How to show the connection between PR and website traffic?
ROI achieved through the communications department was traditionally difficult to measure, and because of this, many companies found showcasing true business benefit and ROI from Public Relations to be tough. Fortunately, since the introduction of PR tools such as media intelligence, the communications team are much better placed to measure the right metrics and prove our worth. Showing the connection between PR and website traffic can be a good way to do this.
From media reach to top publication placement, there are a number of ways to measure PR ROI and the metrics we use will vary depending on our campaigns overall objectives. A concrete metric or KPI that we strongly advise measuring, that many PR professions are not, is how PR is measuring and tracking the needle in terms of driving user traffic to our website.
Business leaders often forget that increased media visibility has a direct effect on the number of users and website visitors, and so it’s good to challenge their way of thinking! The more user traffic we drive to our website, the greater awareness created. High traffic volume can also improve our organic reach through SEO. All of which help us act more competitively!
Measuring Public Relations & Website traffic correlation
Meltwater understood the need for pros to track and measure their Public Relation's impact on site traffic, and to prove their PR ROI. So we recently rolled out a new Google Analytics feature within our media intelligence tool that can easily detect the connection between the two data sets. This new feature has greatly helped professionals speak in the language of their c-suite – numbers. Quantifying your PR efforts can improve boardroom buy-in and our communications budget is also less likely to be cut as a result.
Google Analytics widget
The Google Analytics widget displays the sessions and referred sessions to a selected website against the media exposure for a Meltwater news or social search.
Exploring referral or direct traffic is handy for those wanting to understand which media outlets (e.g. press releases, blog posts, particular landing pages, social channels etc.) are driving the most traffic from earned coverage. We can use the data to tweak our content strategy based on the insights
So there you have it, a very simple way of measuring your PR efforts and determining how Public Relations is influencing other marketing initiatives.
If you’re interested in expanding your PR campaign reporting capabilities with this simple Google Analytics widget, fill out the form below and prove the connection between Public Relations and website traffic.