PR Distribution Online Services: Know How to Track PR Success

How do you know if your public relations work? Even if you are using PR distribution online services, you need to have your own gauge to measure your PR success.

It can be challenging to measure the benefits of PR. But it shouldn’t stop you from using it. Although the press release distribution service gives you tracking or analytics report, having your own knowledge on what to track can be a big plus.

The distribution of your releases must be quantified in order to measure its impact:

1. Media impressions.

Media impression is one of the most important metrics in traditional as well as digital PR. It refers to the calculation of the audiences who have heard about your brand in a stated time period.

For easier understanding, if your brand or product or service was mentioned in a TV program with 1.5 million viewers, your media impression is 1.5 media impressions.

It is not restricted to television, radio, or print media. Technically, it also refers to any interaction of an audience to the content. So, even if an audience is scrolling through the advertisement on social media, it is already considered an imprint.

If you’re getting imprints, don’t think that your PR efforts are successful. Sometimes, imprints don’t translate to sales.

Just think about it. If an audience is looking at the advertisement on the billboard doesn’t mean that they will buy your product.

You have to support media impressions with other metrics to validate it. Ask yourself, “Do people have interest in your message?”

For example, you can check how long readers stay on your page. If they stay longer than usual, that means your content is engaging enough to encourage them to share it on social media or make buying decisions.

2. Content analysis.

Although numbers matter, it’s not all that matters. You need to pay attention to the quality of your content.

Check if the reporter used your key message in the coverage. Was it good publicity for your brand? Your content must be seen as valuable content not only for the media but the readers.

Analyzing your release provides a number of benefits including:

1. It offers insights on the use of language.
2. It is a method to analyze interactions.
3. You’ll assess the communication through transcripts or text.
4. It provides qualitative and quantitative data.

3. Press clippings.

You can measure the success of your campaign through the number of mentions that your brand or product received. You need to ensure though that the mentions or coverage appeared on sites that are relevant to your audience or prospects.

If you don’t get any mention at all, it’s an indication that your business lacks awareness. You need to develop strategies to improve brand awareness.

You can compile it to track how much and where those mentions are coming from. Do this across all media channels (television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and sites).

It is part of media monitoring. When getting a press release distribution service, choose a platform that offers this feature. You may pay for an additional fee but it’s better to get a service that provides many features.

It is very important to measure this metric because you’ll know your earned media. You can plan your future campaigns better and adjust strategies.

4. Website traffic.

Monitoring the number of visitors to your site is important for your campaign. You need to track your site traffic before and after the release was published in order to know if there’s an improvement in your visitors after the campaign.

Analyzing the changes in traffic is significant in determining the effectiveness of your PR effort. Sometimes, leads are coming from your site itself.

Your site’s traffic is a good indication of your site. It signals if it is growing, stagnant, or declining.

Brands can also use this metric to measure the effectiveness of their PR activities. For example, if you received an influx of traffic to your site after publishing a release about your expertise, it indicates that you must be issuing more of this topic.

On the other hand, if your traffic is not moving or it’s decreasing, it tells you that you must review your strategies. It can also indicate that you must try new tactics.

Although it is only a part of the overall status of your site, it gives you a good snapshot of how well it is performing. Aside from the total traffic, you can measure the number of unique and repeat visits.

It’s important to know how much new traffic you attract and how much traffic returns to your site. It gives insights that your PR strategy is working that’s why you can attract new traffic.

Repeat visits tell that they like what you are writing. You can repeat the same strategy or improve it more.

If you have more repeat visits and low unique visits, it tells that you are doing well on building your fans or followers. If you have low unique visits, you need to enhance your techniques to build awareness and establish engagement.

5. Social media mentions.

Another analytics that you must be aware of is social media mentions. What does it mean for your campaign?

You need to track the conversations happening around your brand on social media. It’s also important to monitor the social communities in your niche.

Social listening must be part of your PR strategy. You need to listen, monitor, and respond to these conversations to become a more effective brand. Without finding out what they are saying about you, you’ll miss important insights.

This is a two-part process. You need to check social media platforms for mentions of your company name, product, service, competitors, or relevant keywords.

The second part is, analyzing the information. When you analyze the information, it gives you an idea on the next step to take whether you’ll change your PR tactic or issue a release that improves your engagement.

Monitoring social media mentions matters because you want to ensure that you are giving importance to what your audiences are saying. Here are the following benefits of tracking social media mentions:

1. It helps to identify the opportunities that improve your engagement in the conversations about your business. For instance, you need to listen and know if your customer is happy or unhappy with your product.
2. You can change your tactics immediately. When you track the sentiments, you can right away tweak your strategies and know what caused the change.
3. You can distinguish the pain points. As a business, you need to be on top of everything even when it comes to the conversations about your product or service. If someone has bad feedback about it, you can immediately tell it to your product team.
4. You know what and how your brand stands against the competition. When you monitor the social media mentions, you’ll have an idea what people are saying about you against your rivals. You determine your stand in the market. You’ll also gain insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors.
5. Develop new sales leads. When you track who’s talking about your brand or products, you’ll get the idea about the segment of the population that resonates well with your brand.
6. You’ll determine the social media influencers and supporters. Social listening enables you to identify influencers in your industry. It gives you the idea of who to connect. You will also know your strongest supporters.

6. Lead sourcing.

You need to know how a customer purchased your product. It’s one way to determine how your PR effort contributed to your sales. Did they learn about your brand or product through advertisement or referral?

When you analyze the information, you can have better and effective PR campaigns. You’ll know the strengths of your PR.

If you know that your leads are coming from your site, you can develop a strategy that will drive the audience to your site. On the other hand, if you have less leads coming from paid ads, you can concentrate on other means to boost your ROI.

7. Market surveys.

It is one metric that you need to monitor before and after your campaign. Prior to your campaign, survey if your audience is aware of your brand and offer. After the campaign, measure it again.

If it improved, it means that people are more aware of your product. Developing brand awareness is essential before you can even gain trust. By knowing the results of the surveys, you can alter how you can better promote your brand or products.

Brand awareness is very important, especially for startups. This is basically the reason why some companies spend money on sponsorship. They collaborate with another national brand to boost its presence in a bigger market.

There are different methods to measure awareness of your brand. It can be done through:

1. Surveys: This method can be conducted by telephone, email, or site. Ask present customers how they heard about your brand or product. You can also ask prospects if they have heard about you.
2. Web traffic: Looking at the flow of traffic to your site gives insights into your brand awareness. It means more visitors to your site, the more people are aware that your brand or product exists.
3. Social listening. When you track the conversations, knowing that people are talking about your brand or products gives an idea that they are aware of your existence.
4. Search volume data. It gives the information that the higher the search volume, the more people are searching about your brand or product.

These are important metrics that you must be aware of when conducting a PR campaign. Although almost the majority of paid distribution platforms already provide analytics reports, you must keep your own monitoring to understand how it works.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes.