Data-Driven PR: Proving ROI with Outcome and Impact Measurem

PR teams often use metrics that are difficult to translate to business outcomes (sales, customer acquisition), leading CFOs to target PR budgets. To help, CBC approaches PR more like eComm experts. We build proprietary client dashboards that converge traditional metrics (e.g., opportunity to see), qualitative data (e.g., message quality, audience quality), website analytics, SEO rankings, and sales to provide a 360-degree view of the true impact of PR.
One example is “spike detection,” which correlates lift in website traffic and revenue with press coverage. For one client, 4 of the top 5 days for organic search traffic in 2021 correlated directly with top outlets like Eat This, Not That, Men’s Life, and Yahoo News. Across CBC clients, 70% of all top traffic days correspond with earned coverage.
For B2B clients, we track leads generated by coverage using trackable links, Google Analytics, and CRM data. For one client, we doubled qualified leads, increased demo requests, and closed more than $200,000 in sales – all attributable to earned media coverage.
Media coverage also creates backlinks that improve domain authority and drive organic search traffic. We measure how coverage increases organic and branded search traffic, dramatically increasing the ROI attributable to PR. Long-term, articles featuring our clients continue to rank highly in Google for relevant, high-volume SEO keywords, increasing exposure and clickthrough among audiences with high purchase intent.
CBC has also invested in outcome measurement for influencer campaigns. One influencer campaign for MegaFood drove an 11-point lift in intent to purchase (measured via an independent brand lift study with a control/exposed methodology).
Additional campaign results testify to the quality of the content:
1.1M impressions (4x more than forecast)
37K engagements
1,115 clicks
6.2% engagement rate (2.1x above goal)
This work won a Global Digital PR award for influencer campaign of the year in 2022. A follow-up campaign continued to leverage creators as educators and thought leaders aligned with MegaFood’s values. This campaign drove a 26-point lift in consideration (more than 3x higher than benchmark), proving the impact of expert-created influencer content on consumer behavior.