Public relations are an important part of every business strategy. But how do you know if it is working for you? Here are some key PR benchmarks for 2019 that you can use to measure your success and one outdated benchmark you should ignore.
One key benchmark for public relations is website traffic. You should ideally see an uptick in website traffic as a result of your public relations strategy. Google Analytics can help you trace the source of your website traffic, so you can see if it came from a specific PR blog post, earned media or press release.
Another benchmark to track the success of your public relations is share of voice (SoV). Share of voice refers to the number of times your brand, product or service is mentioned in the media compared to your competitors. If there are 100 articles about your industry, and 30 of them are about your company than your share of voice is 30 percent. The higher your share of voice, the more successful your public relations strategy has been. However, you need to keep in mind that share of voice does not account for nuances in the quality of the mentions. Not every media reference may be positive, for you or for your competitors.
Backlinks are also an effective public relations benchmark this year. A backlink is a link from another website that connects back to your website. They are important because they contribute to the search engine optimization (SEO) of your website. Public relations helps you earn backlinks through press releases, guest blog posts and earned media. The more high-quality backlinks you earn, the better your PR strategy.
A public relations benchmark that you can ignore in 2019 is advertising value equivalency (AVE). Most PR practitioners consider this metric to be an out of date way to measure the effectiveness of your public relations strategy. To calculate AVE, you look at what it would have cost to purchase the amount of advertising space that you earned as a media placement. Because advertising and public relations are very different, AVE is no longer considered a valid way to measure the success of your PR.
Looking to measure the effectiveness of your public relations, or are you looking to start a PR campaign? You should contact the pros at the Borenstein Group, a Top DC marketing agency. Get in touch with us today to get started right away.