Although almost indigenous to development studies, sustainability initiatives, donor projects and programme reports, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) remains at the core of communications governance. It is PR’s bread and butter when it comes to convincing leadership, understanding issues, reporting campaign visibility, tracking reputation and identifying a brand’s place in public conversation.
Founders, investors and boards require a clear demonstration of how corporate communications has moved the needle, so their decisions can be guided by the narrative being compounded, increased mentions in the right conversations and the company’s perception. Return on investment (ROI) is achieved when the board is convinced about value for money. This conviction comes from the company appearing on sector-specific platforms, being cited in generative AI overviews and taking centre stage at industry conferences and events.
M&E and ROI intersect in the Theory of Change (ToC), where the success and impact of public relations execution are benchmarked against broader business objectives to ascertain what changed. The theory is a strategic framework that uses “backward mapping” to define how and why communication tactics will lead to a desired long-term goal — in this case, ROI. It connects the communications team’s daily work to its final impact by charting every step, action and result in between.
Beyond numbered figures without arguments
Public relations shouldn’t hide behind numbers but must be explicit about the changes each figure represents. That is the documentation that supports decision-making. Random media mentions — no matter how high — in outlets your audience never reads aren’t ROI but noise.
PR must detail how its efforts are hitting set targets: outpacing competitors in share of voice, sentiment analysis, message pull-through, brand search, robust media relationships and business impact.
A single placement in the right niche publication, read by the exact buyers and investors you are trying to reach, is worth more than a syndicated mention viewed by millions of people who are not looking to buy your product or fund your company. M&E may report that a company announcement had 50 million impressions and was read by the right 100,000 people; ROI is interested in whether this resulted in the market better understanding the company.
In this Golden Age of Strategic PR, communications teams can’t continue basing campaign success on outdated KPIs such as Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE), media pickups, potential reach, followers, impressions and referral traffic. These vanity metrics endure because they provide easy answers to the difficult question: “What did the tactic actually achieve?” — not because they can predict anything.
AVE, for instance, prices coverage as though it were an advertising buy. Yet it is silent on whether the coverage converted or created sales funnels. The Institute for Public Relations has dismissed advertising value equivalency because its multipliers are not scientifically supported, while studies have shown that editorial coverage does not behave like paid advertising.
The board should be pleased when the communications team’s latest report arms them with answers, not just a concatenation of numbers. PR teams must therefore interpret data points and use numbers to demonstrate the significance of activities on the field. When the Chief Financial Officer gets a concrete report, they will essentially start calculating the ROI in their head.
Answers ROI seeks from M&E
Given the huge spend on public relations to influence perception, build credibility and ultimately support business outcomes, the least the function can do is provide leadership with answers to these questions:
- Did our activities sway market sentiment in our favour?
- Did our Share of Voice rise above competitors’?
- Did they influence branded search, website traffic, inbound enquiries or sign-ups?
- Are journalists convinced about our expertise and proactively seeking our opinion?
- What is the quality-weighted coverage score?
- Did more customers understand what our company does?
- Did investors gain greater confidence in our business?
- How many leads were generated, and how many sales pipelines were closed?
- Did our brand become easier to discover in generative engines?
AI discoverability: Paradigm shift PR sorely needed
Artificial intelligence systems have reshaped the communications landscape by matching brand stories with searches. Being discoverable now trumps having hypothetical access to millions of potential readers. Buyers are increasingly starting their search with an AI assistant, not a search bar.
When someone asks a tool such as ChatGPT or Claude to recommend a solution in an industry, the cited brands are those the large language model (LLM) has learned to associate with that specific quest. Such referrals are ROI minefields.
AI discoverability confirms that an organisation has become part of the information ecosystem people actively rely on to make decisions. When answer engines and generative AI overviews identify a company, accurately explain what it does, connect it with the right audience and reference credible sources supporting that information, the outcome is far more tangible than a report claiming that a press release had a potential reach of 80 million views.
Thanks to answer engine optimisation (AEO), earned media now pulls double duty. It reaches the humans who read the publication while substantially shaping how AI systems present or recommend a brand to the larger audience privately seeking solutions.
When credible publications repeatedly reference a company in connection with a specific problem or category, those citations become part of what an AI assistant knows and projects about that space. The more credible, consistent and niche-nuanced a brand’s digital footprint is, the more likely it is to be surfaced when users ask questions related to what the company does.
What makes a media M&E report useful
Coverage synopsis: This gives busy leaders a quick grasp of the bigger picture, specifying whether coverage concerns a policy announcement, product launch, campaign, crisis response, leadership statement, stakeholder concern or customer complaint.
Source and placement: This speaks to the quality-weighted coverage score, measuring each placement against the popularity and relevance of the platform. Since all coverage does not carry the same weight, the report should state whether a story appeared in tier-one media, a trade publication, with a specialised reporter or on an account shaping public opinion.
Tone of coverage: Without tone analysis, a report can present coverage as successful simply because the company was mentioned several times. Being in the news is not always for the right reasons. The report should show whether the tone was positive, negative, neutral or mixed, and whether the headline was favourable while the article was critical, the report was balanced, or the journalist framed the brand as credible, defensive, slow to respond, proactive or responsible.
Key messages: Where the central idea isn’t communicated, visibility is vain. For every campaign launch, press briefing or statement, the PR team must ensure the main points are not misquoted, ignored or overshadowed by another theme. Communications executives can ascertain that the strategy worked when key messages are captured correctly.
Leadership and spokesperson citations: Featuring the CEO and other C-suite executives in media coverage is essential to building credibility. The report should indicate whether they were quoted, paraphrased, criticised, praised or made the talking point, and whether their messages were clear and consistent with the organisation’s position.
Red flags and incendiary sentiments: A relevant M&E report should proactively flag emerging risks, including misleading claims, unsavoury comments gaining traction, stakeholder dissatisfaction, negative comparisons, regulatory concerns, service delivery issues and reputational threats. This allows the PR team to act before supposedly insignificant issues snowball into a crisis.
Recommended action: A media monitoring report should not leave the team hanging but specify what needs to happen next. Recommendations can answer a simple set of questions: Should the communications team respond, clarify, escalate or monitor further? Should leadership be briefed? Is a holding statement required? Should pundits and talking heads be engaged? Do key messages need strengthening?
That is the point where M&E stops being a collection of numbers and starts demonstrating ROI.
- business a.m. commits to publishing a diversity of views, opinions and comments. It, therefore, welcomes your reaction to this and any of our articles via email: comment@businessamlive.com
Founders and investors find ROI in M&E