It is very difficult for them to understand these indicators, especially since they are practically not related to their business KPIs. For them, it is simply a set of non-obvious, often far-fetched numbers that clearly pay tribute to trends.
Each company measures these indicators in its own taiwan mobile phone number example way, combines them differently, and the methods for determining them change from one report to another. It is very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to establish their relationship with P&L, brand love, or sales.
If you are a shareholder, CFO or CEO, you are unlikely to trust this data either. Therefore, we will consider only those KPIs that are objectively agreed upon by people who are far removed from PR.
Audience reach (media outreach)
This is a well-known indicator that has evolved from analog to digital format. It shows how many consumers have seen your content, such as a post on a social network or an article in the media. Its calculation is based on the circulation of the media or the number of the audience of the resource over an average period of time.
Why is it needed : Usually, coverage shows huge numbers. For example, a standard news item, not a sensation, can give 70 million coverage. This is considered a normal result. It is clear that managers do not treat this as if all 70 million people read the news.
But this figure means that the information could be seen by 70 million users. This greatly increases the recognition of your products and knowledge of the topic among customers.
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Leads
This is the volume of the target audience that has contacted the company, its products or the topic of interest after communication. In relation to PR, this indicator is considered more broadly compared to marketing, where a lead is understood as contact information left by the client.
A good PR result can be even one lead, but a specific one, which the communication was aimed at. For example, if the target stakeholder made an important decision after reading your article.
Why you need it : Your board will be much more confident in the effectiveness of your work if they can see real consumer actions after your campaign than if you simply present a set of synthetic media indices.
Obvious contribution to business performance
This could be an increase in the number of users during or immediately after a PR campaign, an increase in traffic to the site, an increase in sales, and so on.
This indicator can be blurred due to the fact that in large organizations, the PR department is rarely the only one involved in product promotion. Sales also depend on the work of the marketing department, the season, the activities of competitors, and other factors.
Obvious contribution to business performance
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However, in some situations, it is the communication contribution to the result that is obvious.
Why is it needed : There is no better KPI than this one, so that business and PR can speak the same language.
Share of Voice
In other words, share of voice. This is a comparative indicator of the number of articles and other materials of your company relative to the same content of competitors. It is better to use a comparison, since absolute indicators often not only do not reflect the effect of communications, but also lead to a distortion of expectations and ideas about PR.
This type of assessment shows who is really working effectively and who is just creating the appearance.
It is important to clearly establish what and where to compare, since quantity does not equal quality. If a competitor publishes a huge number of articles to increase the number of mentions, this does not mean that he is influencing the target audience.
At the same time, he may report to his superiors on the number of publications, but the quality of work will be low.
Why is it needed : the indicator clearly shows the effectiveness. If you compare Share of Voice simultaneously with the costs of communications, you will get one of the most transparent parameters of effectiveness.
Engagement and Citations
It is important to understand not only how many people have encountered your article, but also the depth of contact. Engagement shows that a certain portion of consumers are actively engaged with your topic — commenting, rating, liking.
The highest level of engagement is citation. The most successful communication campaigns are discussed even beyond publications. Users are so fascinated by the topic that they begin to mention it in other people's comments, their articles, and in the best case scenario, they bring it "to the kitchen."
Engagement is directly proportional to the precise correspondence of communication to a specific social group. PR people often manipulate this metric, obtained through situational PR, which gives a short-term boost to citation. Therefore, it is important to use a set of metrics to immediately understand when communicators get too carried away by the agenda and forget about the product itself.
Engagement and Citations
Source: shutterstock.com
Why it is needed : it allows you to understand that the audience is really interested in your content. It often happens that high citation can be confirmed even by the management of the company, having accidentally seen your article or heard something on this topic from other people.
Key
It is divided into two categories: content tone and feedback tone. This indicator is critical for communication when problems or crisis situations arise. Simply put, it shows whether we managed to reduce the degree of the problem with our actions. It is even better if we can find out how exactly the attitude towards your company has changed, so it is recommended to conduct semantic analysis.
Why is it needed : the effectiveness of communications can be clearly seen - “they used to speak about us this way, but now they speak about us differently.”