Impact Analysis More Important Than Ever

With social media and Web-based communications coming on so strong, some PR folks are debating whether the old method of providing return on investment stats is a thing of the past. For years (it feels like centuries, actually), PR folks have measured editorial coverage against the cost of comparably-sized advertising, figuring in what the client has spent on PR services to determine an ROI.

That approach speaks to clients who are always looking to see what they are getting for their investment in PR. Never mind that some of the most impactful publicity might appear in low-cost media, or that you can't put a dollar value on the third-party endorsement of media coverage.

With pay-per-click and Web analytics, clients are experiencing results in ways that they never could with traditional advertising. And so, they are looking for similar stats from PR.

And, just to be a little cynical, you have to wonder if some PR folks are eager to ditch ROI analysis because there aren't so many expensive magazines to measure against. Newspaper and Web-based ads cost way less than the glossy four-color print ads in magazines. ROI can shrink pretty drastically in the face of that. So, ROI is not as impressive.

So is ROI dead? No. But it can't be asked to stand alone in the face of scrutiny. That's where reach becomes increasingly important.

And impact analysis — determining if you actually reached the target markets the client wanted you to aim for — is critical.

It's a new day dawning. And half the excitement is figuring out how to communicate the value of PR in concrete ways that speak to the client.