The ultimate guide to measuring PR success in B2B
What is PR?
Public relations (PR) is the strategic communication process that builds and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between organisations and their publics. In the B2B space, PR plays a crucial role in shaping the perceptions of your brand among key stakeholders, including customers, investors, partners, and industry influencers. Effective PR helps to enhance your brand’s reputation, increase visibility, and ultimately drive business success.
The challenges with measuring PR
One of the most significant challenges in PR is proving its value. You might secure impressive media coverage, but the question often arises: “So what?” How does this coverage translate into real business outcomes? This challenge stems from the difficulty in directly linking PR efforts to tangible ROI. Because of this, PR is sometimes not taken seriously by senior leaders, leading to underinvestment in what could be a powerful driver of business growth.
The reality is that traditional PR measurements often fail to capture the full impact of a campaign. Without clear metrics, it’s challenging to articulate the power of PR in a way that resonates with the C-suite. As a result, many B2B companies struggle to justify their PR investments.
Outdated PR measurements
Over the years, several methods have been used to quantify the value of PR, but many of these are now considered outdated. One of the most common is advertising value equivalency (AVE), which estimates the value of editorial coverage by comparing it to the cost of an equivalent amount of advertising space or time. While AVE provides a monetary figure, it oversimplifies the impact of PR by equating it with paid advertising, ignoring the credibility and influence of earned media.
Another outdated metric is clip counting, where PR success is measured by the number of media mentions or articles generated. While it’s useful to know how much coverage a campaign has garnered, this metric fails to account for the quality of the coverage or its relevance to the target audience.
These outdated methods fall short in today’s data-driven business environment, where senior leaders expect clear, measurable outcomes that align with business objectives.
Digital PR: a more measurable form of PR
Digital PR has emerged as a more effective and measurable approach to public relations. Unlike traditional PR, which focuses on print and broadcast media, digital PR leverages online platforms to increase brand visibility and drive traffic to your website. A key strategy within digital PR is creating data-led stories. Brands use compelling data to craft narratives that resonate with journalists and online publications. The headlines of these stories are shared with journalists, sparking interest and encouraging them to cover the story. The more detailed data remains on the brand’s website, serving as a resource for readers.
This approach not only attracts media coverage but also “earns” backlinks—links from external sites pointing back to the brand’s content. These backlinks are valuable because they drive traffic to your website and enhance your site’s authority, contributing to improved search engine rankings. This method of earning backlinks through data-led stories makes digital PR inherently more measurable, as it leaves a digital footprint that can be tracked and analysed. By focusing on data-driven content, digital PR aligns closely with business objectives, offering clear evidence of its impact on key metrics like website traffic and lead generation.
Measuring the impact of digital PR: coverage and backlinks
One of the key advantages of digital PR is the ability to track the impact of coverage and backlinks.
Coverage can be measured not just by the number of mentions but by the quality and relevance of the publications that feature your brand. High-quality coverage in respected industry publications can enhance your brand’s credibility and authority.
Backlinks are another critical metric in digital PR. A backlink is a link from an external site to your website, and it serves as a vote of confidence in your content. Backlinks provide three distinct benefits to your brand:
1. Increased website traffic: Backlinks drive visitors from the referring website to your brand’s site. When these links come from high-authority sites, the traffic is often more targeted and engaged, leading to higher conversion rates.
2. Improved domain authority: The more high-quality backlinks your site earns, the more search engines perceive it as a trustworthy and authoritative source. This boosts your domain authority, which can lead to better search engine rankings and increased visibility in organic search results.
3. Enhanced SEO performance: Backlinks are a significant factor in search engine algorithms. High-quality backlinks improve your site’s search rankings, increasing organic traffic and visibility. This, in turn, supports your broader business objectives by driving potential leads and customers to your website.
By tracking the number and quality of backlinks earned through digital PR efforts, you can demonstrate how PR is contributing to improved SEO, increased website traffic, and ultimately, lead generation. This clear linkage between PR activities and business outcomes makes digital PR a powerful tool in your communications strategy.
Keep it aligned to business objectives
No matter how effective your PR campaign is, it’s invaluable if it doesn’t align with your business goals. The ultimate measure of PR success is how well it supports your company’s strategic objectives. For example, if your goal is to enter a new market, the success of your PR efforts should be measured by how well they build brand awareness and credibility in that market.
Similarly, if your objective is to drive lead generation, then PR success should be measured by the number of high-quality leads generated from your PR activities. This alignment ensures that PR isn’t just a vanity project but a strategic tool that contributes to the company’s overall growth and success.
Conclusion
Measuring the success of PR in B2B requires a shift from outdated metrics to more modern, digital approaches. By focusing on digital PR and aligning your efforts with business objectives, you can demonstrate the true value of PR to senior leaders. This not only justifies investment in PR but also positions it as a critical component of your overall business strategy.
Read the report
Ready to take your PR strategy to the next level? Our full report on measuring PR success in B2B offers detailed insights and practical guidance on how to shift from outdated metrics to more effective, digital approaches.
Download the full report now and start proving the value of your PR efforts.
