Setting your PR targets: how much coverage should your content be earning?
In a dream world, every content campaign that lands with your PR team will end up with plenty of top-tier news coverage, SEO-friendly follow links and an abundance of social shares.
But here in the real world, Klipr know how to manage expectations! We’ve used data from our sister brand, content marketing agency Kaizen, to establish just what kind of results you should expect from your PR campaigns.
PR targets by coverage type
Based on the last 8 months of Kaizen’s Digital PR Activity, the ratio of follow links to mentions is 2:3. For instance, whilst they earned 1759 follow links, they achieved 2783 pieces of coverage overall. The overall coverage includes No Follow links (which Google tracks differently to follow links) and Mentions, which means there is no actual hyperlink to the site, but the brand name is still present in the coverage.
A guide to setting Follow Link targets vs Coverage Targets:
The targets you set for each campaign may be very personal to the client’s wants and needs. For example, some brands may prefer more well-known, top-tier sites but don’t mind if all the coverage is just mentions. On the other hand, some clients would prefer 5 follow links to 20 pieces of general coverage, because they are more focussed on improving organic traffic.
However, this research on the ratio of follow links to total coverage should help you to establish targets based on coverage type, and manage client expectations!
PR targets by content type
Maybe your client only likes to make infographics. Maybe you want to push the boat out with video or influencer content.
Does this affect the targets you should set your campaigns?
Kaizen analysed nearly 2000 pieces of content to discover how many referring domains and social shares different content types typically earn.
On average, these are the results that different types of content earn:
Based on this research, a good KPI (Key Project Indicator, meaning target) for an infographic campaign would be 7 follow links. Based on Kaizen’s averages, this would equate to 10-11 total pieces of coverage.
Interactives: meaning interactive online tools such as MoneySupermarket‘s comparison of the most and least expensive streets in the UK – were the best-performing type of content for both referring domains and social shares. They earn an average of 18 follow links, meaning that an interactive campaign could leave you with 27 total pieces of coverage! On top of that, analysis of over 1900 pieces of content proved that interactive tools pick up an average of over 4000 social shares – great PR for any campaign.
Videos perform slightly better than infographics in terms of referring domains and social shares. Many content marketers are turning to videos as a far more accessible and easily digestible form of content, especially as people prefer watching to reading by up to four times. Video content is often more costly than an infographic, which are fairly cheap and easy to produce, but do yield slightly better results. It’s worth considering what kind of impact you want to achieve: do you want to be forward-thinking, or play it slightly safer?
Perhaps surprisingly, influencer posts performed by far the worst for achieving referring domains and particularly for social shares. Influencer posts performed 88% worse than infographics for social shares, and 96% worse than interactive tools. Part of the reason for this is that influencer content is usually very brand-heavy, and does not tend to do well with news sites. If you’re looking to create influencer content, it would be best to look for other metrics, such as brand reach through the influencer’s own network.
Whether your client is looking for follow links or general coverage, keen to create infographics or videos, hopefully this post helps you work out how to establish targets for your campaign!