In tribute to our forthcoming PR Masterclass on the intersection of data, planning and measurement, PRmoment's founder Ben Smith caught up with Hard Number’s MD and co-founder, Darryl Sparey to talk about the use of data in public relations.

Sparey has worked at the intersection of data and PR for the last 20 years having previously worked at media measurement organisation Precise. He co-founded Hard Numbers in 2020, and as the name suggests, the business aims to draw a line between PR activation and impact.

Here's how the conversation went:

How does Hard Numbers attempt to link earned media with sales? 

"There’s a number of ways we go about this. At the risk of sounding soft words rather than hard numbers, an important step is to ensure alignment between communications and sales in the first place. Practically, that means spending time with the commercial function of the business to understand what is required from PR and communications. It also means using insights from the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to inform future communications. If we know the top three most commonly occurring objections or reasons for failed opportunities, we can then create on-site and earned media content to tackle these objections, and de-position competitors in relation to them.

"It means, when we secure media coverage for our clients, we are providing sales enablement material so that the commercial teams can share this with their prospects. It also means training all client-facing staff on how LinkedIn’s algorithm works, and how best for them to interact with their company and senior executive's content, so they are amplified on these platforms, and reach their prospects.

"In terms of the analysis and reporting on activity, the key is having access to the client’s Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and CRM system. We then have dashboards we’ve created to bring together insights from our own CRM system that we use at Hard Numbers to manage our relationships with media and stakeholders on our clients’ behalf, alongside the clients’ website traffic and CRM data. We can therefore connect coverage secured with traffic to specific pages to leads generated from those pages in the client’s CRM system. We can show how we’re improving ranking positions for customer acquisition keywords through our efforts, both on-site and off-site, and driving commercial results."

What have you learnt about earned coverage, output and impact KPIs since you founded Hard Numbers?

"Firstly, you have to sweat the earned media asset as hard as you can, across as many channels as you can, to maximise the impact from it. I instinctively knew this when we started out, but data from campaigns that we’ve run over the last four years has proved this to me. So many PR agencies think the job is done when they secure coverage, but that’s when it starts. How are you merchandising that coverage across shared, owned and email channels? How are you getting maximum impact from it, and then tracking the results across those different channels? That is ultimately what should inform Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

"Secondly, from our latest research, the old adage that 'it’s chip paper tomorrow' isn’t true any more. In our latest Coverage To Capital research into reputation and AI, we found that 61% of what Large Language Models (LLMs) say about the world’s top 100 brands is sourced from earned media coverage. Editorial media was found to be particularly influential on answers related to whether a company offered good value for money, driving 72% of answers from ChatGPT. As a result, the earned media coverage you secure for your client or the company you work for has a potentially longer shelf life than you might otherwise think. Having KPIs in relation to securing coverage and key reputation pillars on the channels that most influence LLMs would be a sensible future-proofing strategy for PR."

Does your work differ to other PR firms that don't have a data-led proposition? 

"The short answer is yes. If you want a slightly longer answer, it’s in a couple of areas. For earlier stage businesses, we typically see a strong need for demand generation activities. We execute campaigns which bring together both owned and earned media, using content which we co-create with our clients’ customers. It creates both an initial reason to directly get in contact with our client’s prospects, and a content asset which can be used on-site and off-site to drive coverage, traffic and leads.

"For more mature businesses, increasingly they’re looking to us to help them gain insights from their marketing and communications activities. We can help them bring more of the disparate reporting they get across different territories or regions and different marketing channels to tell a comprehensive story, through data, of what is really driving outcomes for their business. I’d love to do more of this kind of work in 2025, and use our analytics and data expertise as an entry-point into the marketing and communications functions of more enterprise businesses."

Tell us about Hard Numbers’ use of HubSpot as a platform for staff activity. Has that changed how you work?

"HubSpot is the platform we run our business on. As someone who has previously run scaled sales and marketing operations in the media intelligence industry, I found it bizarre that PR agencies don’t have a system of record for the things they routinely say are their most valuable assets; their relationships with journalists and influencers, and their relationships with their clients.

"Our HubSpot CRM system is used to track all our media engagement on our client’s behalf, so at any point we can tell them who we’ve pitched, what the response rate has been, where we have opportunities for coverage, and what the status is with those, in real-time via tailored dashboards. Once we’ve secured coverage, we’re then able to report on the referral traffic, goals and events and leads generated as a result.

"HubSpot hasn’t necessarily changed our work, but it’s just made us much better than traditional PR agencies in tracking and reporting on our activity in real-time, and removed a lot of the reporting overhead. It’s also enabled us to do away with time-sheets, as we’re able to abstract activity data from our CRM. In the future, I’d like to use more predictive analytics to predict the success of campaigns, based on the treasure trove of data we have across thousands of journalists and media outlets, and thousands of items of coverage we’ve generated for our clients. Watch this space…"

If this article has piqued your interest in the use of data in PR, specifically around the areas of planning, creativity and measurement then take a look at our PR Masterclass: The Intersection of Data, Planning and Measurement. it's an absolute cracker! You can read the amazing testimonials of our PR Masterclass series here.