A PR report is an essential part of any company’s efforts to increase brand awareness and reach more potential customers. PR professionals are not only responsible for creating tailored and precise PR campaigns but also follow relevant metrics that will allow them to benchmark the results and show how the public relations efforts have contributed to the company’s growth objectives.
The PR report could help your clients decide whether your PR agency is worth the investment or whether they should focus their budget elsewhere. It presents and proves the results you’ve produced via your PR efforts. Research shows that 41% of PR reports are presented to the Head of Marketing or CMO and that 33% are presented to the company’s CEO.
But PR reports are also used to discuss the PR strategy internally in the team, to report to consultants what we’ve achieved and where we’re heading, and to offer agencies a full picture of the current situation. They’re an irreplaceable part of PR and Marketing that is worth looking into in more detail.
In this article, we’ll look at the types of PR reports and explore the different components used for them.
Types of PR Reports
This section should cover briefly the types of PR reports. We should also talk about real-time reporting, quarterly reports, and annual reports.
There are different types of PR reports used by PR professionals to communicate to different parties the results achieved via certain PR campaigns. The results provided from these reports show how well brand messages were consumed by your target audience and what effects they’ve had.
Weekly PR report
The weekly PR report’s audience is often the agency point of contact and aims to present an overview of the achievements during the week. In most cases, it’s presented at the end of the working week or every Friday and consists of all the PR activities completed during the week.
Apart from the metrics reviewed, it is also used for discussing activities that are to be conducted the following week. Some of the common topics discussed and activities focused on in the weekly PR report include researching, planning, designing, editing copy, ideation sessions, and a range of different activities that are necessary to prepare and execute communication strategies.
Monthly PR report
Monthly PR reports are targeted for your manager and oftentimes any other managers that hold higher positions in the company.
The main objective of this type of PR report is to look at relevant metrics to identify whether or not you are successfully moving forward to achieving your set objectives based on the numbers you can show. The monthly PR report offers a chance to locate the well-performing activities and implement them in other areas that are not performing so good. On the other hand, if you’ve noticed that some results are not what you had hoped for, you can make the necessary changes to improve the PR performance for next month.
Quarterly PR report
Quarterly PR reports include an overview of more information when compared to weekly and monthly reports and are targeted for Senior Directors, VP of Communications, and CMOs or CEOs. They are presented at the end of every business quarter.
In this type of report, the mission of the PR professional is to explain and defend results. The idea behind a quarterly public relations report is to justify every dollar that has been invested in PR campaigns or efforts. You will be expected to explain how the used money has contributed to meeting business goals.
Annual PR report
The annual PR report is presented to the CMO, CEO, the company board, or investors. It aims to present an overview of the PR performance at the end of the fiscal year. The information presented is used to discuss the long-term strategy for the following year and is useful in allocating the PR budget for the year. Yearly expectations are set based on the reports of the previous year.
Campaign PR report
Campaign reports are used to monitor the performance of specific campaigns and track specific goals. This could be a new product release, a new market that has been approached by the company, or a specific promotion that needs to be communicated to potential customers.
Crisis PR report
Although most companies aim to avoid crises at all costs, PR is there to help turn the situation around and maintain a positive brand perception among target audiences. A crisis report can show how PR efforts have helped avoid a catastrophe as a result of a crisis. Benchmarking will offer full guidance along the journey and you’ll need to report the results every step of the way. It’s essential to rely on real-time dashboards for reporting.
Components of a PR report
Now that we’ve covered the types of PR reports, it’s time to look into what components are included in a PR report. Generally speaking, the PR report should present and compile information about ongoing campaigns, brand reputation, crisis management, competitors, strengths & weaknesses, influencers, customers, and more.
But what are the metrics that PR professionals should include in there reports?
- Number of mentions & total impressions Number of mentions and total impressions are two key PR metrics that ought to be included in any basic or detailed PR report. The number of mentions is only useful if you are fully aware of how it feeds back to your PR objectives. Although a large result for the number of mentions may seem like a success, it all depends on what is hidden underneath. For instance, sometimes, it’s better to have ten quality, positive mentions rather than 100 mentions that are of no significant value.
- Sources Your report should also include the sources from which you have received your brand mentions. The share of each source should also be made available. By doing this, you will be able to understand which channels are more popular with your target audience for discussing your brand or campaign. Pinpointing the most active channels will help you tailor your efforts to prioritize these channels specifically, saving you time and money.
- Mentions over time Mentions over time are simply the mentions received in a certain time period. When including this in your report, keep in mind that it’s absolutely normal to see uplifts and drops in the results. If possible, present this in more detail by narrowing down your mentions over time according to their source.
- Sentiment analysis The sentiment analysis metric gives PR professionals the ability to detect whether their PR efforts have resulted in positive, negative, or neutral appreciation from the public or the target audience. It’s what’s used to understand the true meaning or emotional tone behind a campaign or specific words.
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- Sentiment by source When including sentiment analysis in your PR report, it makes sense to include another metric sentiment by source. It provides information about how your sentiment is allocated across different sources. You can use this information to see whether certain channels are leading to positive sentiment, while others may stand out as negative. This will help you tailor your PR campaigns better and turn weaknesses into strengths.
- Locations of mentions When creating your PR objectives, targeting is key. Including a locations metric showing the countries or areas where your mentions originated is essential. This will give you an overview of where your campaigns are performing best and where your target audience is actively talking about you.
- Influencers In PR and Marketing, influencers play a vital role. This is why it’s highly recommended that information about them is included in your PR reports. You can provide details about influencers by the number of mentions, narrow down the top influencers by source, or present the top influencers by search. For example, the top influencers by search will reveal whose mentions had the largest reach for every source separately. Perhaps this information will come in handy when preparing your upcoming collaborations with influencers that you already work with. If possible, you can also segment down top influencers by sentiment to show the influencers that provided the most mentions in the positive or negative sentiment.
- Competitive analysis Looking to benchmark and receive competitive insights? Use competitive analysis in your reports to see the strengths and weaknesses of a brand, service, product, or market.
- Share of voice Share of voice is the number or amount of conversations had about your brand, divided by all conversations had for the same topic, industry, or niche that you’re in. It’s used as a measure of reach and it presents the share of exposure for specific queries. It’s usually included in most sophisticated and long-term PR reports that provide a full picture of the situation.
- Total mentions per channels Use total mentions per channel as a metric that will demonstrate how many times a certain query has been mentioned on a specific channel. It’s an ideal and easy way to make comparisons of queries’ mentions across channels like social media or others.
- Share of impressions Share of impressions will give you the opportunity to present the amount of shares or estimated reach a specific query had from the total number.
Creating and using PR reports to their fullest potential will allow you to not only defend your PR efforts when discussing results with managers and partners but will also help you make the right decisions for future PR campaigns. Create a high-quality, detailed and comprehensive PR report with our sophisticated and reliable tools. We’re here to support you by offering guidance and additional information to help you get started.