When reporting media program results to clients, there seems to be a strong tendency in the PR business to show the highest reach numbers possible: “Our product launch campaign achieved 134 million media impressions!” Sounds good, but what does that really mean?
Business-side stakeholders often don't understand or even trust media impressions as a valuable metric (it’s largely an industry convention/invention), so it’s a better idea to demonstrate the precision of the effort rather than just talk in terms of gross reach. To do this, try segmenting your reach by target audience as a way to demonstrate the quality of the reach: “We reached four million small business decision makers” or “We reached 12 million stay-at-home moms.”
Additionally, if you want to take this idea a step further, try using a “net audience” qualifier to show qualified reach for each publication targeted. For example, only 10 percent of Wall Street Journal’s subscribers may have an interest in your enterprise security products, whereas 90 percent of InformationWeek subscribers would count as qualified targets.
I’ve found it helpful to provide clients with both gross and net reach data as a way to add precision to the reporting and gain buy-in and credibility with skeptical internal audiences.
Comments