One of the challenges that face the public relations profession, is proving the return on investment (ROI) for communications activities in as far as it improves the financial position of a business.
Professor Watson and Professor in their study, Return on Investment in Public Relations A critical assessment of concepts used by practitioners from the perspectives of communication and management sciences, defines ROI as a measure of financial effectiveness concerned with returns on capital employed in (profitmaking) business activities.Â
It is expressed as a ratio of income or earnings divided by the costs that had been applied to generate the income or earnings.
Tim Marklein of Weber Shandwick Worldwide “observed that the top levels of management saw ROI as all about the dollar. The return can be money earned or money saved. Unless you have a dollar value, you’re not going to get to a true ROI calculationâ€Â they noted. Ruth Pestana postulates that some PR activities can’t be financial measured.
 In the late 1970s, ROI was expressed as equivalent to advertising value. However, the Chartered Institute for Public Relations in the United Kingdom, proposed variations of ROI as alternatives to the discredited Advertising Value Equivalence (AVEs). AVE’s metrics specially in Southern Africa, have extensively be used by public relations practitioners and advertising agencies to quantify in monetary terms the PR ROI to the business. However, I do admit that it is difficult to measure perceptions, feelings, and relationships, thus the AVEs are not effective as a measure by themselves.Â
Fortunately, with the proliferation of social media platforms and tools, PRs can now use more measurement metrics to prove their ROI. These metrics include:
- Page Impressions – Every time a page on your site appears on a Google ad or SERP.Â
- Page Views – Every time a page on your site is clicked on a Google ad or SERP.
- Page Click Through Rate – The ratio of page impressions to page views
- Social Media Likes/Shares – The amount of interactions visitors have with one of your social media posts.
- Bounce Rate – The ratio of single page sessions on your site to multiple page sessions.
- Average Page View Duration – The average time visitors spent on a particular page
Other metrics include tonality, brand resonance, and sentiments. Now, AVE’s are still relevant in Namibia, as many people still rely on traditional media for news. Therefore, AVE’s statistics need to be incorporated into the ROI and media monitoring reports.Â
The relevance of Ave’s and other measures to prove PR ROI makes the relationship between PR practitioners and journalists essential. However, I feel as practitioners, we don’t have a full appreciation of the media ecosystem. PR practitioners need the assistance of journalist not only to cover their features and media releases. They also need to comprehend the impact that media buying and planning has towards improving PR ROI. Media rely heavily on advertising to function as PR relies heavily on the media to spread its news.
I am aware that the biggest budgets usually lie with the marketing colleagues, as they have better metrics to prove their ROI. This fact is proven by research conducted by PR week on a company called Intrado. The research found that Intrado’s marketing team was more effective (75%) at demonstrating their ROI compared to their PR counterparts (25%).â€
To conclude, proving PR ROI can sometimes be difficult, but I believe when you have a good relationship with journalist, and understand their need to also balance editorial with advertising, you both might win in proving your value.
Morna Ikosa is a Senior Corporate Communications and Brand Reputation Strategist, CPRP,MA, AKA Fixer. If you want to connect, send me a shout out at micommunicationscc@gmail.com  or find me on LinkedIn.
