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07/11/2005

Public Relations ROI. Fact or Oxymoron?

Does PR work, and how do you measure it? That's the topic this week over at the Revenue Roundtable. Here's my post kicking off the discussion -- hope you join in at the Roundtable.

Got your attention?

To not waste time, I’ll tell you my opinion right up front. I believe PR works and can be one of the most effective tools in your marketing arsenal. For more background, read my post on how to define a good pr strategy.

The problem is: how do you prove it? As with its more glamourous sister, Advertising, it is often hard to trace a lead back to the PR campaign that may have generated it.

And, unfortunately, many PR firms deflect the request to prove it with fat clip books as a measure of increased brand awareness. Which doesn’t answer the question: is the Public Relations effort delivering prospects?

When I was at SurfControl, we tracked PR hits against downloads of trial software from the company Web site. After a major hit, downloads increased by a significant factor, for about 2-5 days, depending in the breadth and depth of the coverage, and then returned to normal levels. Proof positive of a definite relationship between PR and leads.

What do you do in your business to measure public relations?

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Check out the Selling to Big Companies blog by one of my colleagues on the Roundtable, Jill Konrath. She recently posted about a freeware tool called Bullfighter that will help you clean out the jargon from your written communications.

Posted @ 11:07AM in Marketing, PR