By Greg Galant

CEO & Co-founder, Muck Rack & Shorty Awards greg@muckrack.com

Selling the value of PR to your executive team

Hi, I’m Greg.

● CEO & Cofounder of Muck Rack & Shorty Awards

● Member of Twitter and Instagram’s first name club (@Gregory)

Forward-thinking brands and agencies trust Muck Rack as an essential component of

their communications strategy.

Selling the Value of PR

1. Setting goals and deciding what to measure

2. Measuring PR

3. Getting more PR budget: Make the case to your CFO

4. Why AVE doesn’t work for modern PR

5. Distinguishing between PR and marketing

1 Setting goals and deciding what to measure

#RaganExecComms @gregory

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Company goals PR goals

Increase sales Articles that will drive leads

Launch new product line Successful announcement

Raise funding Awareness in investing community

SEO Articles linking to website

Build credibility Articles in trusted publication

Attract talent Articles profiling work environment

Vanity Quotes for CEO

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Leading indicator Lagging indicator

Relationships with journalists Articles published

Inbound links Organic search rankings

Press coverage in target market Inbound leads

Volume of articles Name recognition

Compelling content published Website traffic

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2 Measuring PR

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Article stats: social shares

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WhoSharedMyLink.com

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WhoSharedMyLink.com

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Article stats: views

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Outlet stats

1. Unique visitors per month (UVMs)

2. Domain authority, Page Rank estimations

3. Self-reported traffic

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Outlet stats: media kits

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Outlet stats: media kits

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Outlet stats

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Outlet stats: traffic estimate

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Inbound links

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

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Inbound links

https://analytics.google.com

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Inbound links

https://clicky.com

Comparing coverage and determining share of voice

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3 How to get more PR budget

Conduct interviews

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● Did it translate to increased sales?

● Did your company receive a higher number of job applications?

● Were you able to effectively overcome a crisis?

Show what the increased budget will go towards

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● It’s not enough to showcase that your existing efforts are working

● Provide info on what you’ll do with increased budget

● Larger budget = easily combat negative sentiment

Sift through the noise to find data that matters

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4 Ditching AVE: why it doesn’t work

What is AVE?

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AVE = Advertising Value Equivalence

1. AVE is an arbitrary and inaccurate figure

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● Bases the value of hard earned PR on a number it has 0 impact on or control over: cost of ad space

● The cost of ad space is decreasing

2. Doesn’t account for content of a media placement

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(It’s not always pretty)

3. Doesn’t look at the publication relative to target audience

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● Coverage in non-target media outlet is not furthering your goals

● Even if circulation numbers are high, if your target audience isn’t reading it, it has no impact

● Even if a publication has a large audience, not every subscriber is reading your story

4. Fails to provide metrics for social media impressions

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info.muckrack.com/social-media-ebook

5 Two major differences between PR and marketing

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1. PR and marketing require different skills

● PR pros should be good at storytelling and have ability to think like a journalist

● PR is often more reactive, marketing is more proactive

● PR pros must seize on the right timing to insert a story, whereas marketers often have timing on their side

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2. PR and marketing require different technology

● PR pros need solutions to effectively engage with journalists

● Rather than choosing a software “stack” - PR teams focus on a set of activities (ex: monitoring, reporting, distribution).

● PR software should not necessarily fit into the marketing tech stack

6 Wrapping up: The do’s and don’ts

DO

● Invest in a solution that helps you qualify and quantify your success

● Understand and evaluate which metrics matter

● Demonstrate the results of your PR budget

● Treat PR and marketing differently: marketing gives control over message, but PR offers greater credibility

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DON’T

● Use outdated measurement to apply sales and marketing to PR

● Conflate marketing and PR needs together

● Worry about metrics that don’t make an impact on your success

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MUCKRACK.COM

Thank you.

linkedin.com/in/galant | twitter:

@gregory

Want to sell the PR value to your team?greg@muckrack.com