As you start a communications campaign you may be wondering how you track your results. How do you quantify if your outreach efforts are resonating with their intended audience? Are you moving the needle, or do you need to adjust your strategy?
PR agencies use a variety of analytics to see how campaigns are resonating. Below we examine what they evaluate to see if a campaign is achieving the ideal results.
Media Mentions
One of the most straightforward ways to see if your PR efforts are working is to see if there is an increase in media mentions. Media mentions are news stories your company is mentioned in. What was the number of media mentions before your campaign and what are they now? If you see an increase in coverage because of your recent outreach, then you know your campaign is gaining traction.
According to the Forbes Communication Council, there are a variety of ways to track press coverage. From paying for media monitoring services to setting up Google Alerts, its easy to monitor press coverage your brand is mentioned in.
Reach and Impressions
Another way to monitor results of a campaign is to look at the reach and impressions. Reach and impressions are how many people viewed your marketing efforts. After determining which platform will reach your target audience, monitor the results of that platform.
If you are posting on social media, you can see how many people interacted with your post and how many people saw it. If you are looking at earned press coverage, you can look at the website traffic or circulation of the outlet. Tracking reach and impressions is a great way to show the impact of your communications outreach.
Sentiment
Sentiment, which is the reaction of an audience, is a critical tool in evaluating the success of a campaign. While, according to Institute of Public Relations, sentiment is not 100% accurate since it involves AI which needs to learn over a period of time, it is a good indicator of if your campaign is resonating with your key audience. If sentiment is negative or neutral, you may want to consider modifying your language and tactics to achieve desired results.
Lead Generation
Finally, a great tool to see if your campaign is working is lead generation. Lead generation is potential sales or leads on potential sales because of your communication efforts. Lead generation can come in a variety of ways, from responses to Facebook ads to customers directly calling clients as a result of an earned media placement. Make sure and capture these leads as it can directly show positive results from your campaign.
As you look at ways to quantify results from your campaign, please consider the above tactics. To learn about our measurement capabilities, email info@marketingmaven.com.
