October 2005

Sizzle or Fizzle: Evaluating the PR Program
By Kay Paumier, Communications Plus

How do you know if your PR is working?

In today's economic climate, it is more and more important to evaluate any PR or communications program. Measurement and evaluation are essential to closely link the PR and communications programs to overall corporate goals and, of course, to help you plan, improve and justify your program.

Unfortunately, for many small and mid-sized organizations, formal evaluation services are just too expensive. And it can be difficult to add an in-house measurement program to an already busy schedule.

However, even with little time and money, it is possible to get a good idea of the effectiveness of your PR program. Although precise evaluations are tricky, here are some basic ways to judge the program, both in terms of its publicity and its impact.

1.  Make your objectives measurable.

Before beginning your program, set both publicity and "impact" objectives, the former covering the amount and type of coverage you receive, the latter covering what you want people to know, think or do. These objectives should include:

• The desired impact
• The magnitude of change (e.g., a percentage change)
• The timeframe.

For example, you might set the following publicity objectives for Moonbuck, a new chain of coffee stores:

• "Generate three feature stories about the new stores in major local media outlets within a week of opening day."
• "Generate six mentions of the online products in national publications that cover food within a year."

Possible "impact" objectives are:

• "Increase awareness of the new store among local businesses and residents by 25 percent within the first two months of operation."
• "Within nine months, generate 200 unique visits daily to the product section of the Web site."

2.  Determine how you will measure your success.

If your objectives are well written, your evaluation criteria will be fairly obvious. However, specify the criteria at the beginning of the program so that everyone knows how the program will be judged.

To determine the criteria, ask yourself a simple (but not simplistic) question. How will you know if you have reached your goal?

For example, you might measure Moonbuck's publicity success by the:

• Number of articles
• Key messages in those articles
• Number of positive statements about Moonbuck in the articles
• Amount of coverage when compared to the competition.

Additionally, you might judge the impact of the PR program by:

• Results of surveys of customers and prospective customers (regarding awareness of the store)
• Unique visitors to the product section of the company's Web site.

3.  Track your coverage and "impacts" carefully.

Having determined your criteria, track your results carefully.

For Moonbuck's publicity results, you would probably keep a record of the:

• Publications, Web sites or TV/radio programs that covered Moonbuck
• Title of the articles and reports
• Circulation or other audience figures for those publications or programs
• Authors
• Key messages that were included in the articles
• Visuals included in the articles
• Length of the total article
• Length of the part of the article that deals with Moonbuck
• Tone (positive, negative or neutral)
• Any special features (e.g., particularly good placement on the page).

Track the same factors for your competition.

For Moonbuck's impact objectives, you might track the:

• Results from before-and-after surveys of customers and prospective customers
• Web stats (especially to the product section of the site)
• Comments from Moonbuck's salespeople and customers

4.  Do a quantitative review of the publicity.

One simple quantitative analysis is to add up the circulation figures and run those figures against the total cost of the communication program. This will give a cost-per-thousand figure that most managers understand.

Another traditional approach is called ad value equivalency. To determine this figure:

• Measure the article (or part of the article) that covered your company.
• Get the cost of buying an ad that size. (You can typically find this information on the publication's Web site.)
• Multiply that cost by four.

The rationale is that publicity has four times the impact of an ad. Many PR professionals debate the validity of this approach, and there are slight variations on this theme, but at least this procedure gives you an objective figure.

In any event, it's good to compare the amount of coverage you receive to that of the competition. Having more coverage generally translates into increased mind share, which can lead to increased sales.

5.  Do a qualitative review of the publicity.

Also analyze the qualitative aspects of the publicity.

One approach is to assign scores to each of the factors you are tracking as outlined in #3 above (e.g., the messages included in the articles). For example, you could give a particularly positive comment a “+9,”, a neutral comment a “0,” and a particularly negative comment a “-9.” Add up the qualitative score and multiply by the publication’s circulation.

While such a rating is obviously subjective, this procedure gives you a somewhat objective analysis of qualitative factors.

6.  Analyze the impact of the program.

While it is virtually impossible to prove that PR "caused" something to change, you can surmise a correlation between the communication program and behaviors.

So, during and after the PR campaign, what changed? How did it change?

Specifically, did awareness of the stores and their products increase? How much?

What about the competition? Is their business booming? (It's always possible that coffee shops are just "hot" and that your results are due more to market factors than to PR.)

A side note. Although some professionals will disagree, I believe it is important not to directly tie PR results to sales. PR does not directly sell a product or service. Publicity helps develop the awareness, interest and desire that precede the sale. It's up to the salespeople or other sales channels to finalize the deal.

7.  Evaluate as the program is underway as well as at its conclusion.

Evaluation is not a goal in itself. One of its main purposes is to help you improve. So analyze your results during the program. You might make some changes mid-stream and increase the effectiveness of your campaign.

8.  Determine if you've achieved your objectives.

At the end of the program, evaluate whether you have achieved your objectives. If so, how did you do it? What was particularly effective?

If you weren't successful, why not? What didn't work? What will you do next time to improve your results?

A final note. If you are just beginning your evaluation program, start small. Try out a few of the ideas discussed above and build up to the others. It's important to get started, even if you can’t do everything at once.

© 2005 Communications Plus. All rights reserved.