When prospective clients begin to consider PR as a key marketing tool, we're often asked:

How do you measure PR, and how do I know that it's working?

It's a great question and one that deserves a detailed answer.

The PR traditionalists will tell you to tally up the column inches (or airtime) of your media coverage and multiply that by three times the amount of what comparable advertising space would cost.

For example: if a half-page advertisement in PC Magazine costs $35,000, a resulting half-page editorial article would be valued at around $115,000.

This logic suggests that -- if the message gets to your audience via editorial channels -- it has a greater value than a paid advertisement because editorial coverage delivers a credible, third-party endorsement. It's a straightforward concept (and one whose logic has merit).

But we don't think that's quite good enough for our clients.

As a result, BLASTmedia has taken a progressive view of PR measurement through the development of our Web traffic monitoring service – a new feature that goes into effect the first week of your PR campaign.

Sample screenshot of BLASTmedia's Web traffic measurements

WHY IT WORKS
If you're marketing a high-tech product or service, we're going to assume that your Web site serves a vital role in your marketing and sales activity.

So, with visibility into your site's traffic (page views, unique visitors, referral links, conversion rates, etc.), we're able to gain deep insights into the impact that the media coverage we generate has on your business.

With shared access to these reports, we’re able to identify opportunities to optimize your media relations campaign, focusing on the approaches that are most effective in driving traffic (and ultimately, sales.)

HOW IT WORKS
We place a small bit of "behind-the-scenes" code into your Web site. It's painless. Once that’s in place, we start recording your visitors' activities - from keyword searches and geographic location to how they found your Web site. Together we can see how long people visit your pages, how long they stay, what they look at and much more!

With BLASTmedia’s Web traffic monitoring service, you have one more way of ensuring you are getting the most out of your PR investment.