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Measurement &

Evaluation
PR 313
Success of Failure?
How will you determine if your strategic plan
and campaign was a success?
The Final Step
The final step in your planning is to determine
how you will measure and define success
This will be the metric used to determine if your
campaign was a success or failure
At the end of your campaign, you should
evaluate based on the metric that was agreed
upon at the beginning

Why Evaluate?
To document success
To encourage future work
To justify your expenses
To improve your future campaigns
To build credibility
To determine a basis for the next campaign
To promote the value of PR in your organization
Things to Consider
Was the campaign well planned?
Did the recipients understand the message?
What improvements can be made?
Did you achieve your stated goals?
Was the budget adequate?
What is replicable for future campaigns?
Measuring Success
There is a tendency for many PR
practitioners to measure their output, rather
than the achievement of their goals
For example, collecting press clippings is not
enough
Measurement
In order to measure success, you must first
define it
As part of your research and strategic
planning phase, you and your client need to
agree on realistic goals for accomplishment
This ensures that your work will be
recognized and disagreements will be
minimized
Examples
A defined increase in sales
A specific number of mentions in the press
A measured increase in public awareness of
a brand or service
A pre-determined increase in customer direct
inquiries about a product or service

Clients from Hell
The worst case scenario is ambiguous, ill-
defined goals
This invites the client to challenge your work
and effectiveness

Clip Counting
A physical counting of press placements will
measure productivity
This may not truly represent success
There is a temptation to send out excessive
releases to manipulate the perception of
productivity (and add to the clients bill)
How to Get Clips
Do not ask a journalist
to send you a clip
There are several
services you can use:
Cision
Burrelles/Luce Press
Clippings
These services are now
offered online

Online Tracking
Cisions MediaSource
CisionPoint
Message Impressions
These services track media impressions
(a.k.a. gross impressions) to detail how
many people were exposed to the message
This factors in the circulation and/or reach of the
media outlets that carried your message
Example
A campaign for a new soda is mentioned in
several newspapers and magazines
Add up the circulation of these publications to
get the estimated media impressions
Media Impressions
Useful to track the penetration of a message
However, the number can be misleading
This number does not reflect how many
people actually saw the message only how
many were exposed to it
Advertising Value Equivalency
Since story placements are free, there is an
equivalent dollar value for the exposure
What would it have cost your client to get the
same sort of exposure via paid placement
advertising?
The AVE calculates the estimated value of
the exposure (in ad dollars)
AVE
AVE helps to justify the expense of your PR
campaign costs
However, it is not without controversy
Not all media coverage is positive
The value of the story space requires some
subjective judgment and is prone to exaggeration

Systematic Content Analysis
Many of these software programs track the
intricacies of the media coverage
Positive vs. negative coverage
Relationship of the coverage vs. your competitors
Contextualization of your coverage compared to
the overall placement opportunities in the media
outlet
Other Forms of Evaluation
Monitor the Internet
This includes gripe groups (anti-client blogs)
Toll-free numbers
How proactive are your customers?

Cost per Person
It can be difficult to compare the value of
impressions across various forms of media
The CPM (cost per thousand) index helps
you assign a dollar value to the expense of
reaching 1,000 people in a particular media
genre
Calculating CPM
Divide the total number of media impressions
by the cost of your campaign

Example: A $10 million campaign that
reaches 100 million people would have a
CPM of $10. (It costs $10 to reach 1,000
people).


Monitoring Online Chatter
PR Newswire recently launched eWatch, a
service that allows you to track what people
are saying about your client online
Measurement of Audience
Awareness
How many people know about your message
or campaign?
You can conduct surveys to determine the
audience awareness

Audience Attitudes
How does the public feel about your
company, brand, product or service?
You can measure audience attitudes using
benchmark studies that test attitudes both
before and after exposure to the message
Audience Action
What action does the audience take as a
result of the exposure to your message?
Do they buy your product?
Do they talk about you?
Did they request more information?
Did they enter your contest?

Web Site Analytics
Leaders in this space include:
Google Analytics
Omniture
WebTrends
Hitwise

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