The evaluation process within the world of PR can be hard to define by one set of ideas. In looking to create the most effective information for the client to use for their company and how one would apply that to their business should be most of the focus in the evaluation process. Showing the client how to understand when your plan for their business was successful and what to do from there are key topics that are crucial. PR professionals strive to make the best image for the outcome expected by their plan in a campaign.
Creating the best plan for your client is the ultimate goal and the evaluation does a great job of passing the torch to the business as long as it’s done correctly. This allows one to either work with the PR professional to implement and evaluate or take the reigns as the business and use the information to implement within their team. Mrs. Johnson is a professional in the industry that has seen evaluation creating a connection between management and PR teams (Johnson, 2019, para 1). As this has not always been the case for teams in the past, the evaluation can help to create these connections needed for professionals. Objectives in a campaign steer professionals to give an evaluation in a structured and supported form.
In looking at an example of an evaluation executed, Southwest Airlines had a PR campaign that would be optimizing press releases for the major news search engines. In looking at this campaign conducted, they were able to track sales in tickets and watch the plan layout over time. From that one was able to use this see what results came about from the objectives given for improvement. In looking at some key information they were able to gain, two PR professionals found “Southwest Airlines was able to directly track more than $2.5 million in online ticket sales as a result of optimized press releases”. This allowed them to track the turns of the ticket sales over a long period of time to figure out the relation between media and sales. From this example, we can understand a properly carried out evaluation that is used by the business for improvement.
As it is always strong to have true data evidence that shows credibility in one’s results, PR professionals use ROI (Return of Investment) to measure the efficiency of ones plan. ROI helps in comparing the success and gain from an investment to others and helps to rank the effectiveness of a campaign. As this data is very important to keep track, it is crucial that businesses keep their focus on the true importance of implementing and are aware of long term benefits as well. Measuring ROI right after the scheduled plan and calling it unsuccessful is the opposite goal of what a campaign should do. If one’s campaign did not play out as expected, it is important to look for improvement and benefits from that campaign to work with for future implementations. Mr. Hall from Forbes advises those to “Harness your brand story, continue to nurture these efforts over time, and don’t rely on the numbers for the whole story” (Hall, 2015, para 8). As this statement speaks volumes, it is key to properly balance the numbers with the long term goals that can be measured over time through the evaluation process.
Watson, T., & Noble, P. (2007). Integrating Planning and Evaluation: Evaluating the Public Relations Practice and Public Relations Programs. Handbook of Public Relations, 1–252. doi: 10.4135/9781452220727.n19
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