We as Public Relations or corporate communications professionals are incessantly asked about the ROI (return on investment) on a particular initiative. What I’ve put together below could be a way to answer to that crucial question. We could actually look at it as three different aspects or phases of measuring the success of a particular public relations campaign.

Three levels of measuring public relations effectiveness have been identified by Dr. Walter K. Lindenmann, Senior Vice President and Director of Research at Ketchum Public Relations. He labels the basic level “outputs”, the intermediate level “outgrowths” and the advanced level “outcomes”.

1. Outputs measures message transmission and the initiative response
2. Outgrowths measures message reception with immediate reaction
3. Outcomes measures attitude and behavioral change

Outputs

Outputs of a particular PR campaign will be with respect to the initiative that was undertaken; like that of a press release announcing a product launch being sent out and ‘x+1′ number of publications carrying it. A direct impact of the proposed plan of targeting ‘x’ number of publications. The client is quite satisfied since we send him the scanned copies of clips as well as the detailed status on the achieved media coverage. This is termed as Target Media Reach. Few more ways to measure the output and the success of the campaign are:

Circulation – provide the circulation figures in case of print media. Similarly, providing TRP for television on real time basis and listenership for radio, this is revised on a weekly basis. The possibility of the total potential exposure to the message in the feature or the news article can be hence calculated.

Target Audience Reach – have you targeted the right media to reach your target audience? Case in point would be a cornflakes company targeting parents highlighting the nutritional value. In such a case, it is imperative to include niche magazines like Parenting, Prevention and other vertical publications in our media plan. One challenge here, that could be faced, is that of periodicity of the magazine. We could look at creating and including customized initiatives around the vertical magazines to gain mileage and required publicity. This will surely help in reaching out to the desired target audience with the desired, customized messaging, rather than merely relying on coverage through a press release being sent to them.

Impressions – the number of times an article has appeared in a particular publication should also be calculated. These articles should be checked for all the right messages. Then, these articles then should be multiplied with circulations figures.

Delivery of Message Points – We are in the profession to form the right impression. For that, we need to create the right messages, in the right media and to the right audience. If all the messages that were designated (or desired) to be published, are published, we would be successful in our campaign?

Competitive Analysis – All the above mentioned parameters can be used similarly for the competing brands and evaluated and compared to our brand. From a tactical perspective, this helps in gauging the competitor’s media presence in terms of media type and frequency, which helps us implement our own media plan much more efficiently and effectively.

My next article will highlight success based on the other measurement techniques under Outgrowths and Outcomes!! Let me know if you want to add any other parameter to Outputs.

(This is the first in the three part series on measuring the success of a Public Relations Campaign)

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