The tools to measure the impact of public relations and other marketing initiatives have improved dramatically in the last few years, and, well, we need to be leveraging them. Better marketing reporting is becoming critical. By implementing the right tools, we can not only measure success through ROI and outlined objectives, but also demonstrate the business impact of having a creative, passionate PR team on your side.
To highlight the importance of reporting, I recently partnered with Full Circle Insights’ CEO Bonnie Crater to co-host a webinar on “Measuring the Power of your PR.” (In case you missed it, here’s a link to the recording.) During the webinar, we highlighted the importance of accurate measurement tools for a successful marketing program.
As we kick off the new year, it’s the perfect time to reassess how you’re determining media coverage, social media and marketing success.
Here are my marketing reporting resolutions for 2018:
Harness the right tools.
We use CoverageBook as a method to aggregate media clips. This integrated version of the old-fashioned clipbook offers access to media coverage and impact measurement online. No more cutting, pasting, scanning, printing and binding.
Through Coveragebook, our team is able to demonstrate our great work and provide clients with fresh insights around outlet DMA, link-backs and social shares on article traction. I’ll be on the lookout for additional, awesome ways to display our successes.
Determine what you want to measure and stick with it.
A key to monitoring trends, strengths, weaknesses and opportunities is comparable data. It’s important to discuss with your PR team what you value most to customize the reporting dashboard for your business. Data is most powerful when you can compare quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year to see what’s working (and what’s not), so dive into which data is really valuable to your operation.
For example, Full Circle Insights cares most about demo requests that originate from a media placement. This specific measurement helps us discover which media outlets and activities bring them the most new business opportunities.
Implement Google Analytics.
This year, our team honed its Google Analytics expertise, with a dozen Next PR team members becoming Google Analytics-certified. The importance of measuring the connection between web traffic and media placements will only continue to grow – and I imagine our GA-certified team will grow, too!
Developing a consistent schedule to examine the web traffic gained from placements is a great place to start, but it’s only the tip of the marketing ROI iceberg of what insights you can discover in the Google Analytics world.
Leverage campaign and sales data to measure what’s working.
I might be biased, but if you’re using Salesforce for sales, you should also be utilizing Full Circle Insights to report on the impact of your marketing campaigns. Their tool allows you to look deeper at your campaign success so you can attribute revenue to multiple prospect touch points, such as emails, social media posts, media hits and other collateral. This helps you determine where to direct your spending and can help you make the case to add PR resources.
For marketers, there’s an overwhelming amount of data at your disposal, but finding meaningful measurements that tie to your business goals makes wading through the information worth it. If you need help gaining media traction and measuring the results, shoot me an email and let’s chat!
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