Download Making the Link Between Public Relations Initiatives and Sales

Making the Link Between Public Relations Initiatives and Sales Revenue
Tips For Using Web-based Communications and Measurement Tools
By Diane Thieke, Director of Global Public Relations
Factiva®, from Dow Jones
Business managers and public relations (PR) managers inherently understand that public
relations is an essential activity for building awareness among potential customers and for
influencing their actions. But ask a CEO for proof of public relations value and see how he
responds. He may provide you with an anecdote or two, cite a good article in a major publication
or share the results of customer awareness surveys. But he is unlikely to directly tie public
relations results to standard management measures such as revenue.
Despite this inability to link public relations to sales, companies are continuing to invest.
According to Veronis Suhler Stevenson, public relations spending totaled $3.7 billion in 2005 and
will grow by almost 9% a year in the U.S., faster than the overall market for advertising and
marketing. With this kind of investment, making the public relations-to-sales link is critical to
sustaining corporate spending on public relations.
As public relations professionals, we know that much of what we do is intangible and relies on an
indirect correlation between results (press coverage) and outcomes (a change in consumer
behavior). This is further complicated because consumers are the target of multiple marketing
efforts, like direct mail and advertising, so directly tying sales revenues to specific public relations
efforts is notoriously difficult.
While practitioners and academics have been researching and testing various ways to measure
the effect of public relations for more than 60 years, today no single measurement methodology
stands out as the holy grail – the method that indisputably ties public relations to company
success. Instead, the profession relies on a combination of methods, including consumer
research and media monitoring to guide strategy and demonstrate success.
So how can public relations professionals move beyond creating general brand awareness and
address the CEO’s mandate of tying public relations to the bottom line? The Web provides the
opportunity for such a direct link to customers and a tangible way of measuring public relations
programs.
The Web Opportunity
Buyer behavior has changed substantially in the last decade. Millions of people begin their search
for product information not in a store or by watching television, but by conducting research on the
Web. They use a combination of search engines, community sites and Web-based news
services, including premium enterprise-class offerings like Factiva and consumer services such
as Yahoo! News and Google News.
Whether it’s for their professional endeavors or their personal lives, people start with the search,
making the old-line marketing approach of interruption less effective. When people are searching
or browsing, marketers have the opportunity to provide meaningful information at the point of
need, which is a much more effective sales technique than barraging consumers with fluffy
marketing content. By understanding buyers, their issues and how they search, public relations
professionals can present relevant information directly to the consumer at the time of purchase
consideration.
By combining the deep knowledge we have of our organizations and customers, public relations
professionals can develop Web strategies for PR initiatives that tie publicity efforts directly to
sales.
Tips for leveraging the Web in PR initiatives
How do you provide relevant and credible just-in-time information for today’s shopper? It is
important to understand that when people are looking for answers, they search and they browse.
It is important to optimize for both.
1. Targeting Searchers
The first way that people use content is to answer questions, primarily through the use of search
engines; thus organizations must optimize content to be found by searchers. Press releases and
other PR content must use generic descriptors for products or solutions to attract buyers into their
sales process. Take advantage of search engine optimization and make sure the Web team has
purchased the words you’re using. In fact, sharing your expertise about the market with the Web
team can be invaluable in building stronger relationships with a wider range of customers.
Another tactic is to embed links behind the keywords in your press releases to other areas on
your Web site. If a buyer clicks on a keyword in a press release and is driven into the sales
process, that’s a lead attributable directly to PR.
2. Targeting Browsers
The second way that people use content is that they want to be told something they don’t already
know. This is why browseability is so important; it allows users to “stumble” across useful
information they don’t even know they’re looking for. Press release pages are among the most
popular parts of many Web sites based on visitor counts because many people browse these
pages as they research topics.
Consider organizing your press release section using multiple ways to browse. Create links to
releases based on buyer profile (by vertical market or some other factor appropriate to your
organization), by product, by geography, and the like, in addition to providing a prominent
homepage link to a media center or newsroom. You might also divide releases by different
“solutions” or target-market landing pages to help users drill down to areas of interest.
Whether they arrive at your release through searching or browsing, readers may want to present
their findings to others in their organization, so consider providing easy ways of printing (in PDF
format, as well as HTML).
3. Work with Marketing
PR professionals should also look to complement marketing efforts. As an example, if the
marketing team is developing a direct mail campaign, complement it with an online article offering tips or information about trends or best practices - in your press room, which can then link
back to the sales process. You’ve skipped the media middleman, but you’ve created a
measurable link from PR to sales.
Business-to-business PR: Keyword-rich copy leads to sales
The same thing works in B2B businesses. Consider someone who is charged with researching a
major B2B purchase on behalf of her company. In this B2B example, she also frequently starts
with a search. Imagine if your company sells corporate networking servers. A corporate IT
manager might enter a search for “networking servers” into Google News. If your company has
just issued a press release rich with that particular phrase, you’re virtually guaranteed that the IT
executive will find your products.
So how do you measure this success if you’re the company that issued the
press release? If you have included appropriate links within the press release to landing pages on
your site that drive people into and through the sales process, you’ve created a PR program that
directly drives sales without relying solely on the media to re-tell your message. You’ve just tied
PR efforts to sales revenues. In the B2B world, offline programs such as trade shows should also
work with press release initiatives. Consider creating a show-specific landing page with detailed
information about your services, and include the link with your press release.
Integrate Web measurement into your media measurement
Your Web team can help you understand what can be measured on the Web. Click-throughs,
time spent on a site and referral pages are typical Web metrics that can provide invaluable data.
They allow you to benchmark things like the clickable links on your press page and draw
conclusions from what’s working. They also allow you to test new landing-page content and to
measure how many people are entering the sales process at each point in your PR program. It is
important to measure using the same metrics and sales process as your company uses. If you
are driving people to fill out a form to get a white paper, measure the results in terms of leads. If
you are pointing people to an online catalog or store, track sales results.
Media Intelligence for effective corporate communications strategies
Once you’ve established the appropriate Web metrics, you can overlay this data with the data
from your media analytics tools. In this way, you can assess the effectiveness of your public
relations strategies and use this intelligence to redirect a campaign or modify the next one.
This is especially effective if you use a media-intelligence tool that offers a graphical look at a list
of clips. These tools enable you to chart results over time, providing you with trend analyses. If
you then overlay the Web metrics chart with another showing the number of visitors to your site,
you can begin to draw a correlation between your news items, awareness and message
effectiveness.
For example, suppose you issued a press release on trends in kitchen renovations. The release
was picked up by the Associated Press, which ran an article that was republished in dozens of
newspapers and Web sites, and your media intelligence tool shows a spike in coverage.
By overlaying the Web metrics graphic and determining the time lag between the appearance of
the article and the spike in Web site visitors, you can measure the effect of PR on sales. As a
result, you can quickly see results and change your strategy if necessary, thereby becoming more
valuable to your organization.
Selling PR to management
With a successful PR program for the Web in place, and Web and media intelligence tools
providing raw data and analysis on the influence of public relations on sales revenue, you can
now provide your CEO with some solid metrics. And when asked about the value of public
relations, the CEO can now say, “It’s generated $xx million in sales!”
For public relations pros, being able to link PR efforts to sales revenue means talking to CEOs
about what really matters to them. Demonstrate that you can drive tangible value to the bottom
line, and you’ll have one more reason to be sitting at the management table.
About the author
Diane Thieke is director of Global Public Relations at Factiva. She is responsible for leading
Factiva’s public relations strategy worldwide, including management of its media, analyst and
community relations initiatives, as well as its speakers’ bureau and events programs, to ensure
that the company is positioned for continued growth and success. She has been an advocate of
embracing technology to build a dialogue with stakeholders and to drive awareness and
understanding of Factiva. Ms. Thieke has spent more than two decades as a communications
and marketing professional in the business information industry. For more information, contact
Ms. Thieke at [email protected].