Building reputations takes time, and creating a robustly positive public perception requires consistent, sustained messaging and intelligent, strategic thought. Put simply, it isn’t something that just happens overnight – and even if it did, how would you go about measuring it?
The question of how to quantify and measure a successful PR campaign is one which has divided the industry for as long as I can remember. Advertising value equivalents, readership figures, key messaging – they certainly provide a yardstick by which to measure campaigns, but they still don’t fully represent the true breadth or power of PR.
Justifying the value of public relations is a battle most practitioners have been engaged in from day one of their careers. However, occasionally, we receive the kind of instant results that prove without a shadow of a doubt just how powerful our craft can be.
Case in point: just this week, a franchising client reported that an article we placed had directly generated no less than twenty enquiries from potential franchisees.
For a fledgling business in the midst of a major rollout plan, this is a major result with the potential to generate considerable revenue long term for the brand. If even just one of those enquiries converts, the return on investment would be phenomenal. And all thanks to a 300 word article that took less than a day to organise.
Could a single ad placement achieve the same result for the same negligible investment? I seriously doubt it. And yet ad agencies rarely have to work as hard as we do to prove their worth. If you ask me, it’s about time some parity was established in the marketing industry and the unsung heroes (that’s us, in case you hadn’t gathered) are given the recognition we deserve. Who’s with me?
