New PR media measurement techniques can show a direct link between PR and sales results.

The rapid advances in PR measurement techniques are helping support the huge increases in PR budgets in the marketing arena, sometimes at the expense of advertising.

PR measurement is focused around its media generation role. Most measurement seeks to analyse media exposure – which is similar to the traditional advertising approach that marketing and brand managers are familiar, and comfortable, with.

LEVEL ONE - REACH: The most fundamental – and least costly media measurement – is to evaluate the impact of PR outputs – measuring the effectiveness of the work done. Typically this measurement will cover: media reach – number of media, number of readers; message delivery – did the story deliver the pre-determined messages and what was the tone. The advantage of this is that helps tell the organisation using PR whether the communication of their messages is reaching the desired target audiences. The disadvantage is that it is only measuring the organisation’s communication and taking no account of competitors.

LEVEL TWO - COMPARISON: The second level of media measurement is the equivalent of the traditional advertising ‘share of voice’ approach. This tracks the organisation and its competitors. It provides the advantage of knowing how much media coverage and of what type it obtained relative to its competitors. Combined with the first level it provides most organisations with a good evaluation tool.

LEVEL THREE – SHARE OF DISCUSSION: Increasingly the measurement techniques at the second level are being analysed on a different basis - their correlation with sales patterns. The hypothesis about Share of Discussion is that if: a) PR can increase the amount of public (principally media driven) discussion about a topic, and b) It can gain the majority share (or dominance) for its client or product, then c) It is likely that there will be a consequent increase in sales for that product/competitor after a period of time. The method of analysing public discussion, and the relative weighting between the parties, involves distinguishing between positive, neutral and negative mentions in order to arrive at each competitors ‘net favourable media value’ and then their final ‘share of discussion’.