PR attribution helps marketers understand the strong and weak points of a PR campaign and pinpoint where to attribute success.
A company might, for instance, have five stages to a PR campaign that is designed to drive sales. PR attribution helps the company identify which stage of the campaign was most successful in generating those sales, which stage was best for expanding brand identity, or perhaps even which stage got the most media coverage.
By attributing quantitative data to your PR efforts, it's possible to understand the best and worst aspects of your work. In doing so, you can reward or champion areas that did well, and improve those that didn't.
This guide will walk you through three strategies for nailing an attribution model that works every time. We'll look at the best software used to track your PR campaigns, how to track website traffic and conversions, and how best to evaluate campaign performance.
In this guide
Understanding PR Attribution
Strategy 1: Using PR Analytics Tools
Strategy 2: Tracking Website Traffic and Conversion
Strategy 3: Using Quantifiable Data
Understanding PR Attribution
Before we look at strategies for measuring PR attribution, it's worth us understanding what an attribution model is.
What is PR Attribution?
PR attribution assigns credit to marketing efforts that contribute to successful outcomes. In effect, you identify which parts of your marketing strategy did better at achieving your goals than other parts.
For example, an airline might launch a PR campaign to residents in Ohio ahead of launching a new route from Cleveland to Vancouver. The PR strategy may contain three core strands: audience awareness, audience conversion, and audience loyalty.
The airline's attribution model focuses on conversions. So, the company needs to attribute credit to where those conversions originated from. Did they originate from the first point of contact? Or perhaps from an easy-to-use website? Maybe it was a targeted social media campaign that produced the bulk of those conversions.
There are six attribution models that can be used to distribute the credit among various touch points in the customer journey.
Single Touch
Single touch models attribute 100% of the credit for a conversion to one point in the customer journey. Examples include:
First-click model: Credit is given to the first interaction point between a customer and the brand. This might be a click onto a website, or perhaps even just seeing an ad campaign on the street.
Last-click model: Credit goes to the final stage of the strategy when someone is converted into a customer. This is usually the "buy" stage of the buying journey.
Multi-Touch
Multi-touch models split the attribution across various stages of a marketing strategy. They include:
U-shaped model: Weighting 40% credit to both the first and last clicks, with the remaining 20% to the middle stages.
Time Decay model: More credit is given to the touchpoints placed closer to the point of sale.
Linear model: Every point of the marketing funnel is given equal share upon conversion or sale.
Data-driven model: Using tools and software to spot which touchpoints performed better than others and which drove conversions more often.
Strategies for Measuring PR Attribution
Now we know the single- and multi-touch models association with PR attribution, it's time to look at some strategies to help you along the way. We've detailed three core tactics that aim to more accurately measure your campaign results:
PR Attribution Measuring Strategies
Using PR Analytics Tools
Tracking Website Traffic and Conversion
Listening to Customers
1. Using a PR Analytics Tool
Marketing campaigns benefit from using software that houses all analytics in one place. Having access to every data point in your marketing funnel means PR teams can identify which areas are succeeding, and which need improvement.
PR Analytics Alongside Attribution
A PR analytics tool like CisionOne helps you monitor and analyze the performance of your campaigns.
The aim here is to cover every inch of the market. Use the tool to assess the impact of your TV, radio, newspaper, email, digital, and social media campaigns.
See what original content does well, and what doesn't. Figure out if your traditional methods of public relations works for your audience, or if you need to shake things up with a new PR strategy.
You can assess data to spot negative, positive, and neutral sentiment towards your brand. See which publications are promoting your press releases or stories more than others, and see if all the credit needs to go to one publication.
How Does This Relate to Attribution?
Using PR analytics gives you a holistic overview of your campaign. From here, you can get a better understanding of which areas within your campaign are most effective.
Your tool, for example, might reveal that more people are reading your press release sent to traditional media. However, you're getting more conversions from a smaller number of people who read your company's blog content.
2. Tracking Website Traffic and Conversion
Another top strategy for measuring your marketing activities is to look directly at web traffic and conversion rates. For most companies, a website is the shop window for customers. More website conversions should, ideally, lead to more sales. If the website looks terrible, fails to load quickly, or breaks during the purchase process, then your brand will suffer.
Tracking Website Visitors
The first thing to do when assessing your website's PR success is to track visitors. Doing so will help you identify successful campaigns and tailor your marketing strategies based on visitor behavior.
Google Analytics is a powerful tool for collecting data on various aspects of web traffic, such as:
Number of visitors
Time spent on the website
Pages viewed
Bounce rate
Sources of traffic (organic search, direct, referrals, or social media)
This last point – sources of traffic – is important when attributing credit in a PR campaign. You might find that 80% of your click throughs are coming from a social media platform that you barely use, for instance.
Understanding Conversions
Monitoring how people get to your website is one thing, but you also need to nail the conversion stage.
Your primary goal should be to convert as many visitors as possible into leads, subscribers, or customers, depending on your business objective.
You can do this using the data found in your website service provider, such as GoDaddy or Amazon Web Services.
See how users navigate through your site and eventually make a purchase. You might attribute a sales failing to customers who go straight to product links advertised on social media, but look for a discount code before making a purchase. If this is a touch point that is causing potential customers to leave your site, then consider introducing a clearly-visible discount code for all new customers.
3. Listening to Customers
A third tip for successful PR measurement and attribution is to listen to what people are saying about you. You might push a PR campaign to a target audience, but that doesn't mean others won't see what you're up to.
So, it's important to listen to reactions to your campaigns and earmark the problems that potential customers are facing when dealing with your brand.
Social Listening
It all begins with social listening. You can use a tool to track how users get to your website, for example, but that doesn't tell you what they're saying about your brand.
A social listening tool like CisionOne enables PR teams to monitor how their brand is perceived in the social sphere. You can see what articles resonate with users, get insight into their views of your brand, and determine whether you need to target them or see a different audience.
Sentiment Analysis
Another strand of social listening is to run sentiment analysis on conversations across the social network, even if it has nothing to do with your brand.
For example, a car manufacturer might want to know what new parents think about SUVs. Are they willing to sacrifice style for practicality, maybe? By running sentiment analysis, you can map out the positive, negative, or neutral views of any keyword or topic.
You can then allocate resources to the right area of your next marketing campaign.
Direct Listening
Of course, then there is the act of direct listening through activations like surveys and focus groups. These can be more expensive but might be more applicable to your communications aims, if your target audience doesn't interact much with social media.
Future of PR Attribution
PR attribution has never been easier thanks to the range of tools available that enable us to credit business outcomes to specific sources.
The next step in attribution is about refining these practices so they are even more accurate.
Whether you prefer the more traditional methods found in a single-touch model, or like to attribute via the multi-touch approach, technological innovation will make attribution far easier.
Machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence will be the driver of this new level of detail.
You'll be able to better analyze the actions users take and interactions throughout the entire buying journey. In doing so, most organizations will be able to fine-tune their campaigns and find true value in all output, from a single press release to a full-scale marketing drive.
