Reach and conversion are among the vital metrics of PR that need regular tracking. Tracking reach has the benefit of providing insight into how PR is helping top level brand awareness. Conversions enable businesses to become aware of the number and frequency of visitors converting into desired actions such as sales.
Measuring the Value of PR
It is important for PR professionals to be able to measure the value of their work. PR is an essential aspect of business and a worthwhile investment for any organization. With the ongoing rise of social media popularity, PR has an important role to play. It encourages businesses to listen to their customers and address their needs.
Through social media, PR practitioners can carry out polls, find out what their customers want and determine whether they are headed in the right direction or not. This simplifies the process of measuring results because businesses can get direct feedback from their target audience.
Effective Communication
Effective communication is vital for both growing and established brands. When results can be reported in a credible way, it helps to strengthen the value of PR. PR measurement has developed over time as solutions are sought for the purpose of assessing social media and ROI.
Reach or Conversions?
Determining whether PR should focus on reach or conversions ultimately depends on what the company’s goals are. Both metrics are important because they help to gauge the effectiveness of PR activity and its overall impact on business profits.
Reach
Reach tracks the rate at which a particular audience grows. The inclusion of reach metrics is useful for gathering data connected with the overall awareness of a business. In the past, reach metrics were not as clear and people had to rely on estimates of circulation or subscription numbers. Today technology allows for reach to be measured much more accurately over the internet and social media. There are a variety of social media listening tools that can help firms identify brand reach on platforms such as Twitter or Facebook.
Knowing how fast your audience is growing is an important indication of the impact that your social media makes. This enables you to evaluate PR activity over time without depending on information such as how many followers you have.
Conversions
While being able to attract visitors to your site and keeping them coming back is beneficial, you need goals that guide how they will perform desired actions. An online visitor converting into actual sales is crucial, but how you handle social media can easily drive your audience away.
This is why implementing public relations is important because it prevents situations where you push a service or product in a way that is deemed offensive or intrusive. Define your conversion goals and keep up with your visitors on social media platforms while tracking conversions as time goes on.
- The way you communicate and the information you provide can help you build relationships and make sales. Proper implementation of PR increases the possibility of generating interest among potential customers who will return to your site.
- With tools such as Google Analytics in place, it has become much easier to keep track of conversions and goals by using the software. Goals vary from aspects such as the number of people who remain on the site for specified amounts of time to the number of pages viewed.
- Key conversions are often correlated to sales and online transactions. Proper tracking of such metrics makes it possible to gain a better understanding of how PR activity influences traffic and where it comes from. It makes it possible to evaluate what is working and where improvements are necessary.
- Goals and conversions are important for establishing the profitability of online searches and social media.
Importance of PR
PR involves interacting with your target audience and establishing useful relationships. It provides access to important information that a company can use for evaluation and action. Measuring the impact of public relations is therefore critical in figuring out how to best grow top level awareness and conversions for the business.
When you gather the information and statistics that you need, you can analyze the results of your PR activity effectively. This shows you what is working and what has not worked. PR professionals need to consider using data tools for effective measuring.
Capturing & Sharing PR Metrics
There are a variety of ways to track PR metrics such as spend, volume of releases, reach and conversions. Some prefer to use more traditional methods such as sharing Word docs or Excel files. Others use specific PR analytics tools such as PanXpan’s public relations analysis module. Whichever tools you currently use, make sure you’ve identified the metrics you want to track and use as your guide in optimizing activities. Having others on your team on board with the metrics and giving them access to the data so they can run their own analysis is also key.
As content marketing rises in popularity, the number of opportunities for PR practitioners has subsequently increased. The reality however is still that PR needs to be measurable and accountability stems from being able to track PR metrics such as reach and conversions to achieve the desired outcome.