Get more money out of your PR investment

Axia PR helps you measure the ROI of your public relations efforts

While it might seem difficult to measure public relations, it’s not impossible. When you measure PR, you document the return on investment of your public relations campaign. Great PR improves an audience’s awareness, trust, understanding, and consideration of the topic, and it ultimately causes the audience to act.

At Axia Public Relations, we have seven principles for how we measure PR and a four-level measurement approach that provides a true positive impact to your organization. It includes setting SMART objectives and moving your target audiences down the PR measurement funnel to the impacts stage, where they’ll take action.

Return on investment is a ratio between the net profit and the cost from an investment of resources. A high ROI means the investment gains favorably to its cost. Sometimes people say “ROI” without understanding its true meaning. Don’t say ROI unless you are referring to monetary returns. ROI is a financial measure, not a synonym for results.

Axia has a strategic approach to measuring your ROI from a PR campaign. We start by setting communication goals that align with and support your company’s business goals. We identify KPIs to report progress of the PR campaign consistently.

To do this, we need access to your company data, such as website traffic and sales figures, to see changes around our public relations activities. With your collaboration, we’re able to understand the outcomes and impacts of the PR campaign. When this information is available to measure, there’s no reason we can’t document true ROI on your PR program. This takes a commitment from both parties, Axia and you, the client.

By measuring traffic to your company’s owned media, we’re able to track touch points and identify where visitors are coming from. We measure with weekly activities reports, monthly metric reports, and quarterly and annual goals. We report the ROI of the PR program at the end of the campaign by dividing your PR investment and the audience impact metrics we mutually agreed upon in your PR campaign. The impact metrics could be sales figures, foot traffic, sales leads, reputation, or the specific metrics that support your business objectives.

For example, our client Brightway Insurance experienced a 300 percent increase in call center volume around 120 secured earned media stories, which provided a strong ROI from our public relations services. Identifying important company metrics and monitoring traffic around PR outputs allows Axia to measure your company’s return on its public relations investment. We know the bottom line is top of mind for your company’s leadership; we’ll provide the ROI for your public relations campaign.

See also the Power of PR.

If your current PR agency doesn’t understand the importance of ROI for your company, it’s time to find a PR partner who uses best practices. Read Axia’s complimentary e-book “How to Fire Your PR Firm” to learn what you should expect from your PR firm and how to have a smooth transition when you decide to move on.

Clients love Katie’s energy and enthusiasm. She manages national PR campaigns. Katie has worked with Axia Public Relations since September 2015. Learn more about Katie.