When it comes to the Corporate world, Many people focus on the return of investment look on PR, or in other words, business focus more on the dollar for dollar of PR and how much money he PR firm is going to save them, or cost them in dollar amount. In reality there are more than 1 way to evaluate in PR, and that worrying about the ROI isn’t all that important.
Before the PR practitioner gets to work, its very important in terms of evaluating themselves, that they set objectives and goals so that when their campaign or time is over, they can effectively evaluate their efforts. Ilya Pozin wrote in his article “The field is growing, with 70% of companies offering diverse services from media relations to event management. With such a wide range of services and expertise, it makes sense that modern PR professionals have a hard time guaranteeing hard and fast ROI numbers (Ilya Pozin, 2014, para. 8). He says this because the PR field is growing in more diverse which makes it difficult for business to examine ROI when hiring PR firms.
For PR practitioners he gives 5 goals that are measurable and can be evaluated for PR practitioners. 1 of the goals that Ilya Pozin writes about is no.4, “Is your team building your brand”( Ilya Pozin 2014, para.23) Building the brand and exploiting a companies brand is arguably on of the most important aspects of a PR Firms. PR firms helps to differentiate themselves from their competitors so that the consumers are able to see the differences.
Social media plays a large part in today’s society, it also provides a new forum on evaluating a PR practitioners goals. In Get high-Tech article, the author goes in to say that “Technology PR firms are becoming more necessary as electronics and Internet marketing expands across the country and into the homes of the general public — your audience. The professionals can assist you in setting up the right campaigns to keep your business growing” (Get High-tech 2009, para. 6). This provides another way that Pr firms are able to evaluate themselves, and for the business to evaluate that PR firm. When everything is becoming more technology based, how well did the PR firm integrate their clients social media presence. “Although most agenda-building research has concentrated on political news, a small body of work has emerged suggesting that public relations activities and programs can contribute to the salience of business news and its subsequent influence
on public opinion and financial performance” (Spiro Kiousis, Cristina Popescu, and Michael Mitrook, 2007, p.150). They talk about how agenda setting is vitally important for PR practitioners because unlike most outside firms ROI cant necessarily always come down the Dollar mount. Another form of evaluation for PR firms is how well did they execute with the public, “Although most agenda-building research has concentrated on political news, a small body of work has emerged suggesting that public relations activities and programs
can contribute to the salience of business news and its subsequent influence
on public opinion and financial performance” (Spiro Kiousis, Cristina Popescu, and Michael Mitrook, 2007, p.150). This goes to show that evaluating the work of PR practitioners goes far beyond ROI, but also connects with how successful were they in influencing and campaigning to the public
The evaluation for PR firms can come down social media interactions, how well were they able to get the brands message out to the public and among other criteria that reach far beyond money.
References
Get Hi-Tech — Hire a PR Firm That Specializes in Technology Thinking for Better Results and Increased ROI. (2009, April 11). Marketing Weekly News, 49. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA197254858&sid=summon&v=2.1&u=lom_gvalleysu&it=r&p=STND&sw=w&asid=1d861ae892d89f84172474af821f26a1
Ilya, Povin. 2014. 5 Measurements for PR ROI. Forbes Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/ilyapozin/2014/05/29/5-measurements-for-pr-roi/#450db54b1ca2
Spiro Kiousis , Cristina Popescu & Michael Mitrook (2007) Understanding
Influence on Corporate Reputation: An Examination of Public Relations Efforts, Media
Coverage, Public Opinion, and Financial Performance From an Agenda-Building and
Agenda-Setting Perspective, Journal of Public Relations Research, 19:2, 147-165, DOI:
10.1080/10627260701290661
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