Public Relations (PR) can play a far more significant role for startups than many marketing leaders realize. Whether you’re at the pre-seed stage or have just secured your first round of funding, PR helps get your name out there, shape how your audience perceives your brand and nurtures long-lasting relationships with customers, investors, and the media. 

But how do you know if your startup PR efforts are truly making an impact? For many marketers, measuring the effectiveness of PR can sometimes feel like chasing their own shadows. Startup over Coffee will break down practical ways to gauge the success of your PR strategies, so you can ensure that every effort is driving your startup toward its growth goals.

Define clear objectives

Before you can measure the impact of your startup PR efforts, you need to know what success looks like. This means setting clear, measurable objectives. Are you aiming to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, or attract potential investors? Perhaps your goal is to position your startup as a thought leader in the industry. Whatever your objectives, ensure they are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). For example, if your goal is to boost brand awareness, you might set a target to increase media mentions by 20% over the next six months. Without realistic and measurable objectives, you’re essentially making an educated guess that can be wildly inaccurate.

Leverage Google Analytics

Google Analytics 4 is a powerful tool for tracking the effectiveness of your PR efforts. When your startup gets mentioned in the media or thought leadership article written by a founder is published, track the referral traffic to your website using Google Analytics. If you announce a product launch or planned brand activations at an industry trade show, analyze metrics like the number of new website visitors, page views, average time spent on your site, and even foot traffic to your event booth. If a media mention in a popular news outlet like TechCrunch leads to a spike in traffic, it’s a strong indicator that your PR efforts are resonating with your audience.

3. Monitor media coverage and sentiment

Counting media mentions is a good start, but it’s not just about quantity– quality matters, too. If you have the budget, consider using media monitoring tools like Cision, Meltwater, or Mention to track how often your startup is being mentioned in the media, and equally importantly, the sentiment connected to those mentions. Are the articles portraying your brand in a positive light, or is there room for improvement? Sentiment analysis can give you a deeper understanding of how your startup PR is influencing public perception. For many early stage startups, positive media sentiment is crucial for building trust with prospects, customers, and investors. Make sure you’re tracking not just the number of mentions, but also the tone and context of those mentions. Don’t worry if you can’t spring for the 7-digit subscription cost of a cloud-based media tracking solution – most startups won’t have the volume of media coverage that justifies the marketing spend. Instead, you can set up a simple spreadsheet to track all articles, quotes, and mentions by listing date, publication, author, and a measure of sentiment (Positive, Negative, or Neutral should work fine).

4. Track social media engagement

Social media is where some of the impact of media coverage plays out. When your startup gets featured in the media, don’t forget to share that through your startup’s social channels. Also, monitor how that coverage is shared and discussed across social media platforms. Track likes, shares, comments, and the overall reach of the posts. There are affordable tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social that can help you measure social media engagement related to your PR campaigns. If a particular article or media mention is getting a lot of play on social media, it’s an indicator that your message is resonating with your audience. Additionally, social listening tools can help you track conversations and sentiment about your brand, providing real-time feedback on your startup PR efforts.

5. Measure leads and conversions

Ultimately, the success of your PR efforts should be impactful on, if not traced to, your startup’s bottom line. To do that, you must find ways to track how your PR campaigns are influencing leads and conversions. For instance, if your startup was featured in an influential news outlet for your industry, did you see an uptick in website traffic and, ultimately, sign-ups or product inquiries? You can use UTM codes in links found in your press release in hopes of tracking where your leads are coming from and to see how they convert over time. The challenge with UTM codes is that not all media outlets will copy and past the link with them attached; many of them view their role as objective providers of industry news and not enablers of a given brand’s lead gen strategy. With that said, you should still try. If successful, links with UTM codes will help you gain even more insights into the effectiveness of your media outreach. Remember, the goal is not just to generate buzz, but to translate that buzz into tangible business results.

6. Evaluate PR’s role in brand equity

For a startup, brand equity is a valuable asset. Effective PR can help build brand equity by increasing your startup’s visibility, credibility, and customer loyalty. Use brand surveys to measure awareness and perception before and after your PR campaigns. Are more people recognizing your brand? Are they associating it with the qualities you want to be known for, like innovation or reliability? Tracking changes in brand equity over time can give you a clearer picture of the long-term impact of your PR efforts.

7. Consider the value of earned media

Earned media refers to the publicity your startup gains through PR efforts, as opposed to paid advertising. Unlike paid media, earned media is seen as more credible because it comes from established third-party sources. But how do you measure its value? One way is to calculate the equivalent advertising value (EAV) of the media coverage your startup PR efforts have generated. This involves estimating how much it would have cost to achieve the same level of visibility through paid advertising. While not a perfect measure, EAV can give you a ballpark figure of the financial value of your PR efforts.

Final Thoughts

Measuring the impact of startup PR is by no means an exact science. With the right tools and strategies, however, you can gain valuable insights into how your PR investments are paying off. For marketing professionals in the startup world, staying agile and continuously refining your PR strategy based on the data you collect will help you gain market share against entrenched competitors. By doing so, you’ll ensure that your PR efforts are an effective part of your overall marketing mix that drives your startup towards its desired outcomes.

Interested in learning more? Reach out to Swyft about getting B2B tech PR support in the U.S. or anywhere in the world. 

About Sarah Gagliardi: Sarah is a Content Writer for Swyft, a member of First PR Alliance; Swyft is a tech PR agency in Austin and a top digital marketing and PR agency in Denver since its founding in 2011. Swyft offers tech PR in San Francisco though its satellite office in Santa Rosa. Swyft was also listed as one of the top tech PR agencies in Texas by the B2B services review site, Clutch.co.

[Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash]