Short answer – YES!

And if you go on to the Web, you’ll find a metaphorical million people saying so.

They usually arrogantly label their opinion as one of their amazing ‘insights’ (read: statement of the bloomin’ obvious).

But they rarely suggest what a good system of PR metric might be. They just criticise the current status quo.

It makes me think of the great phrase (don’t know who said it first) ‘It’s easy to criticise, hard to create.’

You’ll recognise this, I’m sure.

Just think of gazillions of critics (often abusive) on most subjects on social media compared with the almost-impossible-to-find person who comes up with an even halfway constructive and positive suggestion.

Back, then, to the main subject.

How do you measure the value of PR?

I’d like to concentrate on B2B (that’s what I know best).

The main point I have to make is that we have to differentiate between discrete and mass audiences.

If you sell an SME business app online (direct), then your audience could be any SME. There are about 1.6-1.8 million actual trading companies in the UK, the vast majority of which are SMEs. So that’s an audience of a million plus – as mass audience.

If you’re an insurance company selling through the broker channel, then you know who your audience is. In fact you know who the individuals are. And your audience size is probably a few thousand. Is that a mass audience? Not really. And you can probably whittle the broker community down into a hierarchy of likely interested parties (part of your basic marketing and comms planning). So these audiences can be reached direct and the most important addressed individually or as small groups.

If you’re an industrial technology company selling machine controls, then your total prospect universe might literally a few hundred.

If you’re a specialist service provider to challenger banks, we’re now talking about a few score prospects.

OK – so what does that mean for PR and its measurement?

Reach, Advertising Value Equivalents, engagements…. they’re all useless.

You know who the people you want to reach are.

So it’s not really about volume… it’s about WHO.

Lord knows how many times we have to say this clients…

…build up a network of the known people you need to reach – DM or LinkedIn…

…serve up your PR content and publication successes directly to them…

…then look at WHO is interacting.

If one or two of the right people are engaging with your comms, then you’re on the right track.

And unless you look at WHO, then any volume measurement (which is easy, but completely useless) is utterly irrelevant.

In short, the really sophisticated marketers we deal with have clocked this. They use it in their monthly and annual reporting. And as soon as top management start to see it, they recognise its value and – with the zeal of the convert – will countenance no other form of reporting thereafter!

I hope you find these bulletins entertaining. I’m happy to discuss all relevant engagements – from customer community creation, to directorial mentoring, to strategy development, to thought-leadership content development, to full campaign structuring and management, and more.

Do get in touch!