Let’s say you come up with a new food delicacy and prepare it for your family without noting specific ingredients used. If they enjoy it and want you to teach them how to prepare it, you won’t know how to repeat the same process.

However, if you knew each and every ingredient, you will be ready to take in feedback and draw conclusions on ways to repeat or improve the delicacy.

To be more certain about your PR plan as a PR Professional, you have to decide on what success is and how to quantify that success. Once you take action, you must measure to see how much success was achieved. You can then apply findings to inform subsequent actions. This action is called the PR Process.

ALIGN

Is the business concerned about how many pitches you put out, or how many people are converted to customers? Make sure you have a detailed grasp and understanding of the business goals (both short and long term) so you can make a positive impact with PR activities.

DEFINE                 

Sales may not be the only variable to measure success. Build a list of high value actions, or goal completions, including website visits, newsletter sign ups, demo requests, and more.

Anything that changes a person from “unknown prospect” to “potential customer” should be considered and assigned a value. Lastly, know how these actions are tracked, or put tracking in place.

For example, think of conversion as a change in status. When you browse Jumia, you’re a visitor. When you make a purchase, you have changed or have been converted into a customer.

OPERATE

Devise PR plans to pursue business goals using all the possible ways earned media can influence people to take valuable actions. Apply your skill in pitching the right stories to the right content creators to get publications of the highest value and relevance to your audiences.

AMPLIFY

Use PR plans to increase attention on the earned media you win. Share worthy articles on social platforms, and consider paid strategies to drive more traffic. Give new story angles or ideas to those who have written about you. Use the placements you have won to convince new content creators.

QUANTIFY

Assess outcomes according to well-defined success metrics. Communicate findings in a language executive understand and return on investment. Bear in mind that a more successful PR strategy can be derived from the data, whether positive or negative.

ANALYZE

To discover the impact of the results you achieved, investigate deeper. Why was a pitch used by one writer and ignored by another? What made a certain story successful and who found it attractive? Draw conclusions about what worked, what did not, and why. This will help you repeat the good ideas next time around the PR Intelligence loop.

Conclusion

The objective is to repeatedly drive the PR process, constantly measuring what is successful and use learnings to inform your next PR activity. You can also communicate PR value, showing clients value as you operate.

In the past, PR Managers might inform Senior Executives of progress on a quarterly or yearly basis. Nowadays, PR success can be measured, quantified and reported in a daily, weekly, and monthly. To measure PR success, you need to know and track metrics that matter.

Francis Tawiah

Account Manager, Public Relations

Global Media Alliance

LinkedIn: Francis Tawiah