Have you been asked for a financial value metric such as AVE? Although we (as an industry) needs to move away from old-fashioned inaccurate metrics like AVE we know budget holders need to see some kind of ROI (return on investment).

It can be a challenge to demonstrate the full financial impact of Public Relations. But there are simple indicators we can learn from other areas of marketing that when used alongside the rest of your PR evaluation, can be very useful to you, your strategy and a marketing budget holder's decision making.

Cost Per Mille (also known as CPM) is one of the most commonly used advertising and marketing metrics. CPM measures the cost of every 1000 ad or media impressions. Marketing directors often use it as a way of comparing success between 'owned' and 'paid' marketing activity. Wouldn't be nice to get your successful earned coverage involved in this comparison?

This is possible when you use the Estimated Coverage Views metric in CoverageBook.

Estimated Coverage Views can be used as a proxy for impressions. It's then very easy to take the cost of your campaign and review the views. Using a simple calculator you can then work out the CPM for your PR campaign and help your budget holder compare 'earned media' with paid and owned activity.

This simple 'views return on investment' is now being used by agencies to help sell the. value of their work. We have a growing number of in-house brand and marketing directors now requesting their agencies use this metric as a way they can make better budget decisions. We've even been told some PR budgets have increased as a result of using this value metric.

Here's our step by step guide and easy to use calculator. Once you get your CPM number - why not add it to your report as a custom metric?