Most marketing leaders understand public relations ROI and the importance of investing in brand awareness and its critical interrelationship with demand generation. The more prospective buyers that are aware of your company and its products, the more inbound leads you will get. And the more inbound leads you get – the less time, money, and resource you will need to invest in generating outbound leads.
While CMOs and Marketing VPs may get it, many CEOs and board members that are less familiar with branding and demand generation do not. Board members representing private equity and venture capital firms are typically data-driven in their decision-making approach. They have an inherent bias towards directing marketing spend on programs that demonstrate tangible, quantifiable results. There is always a healthy skepticism towards the “touchy, feely” spend on “branding initiatives.” And one of the key challenges marketing leaders face in seeking a budget for brand awareness is explaining the ROI from investing in activities such as public relations.
Despite the firehose of data produced by today’s digital marketing campaigns there is rarely any clear correlation that can be established between media coverage and leads. You might be able to show referring traffic from a handful of media properties in Google Analytics or capture a few anecdotal mentions about seeing you in the news on the recordings of discovery calls. However, the demonstrable link between spend and pipeline that exists from SEM, webinars, and SDR gifting programs is typically lacking.
- Why are we spending $15K per month on a public relations agency? What are we getting for that $180K per year? What if we put that money into Google Ads? How much pipeline could we generate from the same spend?
- What are the three people in the communications department working on? What if we re-purposed two of those headcount on the SDR team? Couldn’t we get 20-40 more leads per month?
Marketing leaders need a strategy for demonstrating the ROI from public relations spend. Martech platforms such as Meltwater, MuckRack, and Cision can churn out a wide variety of metrics regarding exposure, impressions, reach, and sentiment. These standard metrics provide a great baseline set of data. However, it’s likely that only some of the standard metrics will be applicable to your business. It’s also likely that the standard metrics don’t cover some of the more important dimensions of your PR program.
Success with demonstrating the ROI from media coverage will require you to customize your reporting to fit your business and the specific narrative you are trying to tell. Start by identifying four to six key metrics that support the story you are hoping to tell about the value of the public relations investment. You don’t necessarily need to tie PR success to pipeline generated or inbound leads. Most CEOs and board members want to see that you are being thoughtful about how the marketing budget is spent. Even if you cannot tie PR to pipeline, executives want to see that you are identifying goals, measuring progress, and optimizing the spend.
Metric 1
Media Coverage – Quantity
One way to demonstrate public relations ROI is to simply count of the number of times in which your company was quoted, mentioned, or featured in an article or news story. The measurement could be focused on a single topic you are seeking awareness on (e.g. how generative AI will impact creative agencies). Alternatively, the count could be all encompassing including any type coverage of your company receives across the spectrum of marketing-led thought leadership to finance-led announcements on fundraising efforts.
Reporting Time Period
For each metric you will need to decide how best to present the data. Two key questions to consider:
- Time Period – What time period do you want to report results on? The past month? The past quarter? The past year?
- Trend Reporting – Do you want to provide comparative reporting? If so, do you want to compare month-over-month? Quarter-over-quarter? Year-over-year?
Reporting Policy Decisions
You’ll need to make some policy decisions about how to report on the quantity of coverage.
- Duplicate Counts – Do you count duplicate versions of the same new story? For example, if 50 publications you’ve never heard of posted your most recent press release verbatim, do you count that as 50 pieces of coverage or 1?
- Media Definition – What is considered a media organization? Do you want to limit media to more formal businesses that identify as journalists? Or do you want to extend the definition to include influencers, bloggers, and others on social media? Is the substack author with 10,000 subscribers part of the media or do you category him/her as an influencer or social media?
Metric 2
Share of Voice
A second strategy for quantifying public relations ROI is to identify the total number of articles and news stories written about your company over the time period (as identified in metric #1). In how many of those articles were you mentioned or quoted? How many of those did you author and contribute to a publication? How does your coverage compare to your competitors? Your media coverage divided by the total media coverage on the topic is your share of voice.
Presentation of the Data
For each of the metrics you will need to decide how to segment and present the data. For example you might want to demonstrate:
- Competitive Comparison – Show a side-by-side comparison of your media coverage against your top 2 or 3 competitors. “Our share of voice is 40% as compared to our archrival competitor who has 35%.”
- Goal Tracking – Present your actual results attained against the annual goals set out for the public relations program. “Our goal was 10 pieces of coverage in national publications and we have 7 year-to-date.”
My advice is:
- Compare Different Approaches – Run the numbers for each of the combinations above to understand the results. Decide which presentation approach ties best to the story you want to tell. If you are an early-stage startup competing with SAP or Google, then a competitive comparison may not be the best approach. Goal tracking might be better.
- Adopt Different Approaches – Adopt the best approach for each different KPI. Just because you present a competitive comparison on share of voice doesn’t mean you need to take the same approach for media coverage by tier. The latter might be better illustrated with a goal tracking style.
Metric 3
Media Coverage by Tier
How does your media coverage vary by tier or category of publication? Did you get a handful of quotes in mentions in prestigious national publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times? Or did you get 50 mentions from niche tech sites and influencer blogs focused on your specific market segment? Does the coverage you are getting support the impact you were hoping to achieve with your PR program? Reporting on coverage by media tier can help answer these questions.
Examples Media Tiers
You will need to work with your internal team and agency to decide how to segment the different media tiers, but an example segmentation strategy might look like this:
- National Publications – The top 10-20 business news sites with the highest web traffic, print circulation, or paid membership community. Examples include the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg, and Insider.
- Industry Trades – Online and print publications focused on your target vertical industry segment. The list of publications will vary by sector. Examples include Chain Store Age in retail, Automotive News in automotive, and American Banker in financial services.
- Regional Publications – Examples might include highly-regarded publications such as the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution as well as tier 3 and 4 media outlets in local metropolitan areas.
- Technology Media – Sites that cover hard news and trends in the techindustry. Examples might include publications such as TechCrunch, VentureBeat, or Wired that cover broader trends as well as niche sites that cover sub-segments like cybersecurity, devops, or AI.
Metric 4
Coverage by News Category
Which types of news are generating most of your media coverage? If you experienced a 300% surge in exposure last quarter what was the cause? Was most of the coverage due to your announcement about a Series E round and planned IPO trajectory for next year? Or was the bulk of the coverage from your Chief Product Officer newsjacking on a major industry news story that unfolded during the quarter? Breaking out coverage by news category can help to highlight where you are truly getting lift and public relations ROI from your program.
Examples of News Categories
You will need to work with your internal team and agency to decide how to categorize the different types of media coverage, but an example segmentation might look like:
- Product – Pickup and buzz related to new product launches from traditional media channels, bloggers, and influencers on social media.
- Partnerships – Joint press releases with technology alliance partners, reseller relationships, and other distribution channels.
- Industry Trends – Thought leadership and opinion editorials about trending topics, market dynamics, and emerging technologies.
- Financial News – Hard news related to earnings announcements, recent funding rounds, or mergers and acquisitions.
- Economic Impact – Coverage about hiring plans, new office locations, and/or community and social responsibility initiatives.
Metric 5
Award Submissions
Awards programs are another way to help establish and demonstrate public relations ROI with your stakeholders. Being recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor, the Inc. 5000, the Deloitte Fast 500, or Forbes Cloud 100 can add significant credibility to your brand. Awards for CEOs and other executives help build personal brand equity for key thought leaders. If you regularly apply for awards, consider reporting on the outcomes. How many awards did you submit applications for? How many did you win? How many did you earn and honorable mention or inclusion in a list of finalists?
Other Metrics to Track
Strategic Topics
Is the goal of your public relations programs to build awareness for a new idea in the marketplace such as new category of software? Or is the goal to establish your Chief Product Officer as a leading authority on a specific industry topic? Some public relations programs are laser-focused on certain “strategic topics” while others are more broadly focused on building brand awareness. The answer likely depends upon whether you are an early-stage startup with a single product or a billion-dollar enterprise with a suite of 30 products. If the goal of your media coverage is more targeted then consider reporting on your volume of coverage (metric #1), share of voice (metric #2), coverage by tier (metric #3) on that specific topic.
Brand Awareness Projects
Are there specific high-effort or high-dollar investments that you need to demonstrate the ROI for? Did you spend $100,000 for Forrester Consulting to conduct a custom research study on the big market problem you solve? Did you spend $50,000 on a launch party in San Francisco for a new product to create buzz in the market? For these big strategic projects you may to report on the volume of coverage (metric #1) or coverage by tier (metric #3).
