Three months ago our client Robert Waverly was a Struggle Street Start Up competing for attention with the big boys. Robert designed a data alert system that could feed real time alerts via any multimedia platform (eg. email, phone, social apps, press releases, etc) that had been purchased via large contract at a State Government level but was failing to impress business, consumers, or worse, investors.

Following a freak storm in a regional town in Jan 2010 Robert had received a modest boost in web traffic thanks to the word of mouth among local government worker families and friends who were all stoked that the advanced alerts allowed them to evacuate a mine and processing plant before flash flooding hit.

So Rob, finds our Free Press Release Service and Free Press Release Distribution on the net and gives us a call.

“What’s the go with this free press release service crap? Is this some sort of bull*$% scam or can a actually use it to send a recovery announcement to this regional Queensland town?” Was the total call intro, no hi, smalltalk, straight to the guts of it.

“Dead right,” I said, “If you send it to me via the web site or email it’ll load and send immediately and send you back the name and numbers of the journos and editors that got it in case you want to ring and check.”

Silence.

“Hang on, it’s Bob@hotmail.com”.

“Got it, look Bob, if it’s super important your get this announcement to the area you can pay $39.00 to get our journalists to follow it up and send you audio or printed deliver reports collected via phone and email. Would that help?” I wasn’t sure if I’d just walked into Bob’s pending accusation of SO IT IS A SCAM or not but he sounded genuine.

“Fine, sounds good. Let me know” Click. Bob was gone and the phone was dead.

I saw the release load into our press release distribution engine a few minutes later and double checked the confirmation report had sent afterward. No probs.

Nothing happened for a day or say until I got a call from Bob in a borderline frantic state.

“Mate, no idea where you sent that release but somehow we’ve tripled our sales rate. Can you find out what happened and let me know so we can do it again or thank whichever producer ran it on the evening news?”

“Ah, sure Bob, the answers right here in my work flow, and you can view it via your email box. The release was picked up by 68 online news, press release feeds, blogs, and then a mix of 4 local print outlets, 2 radio programs, no station desks, syndicates, or TV’s"

If you look at the media monitor data you’ll see that a journo who normally covers the local council up there got it 1hr after we sent it. She ran the standard story of property protection with the added interest that the warning had saved her 6mth old "fluff-ball"Golden Retriever puppy who was napping in the stormwater drain outside her townhouse as she drove home after getting the alert in time to rescue the Pup. Soon after the flash flooding hit and water before from belting in drowning the huge street causeway pipes.

A few of her local racing day friends saw the story via her twitter account and spread it onto Facebook, from there we can see some SMS links were firing back in over email which in total account for about 3450 share instances of the story.

Bob scoffed, “mate I don’t care what you call it, that turned into 297% of real sale revenue from us and I want to pay you for it. I’ve never heard of PR doing sales so I’m happy to give you a bonus for going above and beyond, you know?”

We get this a bit especially if folks are combining free press release services or free press release sites with SEO, and Social, and Word of Mouth in line with our strategy products.

“That’s nice of you Bob but you’re invoice for $39 is fine. If you want to do me a favour you can turn this into a reason to start a habit of sending regular valuable content and updates to your prospective markets via all channels and encouraging them to share about their own lives – I guarantee you will be surprised again sooner than you think”

The Washup (Pun Intended)

PR media measurement techniques can show a direct link between PR and sales results. 
It’s evidence of just how far PR measurement has come in such a short time.  These rapid advances in PR measurement techniques are helping support the huge increases in PR budgets in the marketing arena, sometimes at the expense of advertising.

Most PR measurement is focused around its media generation role. Typically most measurement seeks to analyse media exposure - which is similar to the traditional advertising approach that marketing and brand managers are familiar, and comfortable, with.

For you mad PR scientists out there here’s the advanced strategy and technical specifications ;-)