Measuring Public Relations for Consumer Brands

As you start to consider the impact of PR on your consumer brand, it’s easy to look at its value through a traditional marketing or advertising lens. Granted, paid media may be easier to track and measure regarding ROI, but that doesn’t negate the significance of consumer PR and its ability to expose your business to powerful publicity.

However, as with all investments, to warrant additional spend towards a PR budget, you need to look at the quantifiable metrics and outcomes of working with a top-rated PR firm.

So, how can you measure PR and its effectiveness and what do consumer brands need to know about measuring public relations for consumer brands?

The importance of intentional investment

How you measure PR is intricately linked to your business outcome goals and how well your PR firm understands them. Expert PR firms show you how specific outcomes align with your goals and objectives.

Measuring public relations for consumer brands is about knowing where you want to end up. When it comes to gauging whether or not your consumer brand will benefit from hiring a PR firm, it’s essential first to understand that you may need to alter your ‘measuring stick’ used for calculating earned media value because your value depends on your specific outcomes. For example, a brand that wants to be acquired differs from a startup brand. Each growth phase is important, and PR’s role in each is valuable, but exactly HOW valuable depends on the importance of the goal. In other words, although businesses can track their earned media value, there is no set rule on how to effectively measure it as with paid performance measures.

That said, the reality is paid media offers satisfying dashboards and stats like click-thru rates, but it doesn’t tell you what’s holding back your consumer brand from going further; how could the advertising be more effective? How could you product be more beloved? That’s PR’s job, and that’s why it’s important to have both paid and earned media strategies.

However, a few best practices can help increase the impact, reach, and overall effectiveness of earned media.

Some value will depend on the media coverage your brand gets and by whom; placement in a national publication your customers read is far more valuable than a national publication your customers don’t read. There’s more to it, though; is it newsworthy and shareable? Do you share the article with competitors? Where in the article does your brand appear? Is it written by an authoritative lens or a credible industry thought leader? How can you use the final piece in your marketing? These questions need to be answered before effectively measuring your PR.

Ultimately, working with a top PR firm will allow you to develop the required baselines and KPIs for your unique goals so you can see the impact on your bottom line.

Through this collaborative approach, PR professionals can better create a strategy for effective and long-lasting success, communicating the ways to track revenue increases from PR outcomes with you in a way that’s clear and confident.

For example, if your goals are more sales-orientated, your PR strategy may be based on seasonality or product launches. If your objective is to build brand awareness, the focus of your PR strategy may be to gain exposure through thoughtfully crafted press releases. The outcomes could then include anything from a merger/acquisition, an IPO, or venture funding.

That’s where we come in.

At Avaans, we use emerging trends, hard data, and emotional intelligence to create compelling consumer PR campaigns for brands.

Our PR sprint program is all about fast-moving tactics and fast results, specifically for consumer brands who want product-focused PR. Contact us today; we’re consumer PR experts, and let’s talk about goals, metrics, and media coverage.