When working in the PR industry, it is very important to meet your goals established at the beginning of each campaign. This is why it is crucial to understand PR measurement. Basically, measurement ‘evaluates the effectiveness of messaging and provides a way to show whether PR is reaching objectives.’ In fact, it is one of the most important parts of the PR plan. In general, there are three main parts concerning PR measurement:
-Assessment of the objectives
-Agreed PRIOR to campaign
-Adds to the bottom line
-Sets benchmarks
So, how then is PR measured? There are three levels: basic (measures production), intermediate (measures exposure), and advanced (measures attitudes/change). There are many ways in which one can measure PR effectiveness, namely press clippings, impressions, web hits, advertising equivalency (although this method is very unreliable, and seldom used), Information requests, attendance, etc.
Obviously, the first two levels of PR measurement are relatively easy to achieve, but attempting to get an accurate measurement of attitude and change is very difficult. How can we really know if someone’s attitudes have -actually- changed?
Thankfully, there are many online resources that I have found to help. For example, , a blog about PR measurement from the KD Paine PR firm. as well as the following YouTube video both clearly explain PR measurement:
All in all, measuring the effectiveness of your PR campaigns is a vital part of the process, and should not be taken for granted. But which ways do I think are effective? I think that none of the ways of measuring PR are foolproof. How can a person really know if someone who came across your website (website hits) really got something out of it. Just because someone attended your event does not mean their attitudes changed.
What are your opinions?
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