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PR campaigns are difficult to measure, but a great way to understand the viability of your campaign is by tracking designated KPIs. KPIs, or key performance indicators, are...
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KPIs, or key performance indicators, are metrics that measure the success of your campaigns by gauging the performance of specific goals.
Your CEO and their fellow C-Suite members will want to know whether or not your PR campaigns are driving new leads or supporting revenue growth. While it can be overwhelming to figure out these measurements on your own, we’ve got a few important KPI gauges that can help you on your way to success.
When you create a PR campaign, a great way to measure its progress is through the traction it brings to your company’s website. There are many different kinds of measurements to understand website traffic:
The first is organic search, which measures the number of people that find your website through searching generic keywords.
Next is direct search, which is the number of people who search your specific URL.
Then there is social traffic, which accounts for anyone who finds your website through network postings such as on LinkedIn.
Lastly, there is referral traffic or people that find your website through other websites.
All of these measurements should be taken for a set period to understand if there has been a spike in your media coverage from your campaign. For instance, if you are trying to measure the success of a campaign, measure before the campaign begins, then one or two weeks into the campaign.
Be sure that you are only using one specific campaign at a time to accurately read the measurements of the success of that particular campaign.
Another great way to use KPIs to measure the outcome of your PR campaign is by comparing new users to old users. After your campaign is sent out, a spike in old users means that your loyal customers are engaging with your media content. A spike in new users shows that your campaign did a great job of expanding your reach.
Time can tell you a lot about the engagement of your customers. This will help you better understand whether users attracted to your website have a higher affinity for the content. Analyzing the time spent can also help you determine your bounce rate.
Measuring the success of your campaign involves understanding the people that come to your site and the sources that drove the traffic. Did certain sites drive more traffic to your website than others? When considering those leads, did one site provide better results than others? This information on referral traffic can help you understand which media outlets to spend more time and effort on.
PR should be willing to accept their role in leading conversions wherever possible on the company’s overall marketing communication strategy. Maybe there was a customer that was on the edge of buying and one of your strategically placed content campaigns convinced them to commit. The key is to measure this metric over an extended time to see any upward trends and mention them to your leadership team.
By better understanding where your audience is located, you can better understand if your campaign strategy is working or if you should focus your energy toward a different audience. If you’re targeting a specific audience in the South, you should hope to see increased clientele from Texas, Alabama, and Georgia. If you are getting new interest from Oregon, you may need to reconsider your strategy.
One last way to measure your campaign success is by understanding your audience’s demographics. It can be helpful to create buyer personas to better understand who your campaign is trying to reach. If your campaigns are targeting 25-30-year-old women but you’re seeing a traffic spike in your 45-year-old male visitors through KPIs, you may want to make adjustments to your strategy.
When your boss comes knocking on your door to ask how your campaign is fairing, you can tell them the proof is in the KPI pudding. You can wow them in the company meeting when you provide them with everything they need to know about your successful PR campaign.
About Lara Tanner: Lara is an Account Associate Intern for Swyft, which is a tech PR firm in Austin and Houston and a top digital marketing and PR agency in Denver since its founding in 2011. Swyft also has a small satellite office where it offers tech PR in San Francisco. Swyft has been listed as one of the top tech PR agencies in Texas for two years running by the B2B services review site, Clutch.co.
