Credible data in public relations

Raising PR’s Confidence in Data

There is a greater need than ever for credible data in PR. It helps build stronger strategy, insightful creative and accurate evaluation.

Other areas of marketing appear to be very confident in using data, but where does the PR industry stand?

Fran embarassed by overinflated PR metrics

Our mission

Our mission is to help you showcase your hard earned coverage and being confident in using and presenting data is part of that. To understand how to support you further we carried out research with 420 in-house and agency PR practitioners around the world to gauge data literacy in communications..

How confident are PR teams in their data literacy skills? Let's find out...

91% of in house professionals would invest in public relations if they had more confidence in agency data

91% would invest more if they had confidence in agency data.

Although this indicates that clients lack confidence in PR agencies data capability it does present a huge opportunity; there is more budget that can come into our industry if we increase data literacy. We’ll show you how through this page. A quick win here is to switch from large reach figures in reports and instead use Estimated Coverage Views.

As well as a more realistic measure, this metric can be used as a proxy for impressions which is useful to budget holders when they need to compare earned, paid and owned marketing activity. For some brand managers such as James at Diageo, it resulted in an increase to the PR budget.

Choose Estimated Views for realistic PR impact numbers like the team at Diageo

Estimated Views visualisation showing how it's calculated from outlet audience numbers and amplified by social shares and engagements.

“It's a big gripe of mine seeing PR saying potential reach is X million or even X billion people. As a brand manager and allocator of budget, you can't take a lot from 'reach data'. We like using the 'Estimated Coverage Views' metric in CoverageBook. It's more realistic which means it's easier for me to compare PR against other areas of marketing.”

James Alexander profile pic

James Alexander

Head of Culture & Entertainment, PR & Influencer Marketing, Diageo

Learn more about Estimated Views

The majority of PR pros don't have anyone in an in-hpuse data role (68%) or an external measurement team (98%)

68% don't have in-house analyst

There is an emerging trend of agencies hiring in analyst talent which is a huge lift to the industry. If you’re at the start of that journey listen to our podcast interview with the global head of data and analytics at H+K Strategies; Allisson Spray. We find out how she built an award winning data team within a global PR agency from scratch. It’s a fascinating watch/listen, packed with tips on recruitment and training.

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Confidence in data: Behind the scenes at H+K Strategies

with Allison Spray & James Crawford

50% of PR pros admit to presenting metrics they don’t fully understand to a client

Report cover

Improve data literacy by learning from the best.

Ten leading PR insight and measurement experts (including our own Stella Bayles) collaborated on this paper about data literacy in public relations. It explores the use of data in public relations and ways in which it can be used to inform strategy, decision making, creative, content, execution, and measurement. The paper includes tool-stacks, case studies and step-by-step guides in how to improve data use and confidence.

Download the paper

Can PR tech help improve data-literacy in your team?

Get a unique perspective from an agency MD and Stella from CoverageBook on how to increase data literacy in your team and create a data culture.

Read full article

Stella Bayles and James Crawford

Credible, realistic, industry-leading metrics in minutes

Let CoverageBook handle the data gathering for you. Start a free trial and see how it all works with your own coverage.

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