Evaluate, Present, Achieve

It’s the Final Countdown

When you are getting to the end of your public relations campaign, your last step will be evaluation. Evaluation “is the research and measurement of the effectiveness of a PR campaign (story, activity, etc.) and its strategy against the objectives and outputs set at the outset of the campaign” (Barrett). This is significant because it provides the public relations professional the ability to sift through their campaign, making any final changes or tweaks that might be necessary. Evaluation methods are “used together to determine whether a PR tactic or campaign should be continued as is, revised, or dropped for another approach. Without these three tools, your campaigns will not be successful in the PR industry” (Understanding PR Evaluation).

You should ask yourself a series of questions that interrogate your objectives and tactics. Those are…

1. What did we set out to achieve?

   1. What was the main goal of your campaign?

2. What did we do?

   1. How did you conduct your work, research, writing, etc.?

3. What did we accomplish by doing it?

   1. How was your goal achieved?

4. How effectively did this achieve what we set out to do?

   1. To what extent was our goal met?

5. What did public relations do for the organization as a whole?

   1. How did public relations play a part in your campaign?

After you ask yourself these questions, you should be able to conduct and calculate a return on investment, or ROI on your campaign (Smith). “You need to put in the work and measure, monitor, and evaluate your tactics to see if it’s successful and providing an ROI” (Barrett). This will be able to show your client quantitative data regarding how the campaign enhanced their organization. This also justifies the money spent to have you and your public relations team conduct this research.

Are We There Yet?

When you are completing your evaluation, you should be preparing for your presentation. You should keep these six values of effective public relations when doing so…

1. Survive

   1. Need I explain…?

2. Make money

   1. As a public relations professional, you should have a goal to make money for yourself, and also for your client.

3. Money-making environment

4. Save money

   1. As a public relations professional, you should intend on saving your client money, while still fully creating an effective campaign.

5. Weaken opposition

   1. Public relations professionals should prioritize standing out among their competitors by conducting unique and accurate work.

6. Save lives

   1. As a public relations professional, you should realize that your industry has the ability to save lives through research and your messaging.

The last step would be using metrics to gauge the success of your public relations campaign. These metrics would be exposure metrics, engagement metrics, influence metrics, and action metrics. “It is important to use metrics to measure the success of your public relations campaign because it allows you to assess whether your efforts are meeting your goals and objectives, and to make informed decisions about future PR activities” (ChatGPT).

Works Cited

Barrett, Emily. “Understanding the Differences of PR Monitoring, Measurement, and Evaluation.” Axia Public Relations Is the Expert PR Agency for Regional and National Brands, Axia Public Relations, 24 Oct. 2021, https://www.axiapr.com/blog/understanding-the-differences-of-pr-monitoring-measurement-and-evaluation.

Chat.openai.com. https://chat.openai.com/.

Daeger, Marissa. “Photo by Marissa Daeger on Unsplash.” Beautiful Free Images & Pictures, 29 Jan. 2020, https://unsplash.com/photos/Aq9J4RQWYho.

Media, Studio. “Photo by Studio Media on Unsplash.” Beautiful Free Images & Pictures, 23 Nov. 2018, https://unsplash.com/photos/9DaOYUYnOls.

Smith, R. D. (2021). Phase 4: Evaluative Research. In Strategic planning for public relations (pp. 464-466). essay, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

“Understanding PR Evaluation: Why & How.” Need to Know Marketing, 29 Nov. 2020, https://www.ntkmarketing.co.uk/what-we-do/measurement-for-marketing/understanding-pr-evaluation/.