Evaluating the Effectiveness of PR and Communications: Methods, Approaches, and Trends

In PR agencies, analytics is typically the responsibility of the project manager themselves; in only 36% of cases is it a dedicated specialist or a subcontracted team (10%). In in-house settings, it's the PR manager themselves in 65% of cases, and another 20% is someone on the PR agency team working with the company. Only 15% of respondents specifically identified the in-house analytics function.

The most popular and universal metrics for assessing media presence, serving as KPIs, are Share of Voice and potential reach (OTS, media outreach). In-house teams are more likely to focus on social media metrics and relatively frequently assess the penetration of key messages. Agency teams more often assess the tone of the information space, evaluate publication formats, and evaluate the share of publications in target media; overall, their set of metrics is usually more diverse. Of the audience and non-financial business metrics, brand awareness and brand trust, measured using survey methods, were the most widely used. Evaluating the dynamics of search and referral traffic is also common. However, only 20% of in-house communicators and 14% of agency communicators evaluate their work using brand audience growth metrics (subscribers, active readers, etc.).

About 40% of surveyed communicators do not even attempt to track or consider financial business metrics in the context of their KPIs or points of influence. Fifteen percent of agency communicators and 21% of in-house communicators evaluate the impact of their work on commercial metrics (increase in average order value, increase in repeat purchases, increase in customer lifetime value, and decrease in bounce rate).

PR Value and other derivatives of the equivalent advertising cost of publication are used by the majority of agency communicators (54%) and remain popular with in-house teams (39%). More than half of the in-house PR professionals surveyed (62%) do not use any integrated metrics. The main reasons are a lack of understanding of how to apply them correctly and their redundancy compared to standard metrics. Agency communicators, however, remain the primary integrators of integrated metrics; the majority of PR professionals surveyed in this category (55%) use them.

The vast majority of PR professionals surveyed (98% of those from both agencies and companies) do not implement annual reviews as a regular practice. Annual reports remain a "special event," despite the growing demand for assessing the strategic impact of PR and communications on business.