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.