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PR & Analytics: A Match Made in Heaven

We all remember the days of measuring column inches and multiplying it by the advertising rates to determine the return on investment of an earned-media placement. "But it is not an apples-to-apples comparison because no one looks at the ads," the PR team would say in justifying why we needed to use a multiplier to determine the real value.

We also remember the days when a story appearing online was consider a second-class piece of coverage, with PR people consumed with making it "in print." Boy have times changed.

Today, click throughs and site referrals are king and are making the job of PR measurement much, much easier. But the question still remains, is online king? When it comes to measurement, absolutely.

Take for instance, an Early Show segment that appeared yesterday for our client RetailMeNot. The TV segment mentions the site as a great resource for online coupons and discount codes No doubt some viewers will go to their computer and either insert the address or Google the name. We can likely measure some of the impact in terms of how much traffic increases and the changes in the percentages in terms of traffic sources, especially since the accompanying story on the site doesn't directly link either. Even for coverage that doesn't link, you can make some pretty healthy assumptions about the impact.

But for sites that directly link, measurement is pretty accurate and can result in your PR team being much smarter and more strategic about the universe of blogs, social media campaigns and online sites they target/execute in their day-to-day jobs. It also can correct some assumptions about the overstated prowess of an outlet that seems to be the favorite of a board member or an executive. It also doesn't remove the need for more analysis, such as to what extent a site is sending qualified traffic. One site may send 1000 visitors and not result in as much business as another that refers only 100.

This also doesn't just apply to consumer sites that promise to be hot this season like the aforementioned RetailMeNot, BeatMyPrice, Liftopia or MyGroceryDeals. It can apply to any company that is great at converting online leads to sales, subscriptions or downloads, including application development companies, open source, software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies or solar integrators.

What's the point? The point is that, as one of my colleagues previously wrote PR people should love an analytics tool and the measurement capabilities it provides for demonstrating ROI. It should never be the only measure, but it sure does help.

The other point is that clients should share their analytics with their PR teams to help them become more scientific in terms of how they measure the impact of onlines, blogs, Facebook Groups, Twitter and other emerging social media. Knowing the impact is half of the battle when justifying PR budget.