Content Caffeine: North Star Inbound's newsletter for the content-obsessed.

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Digital PR: Tracking Performance vs Success

You’ve just created a campaign that generated 500 links for a client…but 490 were syndicated. Was your piece a success?

As a client-facing agency, we work with our clients to track and report success, however they need to define it.

But our internal performance tracking is a bit different. Our performance metrics track predictors of success–things that tend to drive consistency in results across clients.

Performance metrics like these can be used to find weaknesses before they become failures. They should also be tracked over time to ensure the team is improving.

Returning to the topic of syndication, this campaign on the happiest couples earned 41% more links than this one on the most stylish sleepwear. So which indicates better performance?

The total number of unique stories. While syndication is great, it’s not something we, as DPRs and SEOs can control.

Instead, by measuring the number of unique stories, we focus our performance metrics on outcomes more directly related to our creativity, news sense, outreach, and other key execution skills vital to strong consistency.

When we measure the number of unique stories, the sleepwear campaign earned 11, and the happiest couples campaign earned 9.

Setting aside SEO value, our performance on the sleepwear campaign was slightly better due to the higher number of unique stories.

The number of unique stories of DA 80 and above. This indicates the quality of links we’re earning and if we’re getting the attention of the most authoritative publications in your space.

There’s no question this is the hardest task in SEO. If you have a team laser-focused on this goal and succeeding, you’ll surely be meeting and exceeding many of the other metrics.

The number of methods of research. This is a number that must grow over time. If a team is only capable of creating an index or a Google trends piece, they will soon find themselves limited in the number of successful campaigns they can run for a given client.

Conversely, the more formats, methodologies, and data sources a team has at their disposal, the easier it is for them to bring an exciting idea to life. Even an old idea can be refreshed through the lens of a novel data source.

Open rates. If journalists aren’t opening your emails, you don’t stand a chance. Low open rates suggest problems with deliverability, subject lines, or worse yet, you’ve missed the mark.

Time to first link. How long does it take your team to get that first link? Is that time getting longer or shorter?

Lags can be due to problems with outreach or with the overall quality of campaigns. Great campaigns with great outreach usually get their first link within the first week. A nimble team can spot the variance, hold a meeting, and quickly pivot a campaign that is initially struggling.

Understanding the difference between performance and success lets you realign your metrics to predict issues and forge digital PR teams that deliver the greatest ROI.
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I hope these insights help. For more tips, follow me here. To explore our work further, reach out here.
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Best,

Nicole DeLeon
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