The public relations measurement guide: how to quantify and qualify your PR efforts

 

We're all striving for success. But what that success looks like is very much a relative term, depending on what your end goals are.

That's why key performance indicators (KPIs) exist. They allow us to track progress, quantify and qualify and measure PR effectively.

Whether it's the outcomes of paid media, an increase in brand visibility through heightened brand mentions, or more visibility in search engines, there are numerous PR metrics and various ways to measure PR efforts.

But how do you know what measurement to put stock in and what measurements to kick to the kerb?

This guide to measuring public relations will help you in that journey.

How can you measure your PR efforts?

For the purposes of this guide, we've broken these key metrics down into traditional and digital results. There are some instances where metrics crossover, but they have slightly different meanings and interpretations when viewed online and offline.

As PR professionals, these are the key metrics by which we measure our success.

How can you measure traditional media PR campaigns?

Reach

Starting with reach, or rather, potential reach. This figure is the number of people who have potentially seen a piece of coverage. Though be aware that reach is something of a vanity metric.

By vanity metric, we mean a statistic that looks good on paper, but there's very little quantifiable substance. That doesn't mean it's not a useful or viable metric to report on as part of the wider campaign results; it just means that it should never be the sole marker of success.

Coverage sentiment

You could have a thousand pieces of coverage, but if nine hundred and ninety-nine of those pieces are negative towards your business, that's not great.

Sentiment analysis is something we do to give a clearer picture of how your brand is perceived within the media. You might see that certain media monitoring tools offer an automated sentiment analysis. While this is nice in theory, in practice, it's not so helpful.

These tools often fail to recognise subtleties and nuance within the media and audiences. So, when it comes to sentiment analysis, we find this is something best done manually.

Coverage quality

This loosely ties in with sentiment. But coverage quality is exactly what it says on the tin; how good is the coverage you've earned?

Now, good is also a relative term, and it's relative to your pre-established KPIs. If you've set out to have your stories and press releases published within sector press, then good coverage will be the number of key titles you've hit, along with the sentiment of that coverage.

Key message penetration

Then we have the penetration of messaging.

More often than not, press releases and news stories will be tweaked and adjusted by various journalists, editors and subeditors to meet the interests of their audiences. This is the point where control of a story is handed over; at this stage, we can't make changes.

If an editor removes something from a story, then they've done so for a reason, and it's more damaging to your reputation to quibble and argue. It can also cause issues with the journalist and damage the future relationship with them. But you can ask why they've edited in this way.

What helps with key message penetration is an agency that knows the media landscape well. For example, we'll know what to include and what not to include in a press release, and we understand just what those journalists are looking for and when something has strayed just a little too far.

How can you measure digital PR campaigns?

Social media engagement

Engagement can be a tricky one to measure in a digital PR context because depending on the channel you're looking at, it can mean different things.

On Instagram, engagement counts as likes, comments, shares, saves, DMs, profile taps, link follows (also known as sticker taps) and reel views. On LinkedIn, engagement counts as likes, comments, reposts and shares. While on TikTok, engagement is measured in likes, comments, saves, shares, stitches and duets.

You can measure impressions engagement (the social equivalent of reach) to get a glimpse of how your content is performing, often referred to as your engagement rate. But don't measure impressions as a sole metric. Again, this is another vanity metric that needs comparative data to show valuable insights.

This metric should be analysed as part of the wider campaign to understand how it fits into the success.

Sentiment analysis

Analysing the sentiment of social engagement will give you a much more defined picture of how your followers and audience receive you

Again, sentiment is something that automated tools claim to be able to do. But in our experience, it's best left to the human eye. Social media sentiment is far more convoluted and nuanced than you might think.

For example, emoji responses; yes, emojis count as sentiment.

But they can be rather complex. A laughing face emoji could be a positive response but it can also be very negative. It's all about reading between the lines in this context.

Domain authority

Domain authority, or DA for short, is a metric we use in SEO and digital PR campaigns.

It's a score, out of 100, which essentially shows the 'authority' of a website, therefore how well it ought to rank on search engines. There are many ways to increase domain authority, ranging from gaining third-party backlinks and creating quality content of your own.

A strong DA can greatly increase brand visibility, but be aware that domain authority does not increase quickly.

In the world of PR metrics, DA is very much a long-term strategy, not a quick fix.

But all of these metrics are for nothing if they aren't aligned with your objectives and desired business outcomes.

Aligning impact with business objectives

To ensure that we're aligning our PR efforts with your goals, we need to base our PR strategy on other KPIs and objectives.

The way we do this is through the AMEC Integrated Evaluation Framework. Through the AMEC framework, we start with objectives and inputs and activities. This gives us our baseline.

Then we can report on outakes, outputs, outcomes and impact. This is how we can truly measure PR efforts against business outcomes. This is the core structure of the AMEC framework and the building blocks of our PR strategy and PR measurement.

Objectives: Defines the overarching goals

Inputs: identify required resources to achieve goals and objectives.

Activity: outlines the strategies to be implemented

Outputs: initial measurement against the 'activity' line

Out-takes: measures immediate results

Outcomes: assesses the impact on audience responses, attitudes and behaviours.

Impact: evaluate the broader effect on organisational goals, such as behaviour change or sales growth.

Oftentimes, outtakes, outcomes and impact can be tricky to define. But this is how:

Outtakes

Outtakes are all about what your audience actually takes away from your communication efforts. They're the immediate reactions, awareness levels, or engagement that you can track. Think of them as the first sign that your message is landing.

So, what kinds of things are we talking about here? Well, here's what that looks like in practice:

• When awareness of your campaign messages jumps from a tiny 2% to an impressive 37%, that's the kind of shift that shows people are noticing.
• Those engagement metrics we're all obsessed with, likes, shares, comments, or even direct requests for more information.
• Website visits and click-throughs that happen right after your media coverage hits as these things are connected.
• Social media buzz; we're talking real numbers here, like 19,000 social media posts or 12,000 tweets using your campaign hashtag.
• How well your audience remembers your key messages when asked about them.

The communication world is busier and far louder than ever before. Getting your audience to take notice at all is half the battle.

Outcomes

Now, outcomes dig deeper. They measure what effect your communication is having on what people know, think or plan to do. This is where things get really interesting.

What sorts of changes are we looking at? These include:

• Actual shifts in knowledge or attitudes, like when people genuinely understand an issue better after encountering your messaging.
• Changes in how people feel about you, maybe preference for your brand jumping up by 10% after a campaign.
• Real actions that your audience takes, such as signing that petition, registering for your event, or booking an appointment. Imagine driving 47,000 new donor registrations during a single campaign.
• Improvements in employee satisfaction or awareness levels following your internal comms efforts.

Outcomes aren't just nice-to-haves. They're critical indicators that your communication is doing more than just making noise, that it's actually changing minds and behaviours.

Impact

Impact is where the rubber really meets the road. It's about the broader, long-term effect on your organisation's goals or society itself. This is what your bosses and stakeholders ultimately care about.

What does impact look like in real terms? Here's what we mean:

• Achieving that policy change you've been pushing for or securing a parliamentary debate on your issue.
• Seeing actual increases in sales, revenue, or market share that you can trace back to your communication efforts.
• Delivering improved public health outcomes, like increased screening rates or a year-on-year decline in stroke mortality.
• Successfully rebuilding brand trust and reputation after you've weathered a crisis.
• Exceeding those strategic targets you set, like smashing your monthly donor registration goal.

Sometimes measuring true impact takes patience, and it's more often a case of when, not if, your strategic communication will show results.

Final thoughts

It's important to focus your KPIs and your goals from the beginning; you'll find it hard to measure PR progress beyond vanity metrics without this.

You can do this through the AMEC framework and the examples we've shown you above show how the AMEC Framework helps you distinguish between what your audience simply notices (out-takes), what they actually do or feel as a result (outcomes), and the ultimate effect on your organisation's big-picture objectives (impact).

It's a journey from awareness to action to achievement, and understanding each stage helps you craft better, more effective communication strategies.