Raina Lazarova, co-founder of PR firm Ruepoint and chair at the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC): "Communication is a multi-faceted discipline and measuring its effectiveness should reflect the complexity of channels, objectives and stakeholders it looks to engage with. What shouldn’t be used to measure communication are purely output-based, media-centric metrics such as number of mentions, media reach, impressions, AVEs. Vanity metrics will tell us nothing about the success of our PR strategy and campaigns.

"Meaningful metrics should aim to capture how our messages have landed in our target media, what is the tone of the coverage, if our spokespeople have amplified the message in the way we intended and ultimately what our target audiences feel about our brand. The latter can be measured in higher engagement levels, higher subscription rates, better conversion rates, increased brand awareness, customer satisfaction.

"A holistic measurement programme will include all of the above and some form of impact-based metric i.e. how communication has contributed to organisational success. The metrics here include increased sales, profitability, higher investment levels. It is clear that communication alone cannot effect change but being able to plot a trend line between PR activities and long-term results should be the ultimate objective of any measurement."

Lydia Woodward, consultant at PR firm LMW PR: “The most valuable, actionable feedback tends to come from one-to-one conversations with a few comms champions, spread across different functions... I like to build relationships with operators across HR, product, sales, as well as investors and end customers outside the company, and identify key individuals who show a strong interest in our work. I’ll aim to grab coffee with them at least quarterly so we can discuss how PR activity has impacted their operations, how they’re leveraging PR wins, and any new challenges on the horizon that PR could support with.

"An engineer asking, ‘Did you see that article about us in the paper?!’ highlighted an area of the business that didn’t understand what PR folks do and whose expertise was being underutilised in our thought leadership efforts. Informal but intentional feedback conversations are the best way to make sure nothing slips between the cracks.”

Gabriella Smith, consultant at PR firm Gabriella Lucy PR: “Instead of thinking about traditional PR metrics such as reach, which can make tracking ROI difficult, consider how PR can work alongside other channels to more accurately measure success. One of the best ways to measure success is to implement an SEO-first PR strategy, so coverage and links help to increase the overall organic visibility of your brand and boost organic traffic to your site — which will ultimately increase the volume of customers you generate. You can use SEO and customer data to look at where your competitors are securing coverage and links, and the publications your key target customers are reading. Outreaching to a targeted media list this way will not only help your brand gain market share from competitors; it could increase brand awareness amongst your target audience.”

Rhea Freeman, PR consultant: "It can be very challenging to measure the effectiveness of PR. Sometimes, it's obvious and you can feel, read or see a tide turning, but other times it is a lot more subtle. We need to think about our target audience for whatever message, and where they might be sharing their thoughts and opinions; are they part of groups or forums online, or active on specific social media platforms? 

"Equally, if a brand is active on specific platforms, what kind of comments get shared below relevant content? This can be used to help judge people's feelings on issues and whether or not they're aware of what you're talking about. Equally, questionnaires and surveys to mailing lists can be a useful way of tracking effectiveness. Looking at responses or contact forms online, and any method that people can contact a brand can be used as markers. It's a hard one to talk about in general terms, as it very much depends on what the PR is about. If it's around crisis, for example, the tone of the national press could well be an indication on how effective (or not) your campaign has been."

Richard Bagnall, partner at Comms Clarity Consulting: "As there has never been a single objective for PR, PR tactic or PR campaign, so there cannot be a single metric that measures its effectiveness. The metrics that matter will always depend on what it is that we’re trying to do. This means that to find me the metrics to measure PR, we must link the organisational objectives our PR and comms activity are driving to a credible plan to evolve performance based on benchmarked data. To measure the success, we then blend the measurement of our activity (frequently, but not only, media content metrics) with data that shows the target audience response in terms of their thinking and behaviours. 

"In the measurement world we refer to this as the audience’s outtakes and outcomes. By pulling this all together, we can show the organisational impact of our work. The Integrated Evaluation Framework by global comms evaluation professional body AMEC provides a clear, interactive step by step guidance on how to do this, including loads of recommendations for appropriate metrics at each step of the process. And companies like Comms Clarity Consulting can help you and your teams succeed too."

Chris Hopper, head of research and analytics at Citypress: “The days of PR measurement involving just a basic report with media coverage, reach or – heaven forbid – AVE are long gone, thankfully. Today we use an array of different measurement and analytics systems as the foundation for brand-defining work. The holy grail is always being able to demonstrate real impact. Where lead-generation is a big factor, we’re helping show how campaigns have moved customers down the marketing funnel towards conversion, but success isn’t always so simple. We often need to demonstrate how work is building brand equity, or the degree to which it is creating engagement and advocacy from employees, customers, stakeholders or a particular community.

“Encouragingly, we’re seeing ever more clients recognise the value in primary research that measures how their audiences are responding as a result of communications activity. In a world where reputation can account for 50% of a brand’s value, our propriety tool allows clients to understand the strength of their reputation and the actions needed to improve it.

“Finally, we recently launched our Regional Advocacy & Intelligence Unit, which helps brands to understand how their reputation varies across the UK. The general election results demonstrated that “UK citizens” isn’t one amorphous group, so understanding how people think, feel and act in different parts of Britain is crucial to making a meaningful, positive connection across the country. Given the government’s plan to ‘turbocharge devolution’, making those connections will be more important than ever for businesses.”

Luana Ribeira, founder of PR firm Dauntless PR: "The success and effectiveness of a PR campaign should be measured by the number and quality of the placements, the audience figures and the overall response to the campaign. Businesses should also include any growth in social following, revenue and client retention over an extended period of time. It's crucial that business owners understand when tracking PR, however, not to look at each individual piece and try to monitor what results came of that piece. PR is indirect and any credit when tracking this way will go to their direct marketing. What PR does is amplify these strategies and help them to work better. Therefore, the best way of tracking is to look at the overall growth in the business over a long term period after PR was introduced to enhance their existing marketing strategy."