pull-through rate
- Keyword mentions
- Highlighted facts, quotes, or visuals
- Call-to-action usage
This qualitative assessment reveals how well coverage aligned with pitch angles and communicated intended messaging.
4. Website Traffic
Media coverage should drive consumers to your online properties. Track:
- Total site visits and page views
- Traffic sources and attribution
- New vs. returning visitors
- Location of visitors
- Pages visited
Spikes following earned media hits indicate you’re attracting the right eyeballs. Sync PR and web analytics for data integration.
5. Lead Sourcing
Ultimately, PR aims to generate actionable leads. Monitor:
- Form fills and downloads
- Email signups
-Requests for demos/trials - Purchases and sales
- Requested contacts
Strong lead flow suggests your content is persuading audiences to engage further.
6. Market Surveys
Polls determine whether your messaging reached and resonated with buyers. Ask:
- How familiar are you with our brand?
- What words do you associate with our company?
- How did you discover our brand?
Results will reveal brand lift and perception shifts from PR activities.
7. Social Media Mentions
PR sparks chatter on social media. Track:
- Brand name mentions
- Hashtag volume
- Share of voice
- Sentiment
- Engagement
Increased brand talk, especially with positive commentary, implies you’reearning interest. Integrate social listening.
8. Sales Impact
At the end of the day, PR must influence revenue. Calculate:
- Web traffic from media → leads → customers
- Sales influenced by lead source
- Changes in purchase intent
- Win rate for new deals
- Lowered customer acquisition costs
Hard sales metrics prove that PR helped drive measurable financial results.
9. Share Price
For publicly traded companies, share price offers an indirect measure. Note:
- Price fluctuations around news announcements
- Comparison to competitors’ performance
- Correlations between media hits and stock jumps
There are many factors at play, but PR can potentially move the market.
10. Talent Acquisition
PR enhances employer brand awareness. Quantify:
- Job page traffic bumps
- Job application increases
- Referral submission growth
- Cost per applicant decline
- Candidate quality improvements
Surges signal you’re reaching and interesting high-caliber talent.
11. Event Engagement
Promoting events through PR expands attendance. See:
- Event registration influenced by PR
- Increased booth traffic
- Higher event app downloads
- Social media buzz during conferences
ROI comes from driving more qualified audiences to experience your brand live.
12. Community Relations
PR aimed at local communities bears fruit. Evaluate:
- Increased brand favorability
- Local partnership opportunities
- Participation in sponsored initiatives
- Positive commentary on social media
- Unpaid media opportunities
Metrics prove PR helps ingrain your brand as a supportive community member.
13. Issue Mitigation
PR plays a key role in reputation management during scandals and crises. Track metrics like:
- Shorter period of negative publicity
- Reduced financial impact/losses
- Faster message control and response
- Lower flood of complaints and backlash
- Quicker recovery of brand sentiment
The impact of PR is clear when it contains damage during turmoil.
14. Campaign ROI
The magic metric—overall return on PR investment. Calculate:
(Value of outcomes like sales) – (Cost of PR program)
/
(Cost of PR program)
This quantifies your overall payoff to present the bottom line.
Tips for Tracking and Demonstrating Success
With the right metrics fueling your analysis, you can unlock game-changing insights. Here are tips to effectively track data:
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Choose metrics that directly tie to business and campaign goals. Avoid vanity stats lacking strategic value.
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Make metrics measurable by selecting quantifiable indicators with available data sources.
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Set benchmarks for success aligned with broader organizational targets.
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Use multiple metrics for a balanced, well-rounded view of performance rather than a single KPI.
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Integrate analytics across platforms like social media, web, sales, and media monitoring.
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Visualize data in graphs, charts, and dashboards for easy digestion.
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Track longitudinally to spot trends and patterns over time periods.
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Segment data by campaign, media outlet, geography or other cuts for deeper analysis.
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Avoid data overwhelm by isolating the metrics most critical for each program.
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Share results across the organization and celebrate wins!
With smart, strategic measurement powering your PR strategy, you’ll unlock valuable insights to drive continual optimization. Demonstrating clear ROI gains respect for public relations and fuels future success.
Let us know if you have any other questions! We’re always happy to chat PR measurement and help show the value of your team’s outstanding efforts.
How to measure PR campaign?
To correctly measure PR, you need a media monitoring tool. A tool like that will help you closely follow important KPIs and assess the impact of PR on your business. Measuring your campaign success without media monitoring tool would be a cumbersome and time-consuming task.
The more advanced metrics, for example, sentiment analysis, media impressions, reach, or the share of voice are based on results from Brand24, a media monitoring tool.
How does Brand24 work? Brand monitoring tools track all publicly available mentions and analyse the data. With the help of a brand monitoring tool you can measure paid and earned media.
Use the best PR measurement tool!
First, you have to set up a project and choose the terms you’d like to monitor. Once you’ve chosen the keywords (think about company hashtags, campaign-specific hashtags, or terms related to the industry you’re interested in), you are ready to measure the PR campaign.
But tools aren’t everything when it comes to PR success. If you want to have a substantial impact on your company’s bottom line, you need to prepare to run and measure the results of your work.
The first step to a successful PR campaign is planning.
Without clearly defined, measurable goals, you won’t be able to assess your PR campaign and improve your communications and business goals.
Once you know what you want to achieve, you could prepare a PR strategy to achieve your goals.
Do you want to raise brand awareness? Spark interest in new products? Make your audience undertake a specific action? Check the sentiment around your new service or product? Assess the success of a campaign?
Before you start your PR activities, invest your time in setting your goals.
Remember to set up all the tools you’re going to use in advance, even if that’s just an Excel spreadsheet.
First of all, you will minimise the risk of failure. Imagine coming up with a great PR campaign that won’t be measured because the tool wasn’t working. Even so reliable tools as Google Analytics can fail you. Ouch.
The second thing you have to take into account is that not all tools provide historical data at a reasonable price.
From my experience, it’s better to have everything tested before the start of a campaign. The “better safe than sorry” rule applies to measuring PR campaigns as well.
Track your PR campaign easily with Brand24!
Earned media value
When it comes to PR success, advertising can have as big impact as word of mouth or news story.
Nowadays, earned media is one of the most important metric for PR pros. Earned media will tell you how much money you would have to spend to achieve similar exposition via advertising.
Earned media will show the impact and effectiveness of your work. It’s a KPI that shows a direct correlation between your work and the money that your client or company saves.
Even though more and more PR campaigns take place on different social media channels, your website is still an important platform for PR outreach.
Log in to Google Analytics and take a closer look at your site traffic analytics.
Are there any spikes in the number of leads that reacted to your call to action from your website?
When analysing your website performance, take a closer look at qualified leads and referrals.
Qualified leads are unique visitors who looked you up in search engines, and, from there, found your website.
A referral heard about you from someone else and they are interested in your product, service, or message.
You have to know where your potential buyers come from. The easiest way to track the user path in GA to use trackable links – for example GA Link Builder.
Another interesting metric you’ll find in GA is the bounce rate. The bounce rate tells you how many people have left your website after viewing just one site.
A high bounce rate is an indicator of bad outtakes of your PR campaign. Your audience might not be happy with the content of your website.
PR campaigns are not only focused on spreading the message to the wide audience. Sometimes, to achieve your goals, you have to reach a precisely targeted audience.
That’s where an email marketing comes to the rescue!
You’ve probably spend some time and a lot of effort on building the perfect media relations list.
Now, you have to check the metrics connected to your PR e-mail database!
How many e-mails with your message were open? How many responses did you receive? Can you track how many times your email has been forwarded?
To properly assess the results of your PR campaign, you have to take into account these metrics.
Measure PR with Brand24!
To successfully measure your public relations campaign, you need the right set of tools.
So what are the best Public Relations measurement tools on the market?
We have a list of PR tools that every PR manager should know.
But I advise you to take a closer look at the media monitoring tool and its possibilities. Why is it worth using such software?
I will answer this question by presenting Brand24. It’s a media monitoring tool that offers strong analytical and reporting features.
Brand24 offers many insights and features you can use in your everyday work as a PR professional.
You start with creating a project. Enter all the keywords you want to track across the Internet. Brand24 covers sources such as:
- social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Twitch
- blogs, forums, and review sites
- news sites
- podcasts
- newsletters
- other publicly available Web sources
But the PR tool offers much more than just mention collection. The social listening tool also offers a robust analytics section that includes:
- the volume of mentions
- sentiment analysis
- social and non-social reach
- social media interactions
- the most popular mentions
- top public profiles
You can get the most important information straight to your inbox via email notifications, Storm alerts, or in-app notifications.
Brand24 will help:
- measure the effectiveness of the PR program
- protect your brand reputation
- provide more engaging content to your audience
- track brand sentiment over time
- and much more!
Sharing the results of your work is a piece of cake. You can prepare a customizable PDF report that contains the most important metrics and insights that will show the results of your work.
Try the best PR measurement tool now!
How to measure PR Success.
How to measure the success of a PR campaign?
You can measure a PR campaign’s success by considering the number of new followers and average monthly post reach on your social media channels. The number of likes, retweets, and shares can help measure engagement after the campaign on social media channels. 3. Media content analysis
How do you measure PR success?
The ultimate goal of earned media is to get your brand’s story out, and land coverage in authoritative news outlets and websites to promote your brand. But measuring PR success is more than compiling links to news articles or screenshots of social media posts. How can you track whether your media relations strategy is successful?
Why should you measure PR success?
With the right success measurements, you can refine communication strategies and show exactly how much your PR effort contributes to overall brand success. By measuring PR campaign effectiveness, you can use data-driven insights to create even better campaigns and show clients proof of your hard work and its results.
How can a PR measurement tool help your business?
Using a tool for PR measurement that gives you an in-depth analysis allows you to not just quantify the impact of your campaign, but helps you prove your return on investment (ROI) and justify the success of your campaigns. One sure-fire way to do this successfully, is to implement reports.
