Marginal gains in PR effectiveness increase website traffic

Marginal gain in PR measurement and effectiveness

Sir Dave Brailsford’s concept of the aggregation of marginal gains has contributed to enhanced performance across the world of sport. Famously, the improvements he introduced to the off-bike environment for the Ineos Grenadiers cycling team made as much difference as those relating to riding technique and tactics.

In business, ‘sweating the small stuff’ can also bring impressive gains. We’ve been working with clients to apply this principle to enhancing the performance of their websites, using media coverage to stimulate additional customer and fan engagement. Yes, that’s right – media coverage is far more powerful than people realise. It supports the customer journey in many and various ways, including:

Increasing the volume of website sessions reported in GA4 for a wide range of paid and organic session types, from direct traffic and referrals to affiliates, shopping and video
Increasing the volume of brand search, which amplifies the impact of paid Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

CMOs can now obtain data that reveals how PR contributes to marketing outcomes, in ways that have never been understood before. One client of Metricomm found that 86% of organic shopping sessions over a single quarter had been influenced by the audience finding and reading online media coverage. There were tens of thousands of website sessions for the product in question. Using PR to drive additional visits can produce marginal gains that stretch the outcomes of online marketing.

To attribute any element of performance to the impact of media coverage, you need robust statistical modelling. The extent of the impact depends on the brand and varies considerably. Online media coverage is most effective because it sticks around, continuing to be found by the audience long after its first appearance. This has a strong – and measurable – effect on audience behaviour. In the same way that advertising works (off-bike), media content makes the audience more receptive to targeted, performance-driven marketing activities (on-bike).

Metricomm quantifies the value added by media coverage over time by using its own audience-centric media data, combined with independent data sets such as Google Analytics, Google search, brand tracking and sales revenue.

To learn more about how PR generates marginal gains across the marketing mix, strengthening brand loyalty and increasing merchandise revenue, get in touch via hello@metricomm.com or by using the form below, and we’ll get straight back to you!