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by The Notified Team on Oct 21, 2024 7:36:57 PM
Press releases are powerful tools for sharing news and engaging global audiences. But measuring their success can be tricky. Many communicators make common mistakes that lead to inaccurate or incomplete insights.
In our blog, we’ll dive into frequent pitfalls and offer practical tips on how to avoid them!
Here are the six biggest mistakes to watch out for:
- Not setting clear goals
- Focusing only on quantity
- Ignoring engagement metrics
- Not using the right tools
- Failing to measure long-term impact
- Not analyzing competitor performance
1. Not Setting Clear Goals
Without clear goals, you will not know what to measure or how to define success. This means you might end up collecting data that doesn’t align with your actual objectives, making it hard to understand whether your press release was effective or not.
Pro Tip: Establish specific and measurable goals before sending out your press release. Decide what you want to achieve - such as increasing website traffic, driving social media engagement, or boosting brand awareness. And then define what success looks like for each goal.
For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic, you might aim for a specific percentage increase in visitors from the press release. If you want to drive social media engagement, set targets for the number of shares, likes or comments.
By clearly defining your goals and success criteria, you ensure that your measurement efforts are aligned with your objectives, enabling you to evaluate the effectiveness of your press release accurately.
2. Focusing Only on Quantity
Many communicators put too much focus on the number of press clippings or media mentions. While these numbers are important, they don’t always provide a complete picture of how effective your press release has been.
Simply knowing how many times your release was mentioned doesn't tell you much about the quality of that coverage or its impact.
Pro Tip: To get a fuller understanding, you need to combine quantitative metrics with qualitative ones. Instead of just counting mentions, evaluate how your press release was covered, the sentiment of the coverage and the influence of the media outlets.
Assess whether the coverage was positive or negative and consider the relevance and impact of the media outlets that picked it up. This approach gives you a clearer view of how well your press release resonated with the audience and how effectively it achieved your communication goals.
3. Ignoring Engagement Metrics
Many PR and comms pros overlook tracking how readers engage with their press release. Simply knowing how many people saw your press release isn’t enough to estimate its effectiveness.
Engagement metrics provide deeper insights into how your audience interacted with your content and whether it prompted meaningful actions.
Pro Tip: To get a complete picture, track engagement metrics such as social media shares, comments and the number of clicks to your website that originated from the press release. Monitoring social media shares and comments helps you understand the level of interest and discussion your release generated.
Tracking clicks to your website reveals how effectively the press release drove traffic and prompted readers to take further action. By focusing on these engagement metrics, you can assess how well your press release captured attention and encouraged interaction, giving you a clearer view of its overall impact.
4. Not Using the Right Tools
Relying on basic or outdated measurement tools can lead to incomplete or inaccurate data about your press release's performance. Additionally, failing to target the right journalists or media outlets can reduce the effectiveness of your media outreach.
Pro Tip: To get accurate and comprehensive data, invest in modern press release analytics tools. Tools like GlobeNewswire Analytics offer detailed insights into how your press release is performing across channels!
5. Failing To Measure Long-Term Impact
Many communicators only focus on the immediate results of press releases, such as the number of views or interactions on the first day. This short-term view can miss the broader, more lasting effects of your news story.
Pro Tip: To gain a comprehensive understanding of your press release’s value, track its impact over an extended period. Monitor how it contributes to long-term goals like enhancing your brand reputation and maintaining ongoing audience engagement.
Assess changes in brand perception, sustained traffic to your website and any enduring media coverage. By evaluating these long-term effects, you can better understand the overall success of your press release and its lasting influence on your communication objectives.
6. Not Analyzing Competitor Performance
Ignoring how your press release stacks up against those of your competitors can limit your understanding. Without this comparison, you might miss out on valuable insights about industry trends and opportunities for improvement.
Pro Tip: Regularly compare your press release with those of your competitors. This comparison helps you understand how your content, messaging and distribution strategies measure up in the industry.
By analyzing competitors’ releases, you can identify trends, assess what strategies might be working for others and determine areas where you can enhance your own approach. This insight allows you to adjust your strategy to better align with industry standards and potentially outperform your competitors.
Measuring the success of a press release goes beyond counting mentions. By setting clear goals, combining quantity with quality, tracking engagement, using the right tools, measuring long-term impact and analyzing competitors, you can avoid common mistakes and get a clearer picture of your press release’s effectiveness.
This approach will help you refine your strategy and achieve better results across future communications!
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