The Public Relations Blog

Measuring your PR and communication campaigns the right way proves its value

The Barcelona Principles provide best-practice guidelines to measure how well public relations and corporate communication efforts are working. PR isn't sales, yet measuring it correctly helps connect PR to real business results like sales pipeline activity, social media conversions, market share of voice, site traffic, and site rankings. 

No marketing plan is complete without PR. An Entrepreneur article claimed “marketing without PR is like a dream without a goal.” And no marketing and PR plan will be able to prove value if not measured.

It's hard for corporate communications and marketing professionals to be creative

Creativity would be easy if we had unlimited time, budgets, and resources. And since we don't, it can be hard for corporate communications and marketing professionals to be creative. 

We are expected to deliver unique and powerful ideas on the regular for our leadership team, clients, and customers. Sometimes inspiration comes from strange places. Since 2016, in an intentional effort to improve my creativity each day, I've been challenging myself to try new things, do things differently, and take more risks. It's now part of my daily DNA and my personal drive.

WordPress might be the most popular content management system, yet it’s not the best for company websites. There are smarter, safer platforms available that offer the perks of WordPress without the hassle and risk.

The digital age has changed marketing. Old-school tactics, like cold calling and direct mailing, are no longer effective as a means of increasing sales. Consumers have more control over what advertising they encounter, and most mass marketing campaigns are an exercise in futility. To grow leads and sales, you must attract prospective customers through thoughtful, insightful, informative, and entertaining content. In other words, you need a winning inbound marketing strategy.

Public relations software is one of the many important tools for earning media coverage

Every week a prospective client, PR agency peer, or another PR professional asks us:
“what's the best solution for a U.S. news media contact database?”

It’s not an easy answer. It’s like asking “what’s the best automobile?” 

At Axia, we've tried them all. And the simple answer is each has their pros and cons.

No company is safe from crisis as we’ve seen with the coronavirus pandemic. Although your communications strategy and tactics must shift to crisis communications during a time of emergency, it’s still of utmost importance to monitor and evaluate your company’s coverage as it weathers the storm.

You should continue to measure your company communications during a crisis, and you should include these four values in your criteria.

Commercial newswire services charge companies to distribute their news. 

The big players in this space – at least in the U.S. – are Business Wire, Cision PR Newswire, Cision PR Web, GlobeNewswire, etc.

These are often confused with newswire services also known as news agencies.

Over the years, I’ve heard many businesspeople say, “I’m not sure what PR is, but I know our company needs it.”

When people think of public relations, they tend to associate it with news coverage. This is what PR pros call “earned media.” The dictionary defines earned media as “publicity gained through promotional efforts other than paid media advertising.”

Let’s get SMARTER about PR

By now, you’ve probably heard about SMART objectives and using them for PR. We blog about SMART objectives and how to be a SMART communications pro frequently.

There’s a movement to add ER to SMART objectives and push for SMARTER objectives, and we love it! 

In memory of George Floyd...

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