Hannah Swinson

Struggling to demonstrate the ROI of your PR program to the CEO? Here’s our advice.  

 

Discussing PR with the CEO can be awkward, really awkward. Trust us - we've got the data to back it up. In fact, in a survey we conducted earlier this year, we found that 84% of B2B CMOs find talking to the CEO about PR awkward, while 49% said that they found it really awkward.
 

The issue seems to be one of value, with CEOs struggling to realise the value of PR programs. In our research, 96% of CEOs said that they saw PR as a cost centre rather than a revenue generator, while 82% claimed that the metrics their CMO uses to demonstrate the value of PR aren't valuable for them at all.   

 

So, what steps can B2B marketers take to overcome this issue and demonstrate the ROI of their PR programs:   

 

  1. Listen to the CEO: CEOs focus on business growth. Before embarking on a PR program, its vital marketers listen to and understand the business's growth objectives as the CEO sees it.   
  2. Speak to sales: The sales team are on the front line. They understand the challenges the business needs to overcome to realise its growth objectives. Speaking to sales can help to create a PR program that will work to overcome these challenges.  
  3. Establish clear goals: Once you have listened to senior leadership and the sales team, the next step is to set clear and measurable goals that relate directly to the growth objectives of the business. This might include increasing brand awareness, improving thought leadership, generating leads, or increasing website traffic.  
  4. Use relevant metrics: B2B marketers must use relevant metrics that align with their goals and the CEO's priorities. Ultimately this should demonstrate how PR activity contributes to the growth of a business's bottom line. Did sales share coverage with prospects? What was their feedback? Did it help them to progress conversations?   
  5. Present findings clearly and concisely: B2B marketers should present their findings in a way that is easy for the CEO to understand. This could include using charts and graphs to visualise data and summarise the key findings.
     

We recently spoke to Becca Chambers, SVP of Global Brand & Communications at Alludo, about how the brand measures the ROI of their PR activity as part of our PR for Growth podcast series.

 

You can listen to the full episode here: https://championcomms.com/blog/pr-podcast/.  

  

If you want to book a call to find out how we can help your business demonstrate your ROI, you can do that here: https://bit.ly/3NzhAub.