Public relations is the business of sending the right messages to the right people in the right places, building a brand’s reputation along the way. Successful PR campaigns require an understanding of the interests and concerns of a brand’s audience, but how do you measure the value of PR?
To fully understand the quantitative impact and value of a PR campaign, you also need to consider the qualitative impact: What was the tone of the article? Quality? Placement? With digital and online advertising, brands and agencies can assume things about their customers, but armed with media monitoring software, they can see how customers engage, set up alerts regarding mentions, and gain clarity into what efforts they’re responding to.
PR professionals define key audiences prior to launching a campaign. For example, how a 13-year-old vegetarian interacts with media – familiarize yourself with Gen Z demographic trends here – is probably different than a 61-year-old lawyer’s approach. Finding what appeals to your target demographic involves a thorough research process, spanning reports, social media, media placements and more.
That brings us to one of the of the most valuable functions of PR: driving a response or reaction. Aside from helping brands be relevant, PR changes customer attitudes and influences human behavior. PR’s value is in its ability to keep tabs on the industry at large and allow that data to inform the company’s next move.
While only a fraction of campaigns are viral successes, in one of these rarer moments, Reebok was able to use NewsWhip Spike to make a quick decision that resulted in massive sales transactions and positive brand association still enviable now. The comprehensive alerts feature in NewsWhip Spike allows PR professionals to receive customized notifications within minutes of a news story, Facebook post, or Tweet and can predict the engagement it will generate over the next few hours, allowing brands to react quickly in crisis, or plan ahead for a new campaign.
Visit the NewsWhip Research Center: It’s the central intelligence hub of NewsWhip where we regularly publish reports around changes to the social platforms and event-specific insights (Black Friday, Christmas, Super Bowl, World Cup, Brexit, Presidential Elections and much more). This multidisciplinary team is comprised of Content Strategists, Editors, Data Scientists, Research Associates and outside partners, including leaders in academia. The center focuses on demystifying the spread of news and information and provides insightful interpretation of the vast social data that surrounds us.
