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Measuring Success

Evaluating a Public Relation Campaign

In today's competitive economy, public relations practitioners become increasingly accountable to top management. Be it a corporate PR department or a dedicated agency, public relations professionals need to justify our existence by showing specific results. Yet, in this business of managing attitudes and reputations, the task of precisely measuring our efforts is as challenging as the business of providing effective PR. How does one measure an intangible like "friendship" or "sympathyi" Despite the difficulties involved, a professional needs a clear understanding of whether or not his efforts were on target.

Amazingly enough, The 2001 Media Relations Reality Check study reports that, even in the United States, the motherland of PR, 82 percent of practitioners use traditional clip books and tape logs as measurement tools and 50 percent rely on gut feeling. While a comprehensive evaluation of a campaign is a time-consuming and costly effort, we propose a combination of tactics that will help in measuring results of public relations work without taking a heavy toll on undersized PR budgets.

There are several approaches to evaluating effectiveness: study of the target audience, result evaluation and reputation analysis. Result evaluation is probably the simplest and most reliable method although its success depends on the objectives formulated for a specific campaign. To serve as a yardstick, an objective needs to be specific and measurable. Good examples would be "To achieve 75% awareness of the product among the target audiences," or "To receive 15 hits in trade press." This second example could be further refined by specifying "hits" as dedicated stories or mentions. Once a PR campaign is completed, its effectiveness is determined by measuring the results against the set objectives. Although this method might yield an incomplete picture of a campaign's results, a study of the target audience and reputation analysis can help to "fill in the blanks."

A study of the target audience measures:
- company or brand recognition; 
- attitudes of the target group;
- behavior patterns of the audience.

The purpose of studying the target audience is to determine a shift in any of these parameters as a result of a public relations campaign.

When analyzing reputation, PR specialists rely primarily on two techniques: a benchmark study of a company's reputation (for example, through a reputation audit), followed by an in-depth analysis of the change in perception of the company by the public. The first technique is beneficial when developing a communication strategy while the second method is needed to determine how the PR campaign affected the company's reputation.

Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used to study target audiences and to measure a company's reputation. Quantitative methods, which include surveys, questionnaires, and opinion polls, are widely used for sociological and marketing purposes and yield arguably the most comprehensive and reliable data on the public perception of a company. Yet, they have one major drawback -- they are fairly expensive. Conversely, qualitative methods are relatively inexpensive as they do not involve a large number of participants. Such methods include content analysis, focus groups, interviews, expert examination, and media analysis.

No matter what other methods are included in a review, media analysis can provide important information on how a key message was interpreted and transmitted to the public. Essential in the initial stages of a campaign to identify media targets, it is also useful at the end of a campaign, when it is used to evaluate the actual "hits." Initially, media analysis describes the target audience of a media outlet as measured against the target audience of the campaign. Then, it offers an examination of a medium's psychographic profile (its style and tone). In the final stage of the process, researchers analyze texts of articles to determine whether the message was interpreted correctly and whether it was easy to understand and clear to the public.

Public relations is a multifaceted profession, and there is no universal, "one-size-fits-all" evaluation method. It is up to us to determine what methods best meet our needs for each specific program or project. Evaluating the effectiveness of a short-term project is clearly different from evaluating that of a lengthy campaign. Media relations and government relations programs have different purposes and target different audiences. Yet, in all cases, the objective set in the initial stage of a campaign is paramount whether the goal is to improve a reputation or to successfully conduct a special event. A PR effort should be focused and continuous, and at the end of the day, its effectiveness vastly depends on the practitioner's ability to monitor its success throughout the process.