5 great ways to measure success

Are you stuck in a measurement rut? Are you using the same measurement tools you’ve been using since you started out in PR? Maybe now is the time to make a change.

At the end of every activity or any piece of campaign work, it is essential to evaluate what has gone well, what can be improved, what you wouldn’t choose to do again, and the reasons why.

Here are five great tools to answer those questions.

1. Carry out a target-audience perception audit.

A perception audit should never be an audit of the general population, as no brand is targeted at everyone. Sample error and sample bias are common issues with communication audits. A smaller, representative sample of your target audience will deliver far greater results than a large, random survey.

2. Track inquiries and web search results.

If your objective is more leads, inquiries, and Web traffic, then those are the things you measure. At a very basic leve,l you can simply look for an uplift in inquiries around a campaign or over a period of time. If you want to isolate the impact of a PR campaign from other marketing activity and if budgets allow, then using PR to publicize a particular telephone number or creating backlinks that link to a specific website is highly effective.