PR KPI’s that Matter

KPIs or key performance indicators are a great way to assess goals. There are KPIs in PR that drive business impact.

Understanding KPIs in PR helps to assess the effectiveness of PR campaigns.

Given below are some important PR KPIs that every PR professional needs to measure the success of those campaigns.

Media Mentions

A media mention refers to any mention of a brand’s name or message in the press or on any online platform.

It is a fundamental KPI. These are valuable as they normally take place on reputed channels. There are tools available that measure this KPI, such as Hootsuite.

Potential Reach

Potential reach is a traditional KPI. This focuses on viewership, circulation, and listenership of an outlet.

This helps to understand the effectiveness of a media placement.

This also includes website visitors.

The reach could be paid reach or organic reach.

Paid reach includes the number of customers that can be reached through ads and organic reach includes the number of customers that can be reached with the help of unpaid content distribution.

This encompasses profile views and page views.

Media Impressions

They are interactions between content and audience. It is the calculation of the number of times any content is consumed.

The content could appear on a billboard, a newspaper article, or a blog post.

Media impressions help to measure PR efforts, Media impressions are determined by the number of times a particular piece of content is displayed.

Share of Voice

Share of voice is the percentage of coverage a brand gets compared to its competitors.

It is an important KPI as it helps brands to gauge their position within an industry.

If a brand gains more coverage compared to its competitors, the strength of a particular media mention can be measured.

There are different tools available for voice such as Brandwatch and Talkwalker. Competitive analysis is valuable, a business has to know the share of market of each of its competitors.

Share of voice also helps to measure the awareness of a brand on different social media platforms.

Website Traffic

Website traffic may not be an accurate measurement of impact of a PR campaign as any article on a website may continue to drive traffic for months.

In spite of that, tracking the number of visitors who clicked on a website can be helpful. Google analytics is a tool which helps to monitor website traffic.

Social Media Engagement

Social media engagement aims to motivate the audience to take action after they have come across content.

The audience can retweet or repost content. This helps to measure how many people have gone through a post that mentions a brand.

A post that goes viral can show that a brand is relevant and resonates with the target audience.

Brands often use videos and infographics to increase engagement.

Text-based content may not always successfully capture the attention of the audience. Comments, likes, and shares can also be considered to be engagement.

Ronn Torossian is the Founder & Chairman of 5W Public Relations, one of the largest independently-owned PR firms in the United States.

With over 20 years of experience crafting and executing powerful narratives, Torossian is one of America’s most prolific and well-respected Public Relations professionals.