Where Does PR Belong in the Marketing Waterfall?
Metrics and the Marketing Waterfall
Marketing is now able to track almost every activity in the buyer’s journey and connect it to revenue. Throughout the year attending a variety of marketing conferences, I've heard session after session discussing the ins and outs of these metrics. Some of the mind-boggling concepts being discussed include measuring first touch vs multi-touch attribution, marketing influenced pipeline, and the importance of lead flow consistency.
Why were they mind boggling? Because marketing used to be considered a cost-center—a fuzzy department that everyone just assumed would help drive business. We invested in it and kept our fingers crossed that there would be a payoff. However, thanks to the Internet’s ubiquity and its pervasive role in global commerce, this is no longer the case. Marketing has become a revenue-center—and we’ve got the numbers to prove it. Instead of talking about cost-per-lead, marketing can present revenue-per-lead and make a real case for itself around the executive table and when presenting to the board.
The only topic I didn’t hear much about this year was PR. I left wondering, is it the only discipline within the marketing department that can’t be directly involved in the demand gen marketing waterfall? Marketers can track their influence on SEO and follow website leads throughout their journey to revenue. Same with ebook or whitepaper downloads, webinar registrations, event attendees, and even social media shares through referral traffic. The impact of email marketing and online advertising can also be cleanly tracked back to bookings.
But What About PR?
You’ll notice that I didn’t mention PR in relation to marketing waterfall metrics. Is PR doomed to be left out, or can we fix this? For now PR can monitor all company media mentions; measure owned, earned, and paid media; and see how well each is doing. PR can put together reports showing the quantity of these mentions, assess their quality using online readership data, and zero in on where this activity is happening around the world. PR can use social media as a channel and track some of its impact that way (or is PR now social, that’s a discussion for another day). And PR can compare all of the above to that of the competition, and set realistic share of voice benchmarks as part of their quarterly goals. There are really great tools to help PR do all of this, of course.
As a demand gen marketer, I’d love to be able to measure PR’s impact on website traffic. I recently talked to our head of PR about this. For now we can see what prospects click directly to our website from a link in a brand mention or a company press release. That’s at least a step in the right direction. Maybe one day there will be a way to bring more of PR’s impact into the demand gen marketing waterfall!
Communications Consultant
7 年PR puts contents to reach end consumers via media owned channels; influencers' page inclusive. It is fact-based and a strategy all companies deployed intensely in crisis and reputation management. And investor and government relations. These are the areas where marketing message will not fly. As hard as it is to measure by numbers, the health of the relationships will tell you if PR is effective. And it sets the stage for marketing to function. Imagine if without a good reputation or poor corporate citizenship, demand gen $, resources and efforts can expect to double or tripled to get the single goal. That's the place for PR in the marketing waterfall.
Marketing And Public Relations
7 年This article presents a question of conversion and ROI where impact/effectivity is measured against sales performance. It is interesting to note, however that Public Relations is in by nature itself "relationship". Relationship is not measured in sales but most often than not, brand image/perception, brand health. It is the "perception" or perceived trust, confidence,love, connection, desirability, aspiration and many other forms of "relationship". It may not necessarily be a direct source of sales. But the relationship built over time has made the purchase decision shorter with the choice "pre-inclined" towards a certain brand,product or service. It is with constant, consistent and cohesive PR efforts through time that a brand/product/service is built to have strong desirability.
Formerly with Disney. Now with Google and YouTube.
7 年PR has a special and irreplaceable role for building awareness, shaping influence, preference and perception which impact consumers' decision-making and purchase journey. The results of PR may not always be immediate, quantitatively treacable and attributable. However, we have to remember that when users are planning to buy an item, service or consult an idea, they ask people they trust--family, friends--and check online. In this situation, clearly, PR has a significant function. PR molds people's opinions and beliefs. People trust reliable news soures, unbiased reviews, and objective contents. At PayMaya, we have seen this magic. Every time we launch a new campaign, engage with high-impact influencers and digital stakeholders, or come out with a compelling review story, there is an increase in app downloads. I hope business decison makers and leaders will always see the unique value that PR can bring to the table. #iworkinpr
Communications Director at Microsoft
7 年@Peter, thought you might find this interesting given previous discussions.