How Ford Exceeded Its PR-to-Sales Conversion Target

Business outcomes included driving demand (online reservations) and attaining an earned media conversion rate of 0.7% or higher, via attribution analysis.

Outtakes included delivering high message retention and company recall, particularly among opinion elites and younger audiences as quantified via surveys. In addition, the team wanted to elevate Ford’s reputation as an environmentally responsible company, achieve a top-10 search ranking on Google Trends and reach record levels of site traffic for a new vehicle’s landing page.

Outputs included generating 1 billion in media reach with more than 30% in positive tone, raising industry-average readership among females to 37%, and delivering strong message penetration in target media.

The data and insights team provided research-backed recommendations to hit these targets. The insights team focused on two primary areas.

The first, an optimized and targeted media list, included demographic analysis identifying optimal media with the highest penetration among target audiences, media segmentation informing multiple event strategies and social media/ influencer identification, ensuring the media conversation spilled into organic social media.

Organic SEO was utilized to direct consumers to Ford. com, "steal" search share from electric vehicle titans and apply SEO data to select earned media partners with the highest credibility around the electric vehicle conversation. 

Ford’s data and insights team utilized analytic tools and research to support communication strategy. Tactics included organic SEO, an optimized media target list and engagement across social media.

The team leveraged SEO to discover the most frequently searched keywords connected to electric vehicles, analyzed opportunities for organic keywords, implemented keywords to increase search visibility, identified earned media outlets with the highest authority in organic search around electric vehicles and analyzed keywords competitors "owned" to assess risk/reward of coopting them.

To best optimize the media target list, the team searched for outlets with highest reach/frequency devoted to electric vehicle topics, analyzed reach potential, particularly factoring differences between reach of homepage versus automotive/ technology focused subpage, and applied reader demographics with existing audience/customer profiles to ensure that intended Mach-E messages resonated with target audience.

Finally, the team engaged with social media by identifying outlets and headline keywords that drove the highest engagement across social platforms around electric vehicles and added data-informed insights and guidance into recommendations.

By leveraging data-driven analysis and guidance, the communication team accomplished a number of its results against its objectives. Business outcomes included filling First Edition Mach-E reservations, which is as good as it gets. Additionally, the team saw a conversion rate of 0.99%, besting its target of 0.7%.

The team also saw successful outtakes. For those aware of the Mach-E launch, nearly 70% of respondents associated the vehicle with Ford. About 60% of respondents reacted positively to the Mach-E launch, chiefly among Gen Z and so-called Opinion Elites. It ranked among top 10 topics in Google Search during launch, and generated 2.5M site visits in first two months.

In terms of outputs, the campaign generated 2 billion in potential media reach after the first week. The intended message penetration reached 72% (the goal was 70%). Beyond the launch, Ford’s data and insights team continues to inform communication strategy for Mach-E.