What Are The Best KPIs for PR?

Ask the question “what are the best KPIs?” and you could be forgiven for feeling like you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. But in a world where data is king, and marketers are being asked to quantify – and justify – everything they do, KPIs are an ever-present part of our lives.

Today’s PR landscape is a complex one. Lines have blurred between traditional public relations, digital PR and social, and the wealth of data at our fingertips can risk tipping from useful insight to information overload.

As a PR agency, we focus on understanding our clients’ objectives and making sure we achieve – and exceed – their targets. Measurement and reporting are integral elements of that. Not only do we need clarity about how successful our work is, but we also recognise the pressure on marketing teams to demonstrate the value of their spend.

So, what are the best KPIs for PR? Read on for the answers to some questions you might have about what KPI stands for when it comes to PR, and how to set and measure metrics that will help you demonstrate PR’s impact on your wider marketing strategy.

1. WHAT DOES KPI STAND FOR IN BUSINESS?

Let’s start at the beginning with a reminder of what KPI stands for in a business context. KPIs – key performance indicators – can be any type of metric which allows for a measurable outcome. Their purpose is to help businesses track progress and make informed decisions. When we’re talking about KPIs for PR specifically, we mean any metrics applied to the public relations activity undertaken by your business or PR agency.

2. WHAT IS A KPI TARGET AND HOW DO YOU SET THEM FOR PR CAMPAIGNS?

The beauty of KPIs is that they can be tailored to your specific goals, ensuring the focus stays on what you want to get out of your PR campaign. While they can be agreed at a later stage, our advice would be to have KPIs in mind as early as when you’re writing your PR brief. Identify what your PR goals are, and how they align with your business objectives, think about the metrics that matter to your brand, and set measurable targets based on previous performance and industry benchmarks. 

If you’re unsure where the line is between ambitious and unrealistic targets, discuss this with your PR agency. At WPR, we’ve analysed reams of data to build a robust benchmarking tool that allows us to make informed, tailored predictions of outcome based on many variables. The more clarity we have about what success looks like to you (we’d advise including this within your PR brief), the more effectively we can build a campaign that will deliver on those targets.  

3. ESSENTIAL KPIS FOR PR IN B2B AND CONSUMER MARKETING

The beauty of setting KPIs is their flexibility and the fact that you tailor them to your circumstances. So, whether you’re operating in a niche B2B PR space, or you’re a mass market consumer brand, the insight you’ll have at the end of a campaign feeds directly into your priorities.

This list is not exhaustive, but typical KPIs you might track for PR activity include:

1. Media coverage volume and quality: the number of media mentions (broadcast, print and digital) and the quality and relevance of those media outlets e.g. tier one media titles and high domain authority digital outlets
2. Share of voice (SOV) vs competitors: tracking how much your brand is talked about in the media and online against key competitors in the same space
3. Sentiment analysis: monitoring the tone of coverage across all channels, assessing whether it is positive, neutral or negative, and tracking changes in these trends over a campaign period or longer term
4. Key message presence: tracking the percentage of coverage featuring specific key messages
5. Backlink quality: reporting on the percentage of coverage including a backlink and assessing the quality of these backlinks via the domain authority of the referring site
6. Website traffic: monitoring increases in website traffic to the homepage or campaign landing page during the campaign period
7. Responses to CTAs: tracking the number of specific actions taken in response to the campaign e.g. whitepaper downloads, entries to a competition, requests for a demo via an online form etc.

Note that you won’t see the dreaded AVEs (advertising value equivalents) on this list. The fact that the PR Week Awards automatically disqualify entries that reference AVEs, should tell you everything you need to know about what the PR industry thinks of this particular metric. While it was once a feature on many an evaluation document, we can hopefully all now agree that it was never a satisfactory way of measuring the value of PR.

4. how do we measure kpis?

There’s an interesting balance for agencies to achieve when it comes to reporting. We want to be transparent and give our clients the valuable insight they need, but we also know they’d rather we spent time delivering work than compiling reports. Technology helps massively. We use a variety of software and tools to streamline swathes of data collection and reporting.

How we communicate that data then becomes a significant factor too. We’ve done a lot of work to make reporting more meaningful and user-friendly for our clients. By creating easy-to-digest dashboard reports which show core metrics – from coverage volume and impressions to geographical area and key message inclusion – on one page, tracked against specific KPIs, we’ve made a wealth of data available in real time.

Once you have a KPI framework in place, it can massively improve how you evaluate your PR activity, how you plan future campaigns, and how you can make informed decisions about where to invest budget to achieve your business goals.  

Get in touch if you’d like to chat about the way you’re tracking the impact of your PR activity, or anything else PR or social media marketing related.