PR Week, 16^th October 2008: “If the PR industry gets hit hard by this recession it is because we haven't done a good enough job getting our clients to really embrace measurement”, said Tim Dyson, CEO of Next Fifteen, which owns the Bite, Text100 and Lexis brands.  

PR budgets are always under intense scrutiny and, frustratingly, PRs are always having to fight the finance directors attempts to draw tighter the PR purse string. Hearteningly though, over time and particulalry since the dot.com crash, we’ve noticed how our clients have been gaining strength in that fight when equipped with appropriate measurement stats.   

A key benefit of a PR measurement programme is that it helps you communicate the success of your campaigns to your stakeholders in ways that they can understand. Demonstrating, for example, how 'that coverage in the nationals' impacted web sales, or how 'that column in Now magazine' drove its readers to change their drinking habits. 

If PRs want to protect their budgets they should make sure relevant measurement is planned and built in from the start, adhered to during execution of campaigns (to ensure they are working effectively and adjust if not) and show contextual ROI on completion. 

When well considered, measurement need not be a huge expense and can make the difference between a budget you can succeed with and one you’re up against the wall with.      

See here for tips on how to survive the credit crunch.