A must read before submitting your Campaign Closure Report

Remember the times when you would come back home with your report card in the backpack? While presenting it, what would be your most used answer/excuse for the performance which was below average? Well, mine was – ‘I had put in a lot of effort but somehow it didn’t show up in the results’. This ‘not so convincing’ response hardly settled down any parent because:

Results explain intensity of efforts

Anyways, we are not dealing with students, report cards, excuses or parents right now. The subject in question is PR – Public Relations, to be more accurate – Modern PR (where Results explain intensity of efforts). The kind of PR where a business would love to engage with a professional who can bring measured values for the money invested by it in the growth of brands. And, when the reports of campaigns carry that measurement, that’s where the threshold for next engagement is built. So, presenting some of the key performance indicators you can consider for your outcome slide in the closure report.

1.Content Analysis – “XX group companies reach 1 million consumers with their xx initiative”. The headline, without any doubt will inform the audience about the achieved milestone. But, that your client knows even before the campaign idea is finalized. What you should bring to his table is –

• Was there an interesting headline?
• Was there a differentiated start to the story?
• Did any journalist turn out to be brand advocate through the story?
• How was the key message conveyed?
• Did the content of a leading daily carry anything about the company?

There might not be very exciting responses to these but as a PR professional, you brought an analysis, and you brought some learning for the business where your primary job is done.

2. User Engagement – When we say user engagement, we are referring to social media. But that social media is beyond the likes, retweets and shares. Let your report value it in terms of direct engagement with the user, in terms of curiosity your users are showing for your brand or your campaign, in terms of public sentiment which primarily defines public relations. Your user engagement should talk about –

• Comments of the users
• Queries of the users
• Profiles of the users who appeared the most interested
• Best and worst of the users
• What actually led to user engagement?

Likes and Shares are fine but the sad part is, once it is liked and shared, it is forgotten. Who knows your shared post is even read and who bothers the likes were genuine or not. When there is actually a difference made, only the users make it. Your client also knows this but when it goes from your end, something is strengthened, i.e. trust.

3.Website Traffic – This is my favorite because of its capacity to be measured. No one can play with it. And it needs you to be daring to suggest this to your client. Well, if you are into PR, I am sure you are way more daring than a number of people in other professions brought together. So, next time, before executing your campaign’s first phase, ask your client to keep a track of traffic on their website (provided website traffic is a parameter for measurement of their business growth). Let the campaign do its work as planned and map the traffic once it is concluded. There should be an increase and if there is, boom! No one can stop you then. You have already seeded the brand awareness and there are some great statistics ready to be included in your report.

4.Lead Sourcing – Well, the source. How important it is! Thanks to our profession, most of us often inquire about the forwarded links on our whatsapp saying – What’s the source? But, what if we tell our client - what’s the source? Or to put it in a pleasing or desired way, we are the source. ?The source of your generated leads and the source of increased brand recall. All what we need to do here is conducting a quick survey in our cities to understand:

• Did consumers know anything about our brand through our campaign?
• Did any customer check website after reading about the campaign?
• Did our social media post help anyone discover the brand?
• Did anyone make a purchase decision after reading a story?

Some details on these factors bring certainty of the success of the campaign.

5.Share of Voice – As a brand, bigger or smaller, we have a competition and we become a preferred choice only when our users compare us with our competitors or consider our role in the industry as a whole. Share of voice can easily be understood the way we recognize Surf Excel today in the FMCG industry. When we write about it, we write detergent but when the consumer goes to buy a detergent, he says – ‘Surf Dedo’. It is an effort to be the most heard voice. As we execute our next campaign, let’s see:

• How many industry stories carry our name?
• How many sessions include our representative?
• How many stories we garner in comparison to our competitor and in what publications?
• At what number (1, 2,3) our consumers consider us on the scale of recognition as a brand in our industry?

These were some of the ways; I know there are many more. But as a PR professional, recognizing what brings value and clear results for the business we are handling is our forte. Good Luck experts!