Republished From Institute For Public Relations Conversations Digest

“What do web analytics have to do with public relations?” It’s a good question, given that web analytics are most often used by SEO professionals and online marketers to track visitors and sales from search results and content advertisements.

The digitization of communications has enabled marketers to better understand the impact of their campaigns by directly measuring audience behavior. This is critical to companies that spend large sums on buying media placements or to optimize their website, as it has enabled them to understand what works and what doesn’t in dollar terms. There is no reason why the same methodologies cannot be applied to the media that a company “earns,” which is the media attention a company can generate through effective public relations and communications, or the “buzz” a product can generate online.

In fact, we would argue that earned media is actually a very powerful marketing channel that can be measured, understood and optimized on the same terms as paid media and search marketing. The number of unique visitors referred to an organization’s website by earned media, the pages that visitors access, and whether or not they completed some goal (e.g., downloaded a white paper, made a purchase, made a donation, etc.) can be directly tracked in a way that has not been possible before—at least not without extensive primary research.

In the new paper published by the Institute’s Commission on Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation, we outline practical steps for public relations practitioners who want to adopt web analytics as part of their media measurement strategy. The paper focuses on what sort of data public relations professionals can obtain from web analytics, how to conduct basic quality control for the data, and how to integrate the data with other media monitoring and research.

The paper addresses how web analytics can be used to answer broad questions such as:

• How do sale conversion rates from earned media compare to online marketing channels?
• Is our corporate Twitter account driving traffic to the right Web pages?
• Are our press releases or social media releases being cited by journalists and bloggers, and if so, do they drive traffic to our corporate site?
• Is “Key Message A” more effective at driving sales than “Key Message B?”
• Should we invest more resources in social or traditional media?
• Where do we find the audiences most likely to respond to our campaigns?

At first glance, answers to these questions might appear out of reach. Fortunately, web analytics are more accessible and cost-effective than ever. This technology is not necessarily expensive (its free if you’re using Google Analytics) and most large organizations have a web analytics team that can help public relations teams get the data and reports they need to inform communication strategy.

Since web analytics technology has some technical limitations and most organizations sell products and generate sales leads through offline channels, web analytics might not be the “holy grail” ROI measurement system that the public relations industry has been waiting for. That being said, it might be the closest thing yet.

In much the same way that online advertising has revolutionized how advertisers can measure and optimize their efforts, public relations can leverage web analytics techniques to measure actual user behavior and optimize campaigns to get the best outcomes.

Go here to download the white paper or click the link below to got to the Institute for Public Relations website to read more.

Using Web Analytics to Measure the Impact of Earned Online Media on Business Outcomes: A Methodological Approach

We used web analytics data (such as # of monthly visitors) and combined that with data on product-related coverage we already analyze for the client on a quarterly basis. We repeated this process for each of their competitors, and found the following:

• Our client was the only company amongst the competitive set to have a significant relationship between media volume and web visits. This meant that they were the most successful in using communications to drive traffic. Part of the explanation for this was the fact that the client obtained better quality press – our metrics showed higher message penetration and better tonality for key product attributes than the competition.

• 1 product-focused article in the media resulted in approximately 10,000 visits to the website. In other words, there was a tangible ROI to their efforts.

We were also able to provide insight into their SEO and search term strategy, that could be implemented in future messaging strategy for the client.

This case study is a good illustration of the fact that PR and Communication investments can be measured by not only how much press coverage was earned, but also in how the investments ultimately contribute to business outcome metrics across the organization.