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Taxes are not the only thing due in the first quarter. Marketers are also closing out year-end reporting, measuring last year's efforts and setting benchmarks for the new one.
Measuring an ad campaign is fairly simple. You know what the ad cost to create, what it cost to place and how many leads it produced. Measuring a public relations campaign is harder. You know what the content cost to create, but you do not know the market value of the editorial coverage it earned or exactly how many readers acted on it. What you do know is your output (articles, releases, Q&As), your outcomes (editorial placements) and, for each publication, the cost of an advertising page and the circulation. Here are the three common ways to turn that into a number.
Pick one method and apply it the same way every quarter.
Multiply the average cost of a paid ad of the same size as each editorial placement by the number of placements. That is the value of the coverage. Divide by your PR investment for a return.
For example, 100 editorial placements at an ad equivalency of $10,000 a page equals $1 million in coverage. If the PR effort cost $65,000 for the year, the return is about 15 to 1: for every dollar spent, roughly $15 in coverage.
Many PR professionals argue editorial is worth more than an equivalent page of advertising, because readers see it as more credible and pay more attention to it. PR equivalency applies a multiplier, commonly 3 or 5, to the ad equivalency value. Using a multiplier of 3 on the example above, the coverage is valued at $3 million and the return becomes about 46 to 1.
Others measure by reach. Each reader in a publication's stated circulation counts as one impression, so one placement in a magazine with 20,000 readers equals 20,000 impressions. Four placements in that magazine equal 80,000.
Whichever one you choose, with one caveat. The key to measuring a PR effort is not the exact number. It is applying the same method the same way every time. If you report ad equivalency, report ad equivalency every quarter. If you use a PR multiplier, use the same multiplier every time rather than switching between 3 and 5 depending on which makes the quarter look better.
Consistency is the only way to see whether the program is growing and where the opportunities are. If you would like help setting up a measurement approach for your program, visit our ‣ page.