Paul Hender, the media analysis director behind Metrica's reach and frequency analysis, discusses successful PR evaluation with GMR.
Why is PR evaluation important?
PR evaluation assists with understanding how PR has performed against set objectives and identifying which elements of activity worked and where there is room for future development. The ability to prove what you have achieved can assist in justifying ongoing budget expenditure on the PR function and may provide an argument for added increased budget.
Evaluation also allows the PR team to communicate in an effective and simple way what it has achieved to the rest of the business, who may not understand the intricacies of what they have been doing.
How does an independent PR evaluation agency like Metrica work?
Metrica works with both PR agencies and in-house PR departments with the key difference being the uses of evaluation.
In the case of in-house, evaluation will be predominantly used to report to the board and/or sponsors, to argue for more budget/resources and as a performance management tool for the greater PR team.
For agencies, evaluation is widely used as a means of proving their worth to the client. In some cases in-house PR will use evaluation to manage the agencies' performance against objectives, for example looking at aspects of the evaluation, such as the percentage of favorable coverage, etc. Some companies pay their agencies by results, with agency costs covered by a basic fee and bonuses paid for the achievement of objectives.
In the most ideal situation, the client and agency will be working collaboratively on evaluation for PR planning and strategy, agreeing to a brief that suits both parties and with access to the evaluation results at the same time. As the agency is often conducting the PR, it is important that they use the evaluation not only to retrospectively view the results, but also to plan for future PR activity and refine the strategy on an ongoing basis.
What are the current trends in PR measurement?
There are a number of different issues that impact on how PR is evaluated around the world. At the most basic level it starts with budget and resource, how this is allocated depends on the PR team's priorities.
Where analysis is being undertaken on an international level, it is important that measures are standardized, allowing for comparison.
Increased choice, delivered by increasingly specialized business and consumer publications and the huge range of choice offered by the broadcast media, mean audiences are becoming more segmented and PR methodology has become increasingly sophisticated to cope.
In addition to this, we are currently experiencing an unparalleled shift in the media landscape and a move away from traditional print media. UGC, wikis, YouTube, Facebook, words that a year ago many people weren't familiar with, are now all part of our daily vocabulary. Clients are increasingly requiring help to navigate them through, and help them make sense of this multitude of comms channels.
Is measurement of PR output enough?
The measurement of outtake and outcome is definitely the next step. The former can be done by marrying media analysis with market research. For example, media analysis can demonstrate how effectively a message has been delivered over time. Market research commissioned over a similar period can show how consumer awareness has altered in line with message penetration.
Of course it is difficult to extrapolate the effects of PR from the effects of other marketing disciplines; however, it is increasingly requested by clients that media analysis is mapped against website hits, phone calls, share price and advertising activity to name a few. It is also possible to iron out effects of seasonality and other external factors that may affect audience response to PR through econometric modeling.
Agencies often argue that clients are not willing to invest in measurement. What is your take on this?
There is still a long way before media evaluation becomes standard practice in the PR industry on a global scale with many agencies happy to sit in the comfort zone of counting clippings as a key measure of performance.
However, with the spotlight on marketing budgets and a trend towards increased investment in more accountable and results-driven marketing, PR practitioners are being forced to use credible measures and consider evaluation as key in any comms programme.
The industry standard investment in evaluation is approximately 5% of the PR budget. If a PR can't afford to use an agency for third-party evaluation, it can be done in-house, for example, the volume of coverage generated each week, or most prominent journalists and number of articles in key titles.
Metrica is a UK-based media evaluation, PR planning and market research consultancy.
© Gulf Marketing Review 2007
