The Top 10 PR KPIs for Measuring Campaign Success
21 Jul 2025, Deya Bhattacharya
21 Jul 2025, Deya Bhattacharya
All too often, the success of a PR campaign is measured by the number of online shares and media mentions that it garnered. And those, undoubtedly, are important criteria. But the actual business impact of a campaign can’t be captured by metrics like these. You need to highlight KPIs that link directly to the business bottom line and show in quantifiable terms how much value the campaign has generated for the brand. And a failure to do so could potentially impact the kind of budget you’re allocated the next time around.
There are multiple PR metrics we like to track at Star Squared PR. Some can be grasped intuitively, others require a little more of a deep dive. Today, we’ll talk about 10 PR KPIs that effectively capture the impact of just about any kind of campaign. Whether you’re handling PR in-house or teaming up with a digital PR agency, these metrics will add heft to your impact reports and present a clear picture of what your campaign achieved.
Media reach refers to the number of unique audience members who were exposed to your PR content. Media impressions refers to the total number of times your campaign content appeared across all platforms. Both are important to measure, but there are two points to keep in mind here:
This is exactly what it sounds like — a measure of how much engagement you’re seeing for your PR campaign on social media. Here’s how to calculate it:
Engagement Rate = (Total Social Media Engagements ÷ Total Followers) × 100
Engagement can include likes, comments, shares, and DMs. Keep track of all these across each platform you’re present on, and pay attention to engagement quality too. A DM expressing interest in the brand, for instance, is more valuable engagement than just a like on a post.
How many people are clicking on your digital PR content and navigating to your brand website? Tracking how much site traffic is coming from campaign content is one of the best ways to show senior leadership how PR can generate valuable leads. Be sure to track specific data on which platforms are leading to the most traffic, be it social media or a mention in a prominent news outlet.
Share of voice indicates what percentage of brand conversation in your industry belongs to you. You can measure it as:
SOV = (Your Brand Mentions ÷ Total Industry Mentions Across All Competing Brands) × 100
This number shows you where you stand in terms of brand visibility, and improvements in it after a PR campaign indicate that you have successfully carved out a bigger space for yourself in industry discussions.
This is one of the most important PR KPIs. It measures how well your brand messaging and talking points are represented in media mentions of your brand. You can track it as:
Message Pull-Through Rate = (Stories with Key Messages ÷ Total Stories) × 100
Keeping an eye on this indicates how effectively journalists and media personnel are able to understand and represent your brand story. A low pull-through rate, therefore, could indicate a need to revisit your core messaging and clarify key points.
This dives past media impressions and mentions to see how exactly your brand is perceived. By studying patterns in whether mentions are positive, negative, neutral, or a mix of all, and by analysing how these correlate with platforms and time periods, you get to see how well your PR campaigns are resonating with your target audience, and whether there are any potential issues that you can address before they escalate. Here’s an easy way to quantify sentiment analysis:
Sentiment Analysis Score = (Positive Mentions – Negative Mentions) ÷ Total Mentions × 100
This metric compares the cost of your PR coverage to equivalent advertisement costs. You can calculate it as follows:
EMV = Total Media Impressions × Average Cost Per Impression (CPM)
This is an easy way to communicate the monetary ROI of your PR campaign to senior leadership.
Investing in thought leadership can be time-consuming and expensive, so you want to make sure that it’s actually leading to increased exposure and credibility. Keep an eye on metrics like speaking engagements secured, conference invitations received, industry report mentions, and other indicators that your brand’s thought leader is respected and sought after.
This is perhaps the most concrete measure of the business impact of your PR campaign. Invest in a quality tracking tool that monitors the correlation between your campaign content and activities like form submissions, demo requests, newsletter subscriptions, or purchases.
A PR crisis is every PR team’s worst nightmare — and yet sometimes it must be contended with. The more quickly your brand responds to a crisis, the more likely you are to come out of it with your reputation intact. Track your average response time over past crisis incidents, and make note of any delays and why they occurred. This will help you develop better response protocols.
We’ll conclude by reminding you of one key fact — PR metrics alone can’t demonstrate your campaign’s success. You need to weave the numbers into a story about the impact your brand is having and how that ties back to broader business goals. The more consistently you measure your PR KPIs, the more data you’ll have, and the more convincing a story you’ll be able to craft. Need some extra guidance with this? Reach out to Star Squared PR today. We’ve championed brand stories across a plethora of industries and would be happy to champion yours too.
