PR/Marketing measuring?
Answer:
Not sure what industry you are looking at so I can't be too specific.
Market share is often easy to measure - many industries have a given supplier or two that tracks that very information. Consumer products get scanner data (from the grocery stores) while others get survey data from their customers (also from a third party company) which rolls up to market share as well. It's usually an issue of money rather than anything else- this information gets expensive if you track it regularly. But you can likely buy one-time information if needed.
Measuring advertising is very complicated and very imprecise unless you do direct response advertising ("call now to order!"). For that, you know how well it is doing based on sales volume. For other products you generally will not be able to directly tie what you spent on advertising with any bump in sales (unless that is the only thing you did so there is no other explanation). What many companies do is set objectives for the advertising beyond sales: our goal is to increase brand awareness and change the perceptions of our product. And that you can measure over time using on-going surveys- but this, too, is expensive.
Overall ROI for marketing (which would include advertising, etc.) would just be looking at how much you spent in total and what impact it had on your business. You won't be able to do this to the penny- other factors do muddy things up- but that can be done well enough to see if your dollars are doing anything for you.
There is a lot to this question, let me try to best answer it from personal experiences and from what I believe you are asking, related to PR success.
As you know, PR has a certain intangibility factor. So determining return on investment is often difficult, and at times arbitrary because for every dollar spent, it is not always easy to measure a dollar gained DIRECTLY related to that expense.
This is why advertising deals with what marketing professionals refer to as "controlled space." You spend $1,000 for a newspaper ad, as an example, you "own" that controlled space for your ad, for a certain period of time, etc, and can measure the results you received via new prospects or customers captured for that $1,000
With PR on the other hand, it deals with "uncontrolled space." You could spend the same $1,000 for a publicist to write and distribute a press release for you, only to receive $0 in financial gain via a new prospect or customer yielded. This is because while the press release may indeed be timely, newsworthy and important news about you and your business, in an editor's eyes, it was not. PR deals with "uncontrolled space." Which is why it is indeed more VALUABLE, via the third-party endorsement (your company mentioned on Oprah, CNN, NY Times, etc.)
True, this still does not solve your problem of "measuring success" in PR. This is how I have seen this handled, especially for those that are very analytical and measurement driven (CFO, Accountant, etc.)
I have seen some some PR firms create a spreadsheet of targeted media outlets, along with that respective outlets ad rates (Per Column Inch, Airtime Rate, Spot Rate, etc.)
Along with each outlet, they then mutually work with a client to determine what outlets are of most "value" to the client, and assign them a weight.
For example, it could look something like this.
NY Times 6,000,000 sub $1,845.00 25%
LA Times 4,000,000 sub $1,350.00 30%
Chicago Trib 3,500,000 sub $1,250.00 45%
In this instance, if the client received a mention greater than one column inch via a story or interview in the Chicago Tribune, you could then reason that the $1,000 paid yielded a return ($1,250 x per inch story run) greater than the money paid to the PR professional.
Again, some of this is arbitrary, yes. But by predefining a weight to each media outlet and then weighing monthly exposure points you gain versus costs for that exposure, you can easily determine whether you are receiving a monthly return on investment for your money.
Best of luck.
Hi, perhaps you can try Google adwords to market your service/product.
Google adwords is a text-based system for advertising on its site and its partner sites. The service allows you to create your own ads, choose keywords to help match your ads to your audience, and control the cost of your advertising—you pay only when people click on your ad (a cost per click plan). Anyone wishing to promote a product on Google can enroll in this program.
you can get a 5 detail pages information about Google adwords at :
http://www.adcenter.net.cn/google-adword.
Good Luck && Best Wishes!
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