Our Latest News
21-09-2009
How do you demonstrate return on your investment in PR?
Studies have shown that many PR practitioners are still not evaluating the work they do on a daily basis with clients. The reasons given include lack of time, lack of budget, lack of personnel, lack of knowledge and fear that the results won’t stack up and PR practitioners won’t be able to justify the fees they are charging.
However, the biggest reason seems to be clients are simply not interested. This is despite a 2001 study of UK marketing directors by Test Research which found that only 28% were satisfied with their public relations evaluation, compared with 67% for advertising and 68% for sales promotion.
As a client, you are investing large sums of money in the promises of your PR consultancy. What good are these promises if you don’t have a way of measuring the results throughout the campaign?
So, what questions do you need to be asking your PR consultancy?
How are you going to demonstrate a return on my investment – not just an opportunity cost of how much I could have spent on other techniques?
How are you going to show me that your work has changed people’s attitudes and behaviours – not just how many people have had the opportunity to see your work?
It is not just down to your PR consultancy. You have to make an investment in terms of time and budget in the objective-setting and ongoing evaluation processes. If you aren’t willing to invest in your results then those results might not meet your expectations.
It’s all a little doom and gloom – you might be thinking that evaluation is going to cost you more than you wanted to spend on PR in the first place. And yes, there are useful options – such as IPSOS MORI surveys and face-to-face primary research – which can cost a scary amount. But, there are other options.
Campaigns can be measured by increases in queries, visits to a particular website, calls to a particular phone number. This is especially valuable when you view it in terms of the different activity which takes place ie the website traffic shoots up the day a feature appears in The Telegraph. Membership and recruitment figures as well as sales can be tracked before and after the campaign to see what difference is made by activities.
There are many options out there so don’t be dazzled. Keep it simple; when choosing a PR consultancy to take your campaign forward make sure they can tell you from the outset how they are going to measure results and demonstrate a return on your investment.
However, the biggest reason seems to be clients are simply not interested. This is despite a 2001 study of UK marketing directors by Test Research which found that only 28% were satisfied with their public relations evaluation, compared with 67% for advertising and 68% for sales promotion.
As a client, you are investing large sums of money in the promises of your PR consultancy. What good are these promises if you don’t have a way of measuring the results throughout the campaign?
So, what questions do you need to be asking your PR consultancy?
How are you going to demonstrate a return on my investment – not just an opportunity cost of how much I could have spent on other techniques?
How are you going to show me that your work has changed people’s attitudes and behaviours – not just how many people have had the opportunity to see your work?
It is not just down to your PR consultancy. You have to make an investment in terms of time and budget in the objective-setting and ongoing evaluation processes. If you aren’t willing to invest in your results then those results might not meet your expectations.
It’s all a little doom and gloom – you might be thinking that evaluation is going to cost you more than you wanted to spend on PR in the first place. And yes, there are useful options – such as IPSOS MORI surveys and face-to-face primary research – which can cost a scary amount. But, there are other options.
Campaigns can be measured by increases in queries, visits to a particular website, calls to a particular phone number. This is especially valuable when you view it in terms of the different activity which takes place ie the website traffic shoots up the day a feature appears in The Telegraph. Membership and recruitment figures as well as sales can be tracked before and after the campaign to see what difference is made by activities.
There are many options out there so don’t be dazzled. Keep it simple; when choosing a PR consultancy to take your campaign forward make sure they can tell you from the outset how they are going to measure results and demonstrate a return on your investment.
More News Articles
Next >>