Public relations activities like media relations, social media marketing, event management and thought leadership are crucial for building brand awareness and affinity. However, the impact of PR efforts is often hard to quantify compared to other marketing channels like paid advertising. 

How can you accurately measure the results and effectiveness of your PR campaigns? What metrics should you track to determine your return on investment? 

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the best practices for PR measurement and analytics. We’ll cover key quantitative and qualitative metrics to gauge performance, demonstrate PR’s business impact, and continuously improve your strategy. 

With the right approach to measurement and reporting, you can get executive and stakeholder buy-in for your PR programs and budgets. Let’s get started.

Setting PR Goals That Align With Business Objectives   

The first step in measuring PR success is defining your goals and desired outcomes upfront. Effective PR measurement starts with setting SMART objectives that directly align with your brand’s overall business goals.

Your PR goals should answer questions like:

• How will your PR efforts support sales and revenue targets?  
• How will you expand reach and share of voice in target media outlets and audiences?
• How will you boost brand awareness or affinity metrics?
• What types of leads will your PR generate and nurture?
• What is the role of PR in influencing audience behaviors or perceptions?

This ensures your PR program focuses on high-impact activities and measurable results tied to broader business success.

You should have specific numeric objectives for outputs like impressions, website visitors, and media mentions. But don’t forget about larger impact goals related to brand equity, thought leadership, audience behaviors, and potential sales opportunities.

It’s easier to track the effectiveness of PR efforts when you have clarity on intended outcomes from the start. Then you can identify relevant metrics to benchmark progress towards each particular goal.  

Quantitative Metrics to Measure PR Results

Let’s explore some of the key quantitative metrics you should track to monitor the tangible results of your PR activities.

Media Reach and Impressions

• Total media placements (online, print, broadcast etc.)
• Impressions – The potential number of people exposed to your coverage 
• Audience reach – The number and attributes of people seeing your messages 
• Share of voice – Your percentage of the conversation in your industry and niche

Media monitoring tools can track your media mentions, outlets, impression estimates, and share of voice vs competitors. This shows the volume of coverage you’re generating.

Aim for consistent reach and impression growth month-over-month. Pay attention to high-authority publications and multimedia exposures that align with your audience’s media consumption habits.

Website Traffic  

• Total site visits driven by PR activities 
• Pages per visit, time on site, and bounce rates
• Traffic from social media referrals 

Use UTM tracking codes and website analytics platforms to monitor how much traffic comes from press releases, media links, social shares, and branded anchor text. 

Prioritize high-quality traffic that indicates genuine user interest – not just bots or fleeting visitors. Traffic spikes may warrant recap press releases or social promotion to extend coverage momentum.

Sales and Leads

• Form fillouts, downloads, signups from PR channels
• New customer acquisition and sales influenced by PR  
• Email opens, clickthroughs, and contacts from PR nurturing 

Many companies don’t directly correlate PR efforts to revenue impact – but you should! Use promo codes, UTM parameters, and call tracking to identify sales driven by specific PR campaigns. 

Nurture press release signups through dedicated email journeys. Look for increases in quality leads, pipeline opportunities, and closed deals after major announcements and launches.

Share of Voice  

– Your % of the conversation volume in your niche

– Brand mentions vs competitors over time  

– Share of positive, negative, neutral sentiment

While you want to boost total media volume and reach, share of voice indicates how well you stack up against competitors vying for attention. Maintain steady or increasing share of voice in your core topics and keywords. 

Task PR teams with monitoring key competitors and industry conversations. Outperform them on media placements, social volume, and positive sentiment.

Qualitative Metrics to Measure PR Effectiveness

Now let’s explore qualitative measurements to gauge how well your PR resonates with target audiences and impacts brand perception.

Media Sentiment

– Positive, negative, neutral tones of coverage 

– Alignment with brand messaging and positioning  

– Feedback from individual journalists

The way media outlets portray your brand shapes audience perceptions. So classify articles and clips as positive, negative, or neutral. Identify themes and narratives that support your messaging pillars and angles.

Build relationships with journalists to get their candid feedback on pitches and interviews. Ask what types of stories and exclusives appeal to them and their readers.

Social Media Engagement 

– Shares, likes, comments, clicks on owned social channels

– User-generated content and reviews 

– Engagement analytics like buzz, virality, applause  

PR content and media pickups should drive organic amplification on social media. Monitor owned engagement across channels as well as comments, reviews, shares, and UGC.

Tools like BuzzSumo and Olapic provide expanded analytics on content performance. Prioritize engaging topics that get high online buzz and shares from real influencers.

Audience Surveys and Interviews

– Perception studies before and after PR campaigns  

– NPS, brand affinity, consideration metrics

– Interviews on messaging resonance, awareness 

Conduct surveys and interviews with target audiences to gauge shifts in brand awareness, affinity, and favorability linked to PR. 

Poll target demographics on whether your press releases and story angles align with their interests and preferences. This sentiment data fuels data-driven ideation of high-performing themes and narratives. 

Using Software to Track PR Metrics

Sophisticated PR tech stacks provide comprehensive analytics on media coverage, website traffic, leads, and social engagement. Here are some top tools to consider:

• Meltwater – Robust media monitoring, outreach, and PR reporting  
• Cision – Media database, distribution, and comprehensive PR analytics
• Trendkite – Automated PR measurement with dashboards and reporting
• BuzzSumo – Analyze social engagement and amplification of content
• Google Analytics – Website traffic insights and UTM tracking
• Mailchimp – Lead tracking and campaign performance for email press releases 

Look for platforms that integrate PR measurement across owned, earned, and social channels. Prioritize trends, top performing content, influencer engagement, and emerging opportunities in reports to guide strategy.

Train your PR team to use tools to their full potential. Create processes for analyzing results during and after campaigns to identify successes to double down on and areas for optimization. 

Tying PR Measurement to Business Impact  

The holy grail of PR analysis is quantifying how media coverage, social buzz, and brand sentiment translates into tangible business ROI – whether that’s leads, sales, lower CPLs, or higher customer retention. 

To connect the dots, track website actions and conversions driven by specific PR initiatives using UTMs and unique discounts or promo codes. Then actively monitor sales funnels and account data for increases following earned media spikes. 

Conduct multi-touch attribution to see how press mentions assist along the buyer’s journey, even if they don’t get the last click before conversion. Survey customers on whether news coverage or PR content directly influenced their awareness, consideration, or decision process.

Compare lead-to-customer conversion rates, deal sizes, and customer LTVs between PR-generated leads vs. other programs. These insights empower you to calculate the revenue value and ROI generated by your PR efforts.

When coupled with advertising and sales data, PR analytics paint a full picture of how earned media drives business growth across the funnel.

Continuous Improvement Through PR Analytics

The real goal of measurement isn’t just validating your efforts – it’s optimizing and improving based on data and insights. Use analytics to guide your PR strategy, messaging, and content.

Look for patterns between specific press releases, story angles, influencer engagement, and media pickups that drive measurable objectives like website traffic, conversions, and sales. Double down on those high-performing themes and outlets. 

Evaluate why some press releases gain no traction while others secure wide coverage. Refine distribution for higher relevance. Test various calls to action to improve conversion rates.

Analyze which journalists and influencers drive the most referral traffic and social shares. Nurture those relationships with tailored pitches and exclusives.

Essentially, let data steer your PR efforts towards what demonstrably works. Eliminate ineffective activities to focus time and resources on winning tactics. Then lather, rinse, and repeat!

Conclusion

Measuring public relations performance provides crucial insights to refine your strategy and optimize activities. But less than half of PR pros feel they effectively measure their impact and demonstrate ROI.

By establishing clear objectives, monitoring the right metrics across media, web, social, and sales channels, and relentlessly optimizing based on data, you can accurately quantify PR results and business impact.

This helps secure executive buy-in for your PR budgets and teams. More importantly, it ensures your earned media programs deliver significant value in fueling brand awareness, affinity, leads, and revenues.

What metrics and KPIs does your brand use to gauge PR effectiveness? What tools and processes help connect media coverage to business growth? Share your top measurement tips and practices below!