This presentation covers the different arguments on media coverage analysis. For a long time the Public relations industry in India has been facing one of the major hurdles on coverage analysis. Here is my perspective on how media coverage can be measured.

1. Measurement &
Evaluation
Moses Gomes

2. 60% of CEOs believe word of mouth has
become more influential in terms of a company’s
business than three years ago.
 71.5% believe online social media outreach can
be effective for corporate communications.
 62.5% of CEOs will be more concerned with ROI
from PR activities in 2010 than they were in
2008
 25.5% of CEOs rarely or never attempt to
measure the success of PR.


3. Situation analysis
Increasing demand from business leaders to
justify marketing spend.
 Shift away from business unit-focused
measurement to campaign evaluation.
 New social media tools allow for more direct
understanding of customer reaction.
 Desire to better understand how PR can impact
the customer.


4. What’s hard about measuring ROI?
MAPPING PR EFFORT
TO THE RIGHT RESULTS!

5. The PR Value Chain
The change
we create
• Customer
preference
• Sales leads
Our
directive
Business Goal
Marketing
Objectives
Outcomes*
• Web traffic
• Sales
RETURN!
Outtakes*
PR Plan
The
impact
we have
• Awareness
• Favorability
• Message
recall
Output*
PR Activity
• Coverage
The result
we achieve
• Event
attendance
• SEO
What
we do
Our
aspirations

6.  The
final step in your planning is to determine
how you will measure and define “success”

This will be the metric used to determine if your
campaign was a success or failure
 At
the end of your campaign, you should
evaluate based on the metric that was agreed
upon at the beginning

7. Why Evaluate?







To document success
To encourage future work
To justify your expenses
To improve your future campaigns
To build credibility
To determine a basis for the next campaign
To promote the value of PR in your organization

8. The Communication Funnel

9. Overview of the Evaluation
Process





ROI/ROE or
ROE+ROI?
Best Practices
Benchmark
Realistic Goals &
Measurable Objectives
Set Timeline

Establish Methods





Measure
Evaluate


Qualitative
Quantitative
“Triangulate”
Against Benchmark
Recommend Action

10. Secondary
Qualitative
Triangulation
Quantitative

11.  Triangulation



Use both qualitative and quantitative methods to
better describe, understand, predict, and control
public relations campaigns
Provides both representative sampling and indepth knowledge of the publics or audiences
under study
Takes the case study into the “real” world

12. Best Practices

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14. Things to Consider
 Was
the campaign well planned?
 Did the recipients understand the message?
 What improvements can be made?
 Did you achieve your stated goals?
 Was the budget adequate?
 What is replicable for future campaigns?

15. Measuring Success
 There
is a tendency for many PR
practitioners to measure their output, rather
than the achievement of their goals


For example, collecting press clippings is not
enough
Evaluating the cm X cm X .per cm advt cost

16. Measurement
 In
order to measure success, you must first
define it
 As part of your research and strategic
planning phase, you and your client need to
agree on realistic goals for accomplishment
 This ensures that your work will be
recognized and disagreements will be
minimized

17. Examples
A
defined increase in sales
 A specific number of mentions in the press
 A measured increase in public awareness of
a brand or service
 A pre-determined increase in customer direct
inquiries about a product or service

18. Clients from Hell
 The
worst case scenario is ambiguous, illdefined goals
 This invites the client to challenge your work
and effectiveness

19. Clip Counting
A
physical counting of press placements will
measure productivity
 This may not truly represent success
 There is a temptation to send out excessive
releases to manipulate the perception of
productivity (and add to the client’s bill)

20. Public Relations Evaluation
Methods

Surveys and Polls





Descriptive
Explanatory
Attitude
Opinion Polls
Content Analysis



Descriptive
Readability
Readership
Communication Audit
 Focus Group
 Field Observation



Participant-Observe
Interview
Case Study
 Triangulation


21. Example
A
campaign for a new soda is mentioned in
several newspapers and magazines
 Add up the circulation of these publications to
get the estimated “media impressions”

22. Media Impressions
 Useful
to track the penetration of a message
 However, the number can be misleading
 This number does not reflect how many
people actually saw the message – only how
many were exposed to it

23. Advertising Value Equivalency
 Since
story placements are “free,” there is an
equivalent rupee value for the exposure
 What would it have cost your client to get the
same sort of exposure via paid placement
advertising?
 The AVE calculates the estimated value of
the exposure (in ad rupee)

24. AVE
 AVE
helps to justify the expense of your PR
campaign costs
 However, it is not without controversy


Not all media coverage is positive
The value of the story space requires some
subjective judgment and is prone to exaggeration

25. Systematic Content Analysis
 Many
of these software programs track the
intricacies of the media coverage



Positive vs. negative coverage
Relationship of the coverage vs. your competitors
Contextualization of your coverage compared to
the overall placement opportunities in the media
outlet

26. Other Forms of Evaluation
 Monitor

the Internet
This includes “gripe groups” (anti-client blogs)

27. Cost per Person
 It
can be difficult to compare the value of
impressions across various forms of media
 The CPM (cost per thousand) index helps
you assign a rupee value to the expense of
reaching 1,000 people in a particular media
genre

28. Calculating CPM
 Divide
the total number of media impressions
by the cost of your campaign
 Example:
A INR 10,00,000 campaign that
reaches INR 1,00,00,000 people would have
a CPM of INR 10. (It costs INR10 to reach
1,000 people).

29. Monitoring Online Chatter

PR Newswire recently launched eWatch, a
service that allows you to track what people
are saying about your client online

30. Measurement of Audience
Awareness
 How
many people know about your message
or campaign?
 You can conduct surveys to determine the
“audience awareness”

31. “Audience Attitudes”
 How
does the public feel about your
company, brand, product or service?
 You can measure “audience attitudes” using
benchmark studies that test attitudes both
before and after exposure to the message

32. Audience Action
 What
action does the audience take as a
result of the exposure to your message?




Do they buy your product?
Do they talk about you?
Did they request more information?
Did they enter your contest?

33. Conclusion
1.
2.
3.
4.
Without a benchmark, we have no way to
evaluate
Evaluation is process-oriented: knowledgebased and behaviorally-driven
We can evaluate public relations, but what we
evaluate toward is not exactly what some call
“ROI”; ROE must be constantly evaluated to
better predict ROI
We can collect, analyze, evaluation and
recommend courses of action