Why and how to measure your PR efforts
Setting metrics and gauging success require almost as much creative thinking as the campaigns themselves. Try these approaches to gauge where you are and to chart your path forward.
Every field needs metrics; PR simply requires a distinct approach to its particular benchmarks.
To measure PR, you must go into your Google Analytics account, your CRM and your marketing automation tools. You must also set up reports to track metrics.
First and foremost, you should set up benchmarks to provide context for those metrics and measure PR effectively. Benchmarks are essential to:
You cannot know where you’re going until you know where you’re starting, and benchmarks identify those starting points. It’s not overly complex; you can keep your PR benchmarks simple.
Here’s an example: In 2010, we hired a marketing resident to help us expand our blog. We had zero idea what kind of growth to expect because we hadn’t tracked anything yet.
We set goals and got to work. This is what they looked like:
There are two things wrong with those benchmarks:
They gave us a starting point, though, helping us to set goals for 75 days and get to work.
Become a Ragan Insider member to read this article and all other archived content.
Sign up today
Already a member? Log in here.
Learn more about Ragan Insider.
