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This month:
How Do I Use Measurement to
Show a Link between PR and Sales?

It’s mostly in the timing.

This month we have another installment in our series (begun last month) of quick questions posed at a recent PR NEWS Webinar. Each of these questions has something to do with the relationship between PR and sales. (Interested readers may wish to read Sabrina Horn's article “Using PR to Drive Sales in the Current Economy” that appeared in a previous issue of The Measurement Standard.)

Question: How do we overcome the impact of competing influences such as advertising?

Answer: I wouldn't call advertising ‘competing’—I would hope that your advertising is complementing and enhancing your messages.

The best way to isolate the impact of advertising is to manage the timing. For example, Southwest Airlines will launch in a new city with PR first, and measure how many tickets they sell via PR. Then, after a month or so of PR only, they'll add in advertising and measure the results of that.

Another, albeit cruder, way to isolate PR’s impact is, when you are surveying an audience, ask them how much news they get from various sources. If your advertising is on TV and they rely mostly on print for information, chances are that PR is impacting them more than TV.

 

Question: How can you map PR to spikes in sales?

Answer: See the timing technique mentioned above. If you are tracking customer transactions, you can compare those transactions to your PR efforts over time. If PR is the only way you are getting messages out there during a specific time, then sales changes are probably related to PR changes. For example, Sears launched a new line of fashion footwear with one story in The New York Times. There was no other information out there about the footwear at the time, so the jump in sales could only be attributed to the PR effort. You need to be working closely with other communications and marketing groups if you want to isolate PR results from other activities.

Question: What are techniques that allow you to claim PR is a key driver of sales?

Answer: You first have to determine that PR can influence sales. Which means asking customers what drives their purchase decisions. Here is one way: Suppose that, through product placement and tests, you can prove that being positioned as being ‘best in class’ is a major driver of purchase decisions. Then measure what share of the discussion of "best in class" you are actually receiving. If you track that share over time, and compare it to sales, you may well be able to show an impact on your market share.

 

Question: How is sales linked to perception and behavior?

Answer: You need to ask your customers what is driving their sales patterns. And you need to track the sales patterns over time. Only by tracking specific transactions and mapping them against various marketing activities can you determine any link.