An expertly planned and executed public relations campaign can elevate brand visibility, strengthen credibility, and drive real business impact. However, measuring the success of PR efforts requires more than just tracking media mentions. In 2025, with a proliferation in digital PR and the growing influence of online PR strategy in Sydney and indeed globally, PR agencies must adopt data-driven approaches to assess the effectiveness of their campaigns.
We often have clients coming to us looking for PR to generate sales directly. Whilst this is always the North Star, and a strong outcome of a successful PR campaign, you can’t always expect earned media coverage to attribute sales directly, as it was never what it was designed for. PR is most often a ‘top of funnel’ activity, which drives brand awareness and consideration with your target audience.
There’s no one right way to go about it, but to us at Agent99, here’s how we suggest measuring PR success effectively.
Before launching a PR campaign, it’s absolutely crucial to establish specific goals aligned with business objectives. Whether you aim to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic and authority, or enhance your brand reputation, having measurable KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) is essential.
Common PR objectives include:
- Pieces of media coverage in top-tier publications
- Total social media engagement and reach
- An increase in share of voice against competitors
- Positive overall brand sentiment and public perception
- Increased website visits and keyword searches
- Percentage of content including key messages and backlinks
Why should I measure media coverage?
Tracking media coverage is a tried-and-true method of measuring PR success. However, it’s not just about quantity, quality matters too. You should always consider the tier of the publication, whether it is a high-authority media outlet that holds more weight than mentions in smaller, niche focused publications, though contrary to popular belief, maximum reach doesn’t aways equal success in PR campaigns. Often reaching a niche audience specifically aligned with your campaign can be 10 times more valuable, so consider how big your intended audience is before demanding 10 top tier pieces of coverage a week.
Similarly to audience alignment, when measuring media coverage, it’s critical to consider how well the key messages were communicated throughout the campaign. Often it’s important to align between the brand and agency, or just internally on what these key messages will be prior to your campaign. We recommend highlighting up to 3 primary key messages, things that absolutely must be communicated, and up to 3 secondary key messages that may be less relevant to every media outlet. This way you can effectively measure how many of the earned pieces of coverage from the campaign included this key messaging, thus determining how well your campaign performed.
You should also be measuring the overall sentiment of the coverage, especially if the campaign is slightly more unconventional. Many brands also measure their share of voice in media compared to competitors, especially during key product launches. PR agencies are increasingly able to measure this also and can also showcase how a campaign performed against its competitors.
How do I measure influencer campaigns?
As influencer marketing in Sydney and beyond continues to thrive and become an important part of an integrated marketing and PR strategy, social media metrics have become another crucial indicator of a campaign’s success. Influencers can share backend analytics highlighting the performance of paid or contra posts if you don’t have access to a social listening platform. If you do have the means to include a social listening platform in your suite of reporting tools, you can calculate many of these metrics manually.
The elements you should be measuring from an influencer campaign are:
- Likes, shares, comments, and saves, which indicate audience interaction
- Reach and conversions that tie back to each influencer. You might want to consider providing personalised codes for influencers to track their performance
- How often and in what context your brand is mentioned online through simple brand mentions and hashtag uses
- How much growth on social media was achieved throughout the campaign
How should I measure the digital PR performance of a campaign?
A strong online PR strategy in Sydney should drive digital traffic and improve search rankings and the overall authority of a website. A few important metrics we measure are referral traffic – to track website visits from the earned media coverage achieved in the campaign. When we roll out influencer campaigns, we often provide them with a personalised link for their followers so we can also track the referrals to the website from their content.
Another metric we benchmark is the time a customer spends on the site, and what the bounce rate is. This allows us to assess whether visitors to the site were more engaged at the end of the campaign as opposed to prior to the campaign. We can also track which pages they visited, and which of these were most popular during the campaign.
Importantly, we benchmark these metrics prior to the campaign to ensure we can draw comparisons and truly measure the impact on the brand’s bottom line. Something like an increase in high-quality backlinks to the website which boosts the domain’s authority, can significantly increase organic visibility of the website on google.
PR has become increasingly more digital over the last couple of decades, and your agency’s campaign metrics should be evolving with this. If not, it’s time to start asking questions!
Measuring PR success goes beyond counting media mentions. It requires a comprehensive analysis of media impact, digital engagement, audience sentiment, and business outcomes. By leveraging data-driven insights, PR agencies can refine strategies, demonstrate ROI, and drive continuous improvement. Whether focusing on influencer marketing, media training, or corporate PR, a strong measurement framework ensures that PR campaigns deliver real, measurable value.
By Agent Brooke
