Bolster e-commerce revenues by understanding how media coverage contributes to buying behaviour
Barcelona FC earned almost €180 million from kit and merchandise sales in 2023. In the UK, the biggest earner was Liverpool FC with sales worth €132 million. This represents 22% of the club’s turnover. It’s more than the £102 million Arsenal earned from match-day income in 2022-23. No wonder maximising the revenue from shirts and other branded items is a high priority for football clubs, with the Shop button on the website usually positioned front and centre of the navigation bar.
The performance of that e-commerce asset is exceptionally important. When it comes to understanding how people land there in the first place, many still rely on last-click attribution, giving all the credit for a sale to one advert or keyword. A common criticism of this approach is that it misses other interactions the customer might have had with the brand. It’s just one of the reasons why few CMOs realise how much PR is contributing to commercial outcomes. Although they are thoroughly familiar with their GA4 data, the impact of media coverage through the funnel remains hidden and the power of PR remains untapped.
Gut instinct tells us that PR builds brand awareness and reputation. Until now, it’s been impossible to quantify its impact on consumer behaviour and business outcomes – including sales. Recent work by Metricomm for leading global brands has revealed that online media coverage amplifies the impact of other marketing activities designed to optimise e-commerce revenues.
Media coverage demonstrably increases the volume of many types of website session. We can see its impact on outcomes for paid search, paid advertising and paid shopping, organic search, organic video, organic shopping, referrals and affiliates, for example. It’s also possible to identify the topics in media coverage that are most efficiently driving this uplift in website sessions. Analysing PR data alongside Google Analytics provides another piece of the effectiveness jigsaw that was previously invisible.
For marketing teams, being able to feed these insights into comms planning means they can maximise the impact of media coverage, whether it’s national and regional coverage about on-pitch results and other club-related news or features with players in specialist sports media, consumer and lifestyle publications.
To find out more about how to sweat the benefits of media coverage to boost fan engagement and support merchandising objectives, contact Metricomm, we’d love to have a conversation. Get in touch via hello@metricomm.com or by using the form below, and we’ll get straight back to you!
