A: While there is a standard “metric” (more on that later) for measuring the value of media coverage of your topic or organization, there’s more to it than simple math.

Here’s the biggest and most important measure of the value of your PR program: Did you get the results you wanted from your communications? For example, did the referendum favoring your business or industry pass? Are your stakeholders saying positive things? Did constituents call their lawmakers and force an issue that you wanted into the public domain? Did sales increase?

While not all PR activities are done to generate media coverage, most PR campaigns do include a media relations element, so measuring the value of media coverage they generate is one tangible way to derive a quantifiable ROI. To do that, we use “advertising equivalency” estimates. This technique correlates the amount of coverage received – airtime on TV or radio, column inches in newspapers, etc. – to the value of equivalent paid advertising space. In other words, what would it have cost in advertising dollars to have gained the same amount of exposure you generated through media relations efforts? Because studies have repeatedly shown the perceived objectivity (and thus persuasiveness) of editorial coverage to be three times greater than that of advertising, B+L typically multiplies the ad equivalency value by the industry standard of three. However, we also give clients the option of calculating ad value without the multiplier and, in all cases, track impressions generated as another form of measurement. Whatever metric is used, we make sure to keep it consistent when comparing year-to-year or campaign-to-campaign results.