Index

Chapter 6 - Evaluating results

6.1. What can be evaluated?

6.2. How do I implement an evaluation?

6.3. Advantages of correctly evaluating results

Chapter 6 Addendum

Chapter 6 Synopsis

Chapter 6 References

Chapter 6 Synopsis

The PR industry has to make an effort to reinforce its contribution to the reaching of an organization’s goals because the methodology that is currently used to measure this contribution isn’t the most effective in clearly showing the true power of public relations.

The evaluation of PR has to go hand-in-hand with parameters from various other disciplines, such as market research, stock value, OTS, web traffic, etc.  Only paying attention to the number of newspaper clippings or in the “ad value equivalent” is limiting and even counterproductive in PR, because it reinforces the erroneous idea that it’s all about getting “free advertising”.

When truly multidisciplinary studies on the efficacy of PR have been conducted, its important contribution has been shown and it’s even been proven that thanks to PR many organizations have saved a lot of budget.

Evaluation begins from conceptualization of the PR campaign and not only does it allow a review of the campaign after the fact, but is also a fundamental element in correcting mistakes that emerge during the implementation of the PR plan.

A fair evaluation should take into account the various communications efforts of others that may have helped or distorted the implementation of a PR campaign because, in the end, one audience receives millions of messages from millions of organizations on a continual basis.