According to research conducted by AIM, the analytics and big data industry are going to double from $3.03 billion by 2025. As data analytics disrupts the world, large corporations are leveraging it to gain an edge over competitors. Some organisations, especially the ones who thrive on advertising and media coverage, have adopted analytics through their public relation (PR) departments.
The whole purpose of PR is to maintain a positive brand image for the company in the public eye. With the help of analytics, they can inform their strategies better.
Tracking Leads
Tracking leads for a PR campaign is absolutely essential. Campaigns for businesses not only concentrate on gaining media coverage, but also leverage analytics to see how much referral traffic has come from the content that they have put out. There are many online tools to set up goals for the traffic – a well-known name is Google Analytics.
The data acquired from tracking leads during PR campaigns provide information about how much interaction the content has generated. It also gives insights on actionable outcomes, like the number of email addresses entered, newsletter sign-ups, filling of forms, or as well as ebook downloads.
Mentions & Earned Media
Earned media is when a customer gives an idea about how popular the campaign is, which is indicated when people talk about the campaign more often. With new analytics tools, PR professionals can get more insightful and accurate information regarding earned media. For example, with data around the number of people who clicked on a post or an article, or how many people bought a product or asked for more information, PR professionals can structure better campaigns.
Tracking Outcomes
Once a campaign is launched and is broadcasted on media outlets, it is important to measure its reach and track developments to understand the coverage on these channels. While gaining traffic is one of the aspects of PR, its main objective is to ensure wide-spread media coverage. Referral traffic takes center stage when it comes to marketing campaigns.
It is essential to track conversion from the media. The stronger the media coverage is, the more views or hits one receives. Tracking conversions gives businesses an idea of where they stand in the industry and also, at the same time, indicates the gaps in the existing market.
Keeping An Eye On Competition
PRs always pride themselves on gathering information about their clients and gaining insights from them to create compelling media coverage. This also helps them keep an eye on competitors, especially on the kind of media coverage they have been getting. This helps them stay a step ahead of competitors and come up with innovative solutions.
Help Prevent Setbacks
According to a survey, company crises can turn into global ones in less than an hour. This means that a problem can turn into a big one fairly quickly. Thus, taking action before the problem turns into a crisis is critical. For instance, an influential personality criticising a certain group of people or community on social media can quickly escalade into a crisis situation. So it becomes the responsibility of the PR team to try and contain the situation with a quick response.
Through social media listening and analytics, PR personnel can continually track such situations so that the agency knows about an impending crisis. The personnel can be in the lookout for a sudden rise in the mentions related to the client, or the client trending on social media suddenly, etc. Using analytics, this information might be processed and could prove critical to avert a crisis.
