Many PR activities happen online.
Thousands of emails being released at this instant; hundreds of junior PR staffers are calling media contacts to verify they received an event invitation; dozens of clients are hoping to secure coverage.
It’s like using an Oldsmobile instead of Teslas and SpaceX rockets—you’ll get there, but it’ll take time.
Many PR pros agree that PR can be measured, but I often meet professionals who find measurement confusing.
According to the results of the European Communication Monitor 2016 survey, nearly 72 percent of communicators believe big data will change PR. However, only 21 percent of all organizations have implemented data strategies.
Many pros still prefer to fly by the seat of their pants, to use intuition rather than intellectual procedures to solve PR problems. Even though Jim Grunig and Todd Hunt said that over 30 years ago, it still qpplies to PR .
Online PR strategies can be tracked by the data they leave behind. Data should be measured and analyzed for an objective evaluation to guide future campaigns.
Event invitation? There’s an app for that!
PR people wrestle with confirming that media reps will attend their events. First you must send separate, personalized email invitations, then follow-up by phone until you finalize confirmations. Sound familiar?
Many apps exist that can get you through this process more easily. Apps can yield instant data on each stage. Large PR firms could develop their own mobile apps for clients’ events. Such app would make the invitation and follow-up much quicker and cheaper.
All you have to do post-event is to report all the data collected by the app to your client—number of attendees, on-site traffic, journalists’ engagement during phases of the event, etc.
“Hello. Did you get my press release?”
Reporters don’t like this question.
Phoning your media contacts to verify they saw your email was justified five or ten years ago. Today, many pros use CRMs and mass mailing tools to get answers.
So why do we still see journalists’ tweets complaining about phone calls?
A basic PR software media-contact plan costs no more than $100, and all the data and insights you get will save you and your clients a great deal more money.
PR doesn’t sell
If you track your PR campaign’s effectiveness and observe the online behavior of your audience, you can monitor the effect your initiative has on your company’s or your client’s sales.
RELATED: Learn new strategies to tell your story with social media, images and video.
Here’s how it works in a perfect world:
Write a press release and publish it in your online newsroom. Include a link with a tracking code (UTM) to your product website or ecommerce platform. Whoever finds your story interesting posts it online with your links, so all their readers interested in your products can go to your online store. That’s it.
Google Analytics will show you all the people who bought your products on your website after reading the PR-driven article.
That model shows how modern PR drives sales and how it happens. It’s all thanks to data.
Rafal Salak is the communications lead at Prowly.com, a SaaS startup developing PR software for communication professionals.
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