Assessing a PR campaign’s effectiveness

Everybody wants effective PR, but few strive to learn how to measure the effectiveness of their own communication.  On the one hand, I can understand it—analytics is not everyone’s cup of tea. On the other hand, you must be skilled at measuring effectiveness if you want to have a clear answer when the CEO asks: ‘What is the use of your work?’

In this article, I will share with you my communication assessment experience and a report writing scheme. Follow these steps:

SLIDE ONE: GENERAL INFORMATION

Collect the input information, such as:

• Business goal

• Communication tasks

• Target audiences

• Period

SLIDE TWO: STATISTICS

This is about numbers and statistical data. Group all activities as follows:

Paid activities

Free activities

Partner activities

Own activities

Once again, this slide should contain only numbers. A pie chart can serve as an example: 124 paid publications, 365 free publications (including those republished in the media), 23 partner publications, and 98 of your own (including those on your social media and websites). You can usually check this data in monitoring.

This slide will also contain a table calculating the cost of reaching your user. Use this formula: communication budget divided by the coverage of paid communication equals the cost of one view.

SLIDE THREE: ACTIVITIES

This is a slide for all activities that took place during the information campaign, including offline activities.

SLIDE FOUR: ENGAGEMENT AND REACTIONS

How your target audiences react to your messages. For example, when identifying your target audiences, you chose the National Bank, economic experts, and financial analysts. 

Did your communication prompt actions from these particular target audiences? If so, how exactly? What were these actions specifically? Through which channels did you manage to engage them and what were their reactions? Was it public support or not?

SLIDE FIVE: ADVOCACY

This slide is dedicated to advocacy and PR results. Who among your target audiences came to your support after the communication campaign and how? How did you meet your communication objectives?

THE FINAL SLIDE: IMPACT ON THE ORGANIZATION

Quantitative indicators show whether the communication impact helped a business save or make money. A business or state institution reaching an understanding with the target audience and having its support is an example of a qualitative indicator.

FOR CEOS AND CROS: FIVE STEPS TO CHECK THE COMMUNICATION CAMPAIGN EFFECTIVENESS

1. Reports must contain a combination of qualitative and quantitative indicators. Quantitative indicators are numbers, per cent, etc. Qualitative indicators can be represented as information from focus groups or any other type of feedback.

2. Insist on using benchmarks or baseline indicators against which you can set your goal and measure progress. Rather than looking solely at the numbers in your reports, you should consider the context, too.

3. High-quality feedback from internal or external stakeholders may help add context to your numbers.

4. Insist on determining the impact of communication activities on your company whenever possible.

5. Make sure that the data obtained from the assessment is used for planning further actions.