While business executives long have asked their marketing teams to provide quantifiable results of campaigns, they’ve demanded considerably less proof from their PR teams. Often, this is because PR is viewed as a “soft” discipline. Executives know intuitively that media coverage of a launch or announcement provides much-needed “air cover” that helps marketing efforts score higher.
But with data driving more and more business decisions, PR is getting greater scrutiny. Thus, executives are demanding that PR professionals show how their campaigns contribute to the business’s success.
Because broadcast coverage is highly influential - more than 95% of U.S. homes have a television and 71% of Americans watch local TV news - capturing and sharing metrics about PR placements on radio and TV is essential to providing a complete picture of PR efforts.
With TVEyes, PR teams can assemble reports featuring commonly used metrics, such as number of clips and the number of impressions. But PR pros can also use broadcast monitoring to provide C-suite executives with additional metrics and insight. Here are a few tips for using TVEyes to communicate the value of your broadcast coverage to your clients and executives.
Link your broadcast coverage to the company’s business objectives.
Broadcast monitoring can be used to show that PR is helping to achieve your business objectives. When the CEO appears on a talk show, a qualitative measurement of the talking points can demonstrate how well your message is being delivered and what improvements might be needed. While it’s tempting to simply supply viewership numbers, it’s far more valuable to provide an analysis of the messages that were delivered during the broadcast and how they align with business objectives. You can also provide an assessment of the reporter’s reaction to the message, providing an indication of whether it was positively received.
Tie broadcast coverage results to the company’s key performance indicators
When every PR team member understands how the company measures its success, it is easier to make the connection between broadcast coverage and business outcomes. For example, all businesses use revenue as a measure of success. While it’s challenging to concretely tie news coverage to an increase in sales, it’s not impossible. PR pros must become adept at asking for and analyzing sales data. If you’ve placed a product on a morning show, for example, you can review the sales data for an uptick in the days after the clip appeared.
Benchmark against the competition.
How a business is faring against its competition is a key metric for the C-suite. TVEyes makes it easy for PR teams to measure competitor coverage – a task that could take weeks if done manually. For example, with TVEyes, you can quickly create heatmaps that show the reach of every competitor’s coverage in each market and region. Viewership and publicity value metrics also help determine if your message is reaching more customers than your competitors.
Manage risk by tracking trends.
PR professionals can help the C-suite manage risk more effectively. Corporate reputation is often considered a leading indicator, and broadcast monitoring is an effective early warning system. With comprehensive alerting of your company’s mentions in local markets, TVEyes can help PR teams alert executives to emerging issues. Heatmaps enable you to track the spread of issues, enabling the organization to shift strategy as needed.
The number of segments and the quality of the placements will always form the basis of your PR metrics. But the PR teams that stand out are those that can provide the C-suite with metrics that align closely with company objectives and provide insights to guide strategic decisions. Using broadcast monitoring will help you move beyond the standard metrics and prove the value of your efforts.
Discover more ways your organization can benefit from broadcast media monitoring by downloading our free playbook Building the Case for Broadcast Media Monitoring.
