What do you get for your marketing $$$: Measuring public relations results

Imagine you’re looking through publications or websites. In one place you see an ad for a product. In another you see a feature article reviewing that same product. Which is more believable to you? Chances are it’s the article. Behold the power of PR!

Have you added marketing public relations to your communications mix? It’s an economical way to get visibility, and it's great for building credibility and generating inquiries.  Notice that awareness building isn’t on the list. That’s because with PR you have less control over where or when your news is published.

With a consistent public relations program in place you can measure results by:

1) Tracking coverage. Review relevant publications for coverage and set up Goggle alerts so you catch online pick-up. Keep a spreadsheet record of what runs, where it runs, type of coverage and size, publication/website readership. This is a raw measure of your program’s impact.

2) Calculating the value of coverage. Use the cost of equivalent advertising space in the same publication to assess the dollar value of editorial coverage. Compare this equivalent value to the total cost of your PR program.Online pick-up is harder to value so you may need to look at relevance of the vehicle and size of the audience.

3) Calculating cost per inquiry. Keep track of how many inquiries your PR efforts generate. Divide the total by PR program costs to come up with the cost per inquiry.