The PR Measurement Myth: Why Chasing Leads Is Killing Your Brand Strategy

During the “courting” stage with prospective clients, one of the most common questions I get asked is measuring the PR program in the most effective way possible. This usually leads back to a question around connecting PR to leads, website visits, or securing a cover story in The New York Times.

While it’s a fair question, especially when the PR program is a decent chunk of the marketing spend, what I can tell you is there is very little consensus on which method of measurement is actually the most effective in a modern PR program.

In my 16 years of experience working with massive public companies, smaller startups, and everything in-between, these are the methods I’ve found to come out on top…and also a few that will sink your PR program faster than you can say, “get me the cover of The New York Times.”

Hint: the secret to your PR program is NOT in tying back to sales or marketing leads. #sorrynotsorry

✅ PR Measurement Methods That Actually Work

1. Message Pull Through

Message pull through measures how often your core messaging appears in media coverage — whether in executive interviews, news articles, or contributed content. It’s about ensuring the right messages are consistently communicated across different formats.

As the media landscape increasingly relies on contributed content and written Q&As, message pull-through helps you gauge whether your messaging is resonating and gaining traction in your industry. If your key themes aren’t making it into coverage, it may signal that your positioning needs refinement or that you’re not reinforcing it effectively in media engagements. Tracking message pull-through ensures that your PR efforts are not just generating visibility, but shaping the narrative in a way that aligns with your business goals as well.

I generally recommend selecting 2-3 key messages per quarter. Depending on the pace of your PR program and how often you’re conducting touch points with target press, those key messages could still be relevant after 2-3 quarters in a row. But select those key messages and see how well they resonate, and what percentage of the time they are showing up in your media results. If it’s less than 50%, you need to determine why they aren’t showing up and how to course-correct.

2. Quality and Quantity of Media Coverage

Volume will always be a priority for any PR program. It’s simple, the more you’re showing up in the media, the more relevant you become. When measuring volume, I hesitate to look at quarter-over-quarter data when historically, Q1 and Q3 tend to be the noisiest in terms of announcements and general buzz. Looking at year-over-year volume increase is a much better indicator of success.

That said, not all press is created equal. Where you’re covered matters just as much as how often. For example, pitching a B2B AI startup to a consumer publication like CNET is like trying to sell high-end business software at a farmers’ market — wrong audience, wrong context, no impact.

I first sit down with my clients and identify which are the top 10 - 15 publications we want to get visibility into. These should be a mix of trade, technology, and business press. Business press will give you broad, blanket visibility, while tech and trade media will often overlap directly with your buyer. Tracking your success with these publications quarter-over-quarter can help you tweak your program incrementally as you go.

3. An Announcement Strategy That Tells A Story

Companies should have a clear goal for the quantity and types of announcements they aim to make over a year, spanning product launches, funding news, culture initiatives, partnerships, and thought leadership.

The startup game is all about proving (versus telling) the public that you are growing as a business. How do you do that? By showing you’re continuously innovating, you’re receiving industry recognition, customers are speaking highly about you, and investors are paying attention to you. I regularly sit down with my clients and map out their news for the year, and oftentimes I help them create news where they might not have it.

This doesn’t mean you need to make an announcement for the sake of it. In fact, please don’t do that. Instead, every announcement should inform future strategy and prove that the company is on a growth trajectory. If coverage is inconsistent, it might signal the need for more proactive storytelling, better positioning, or fresh angles that align with industry trends.

❌ Common PR Measurement Traps to Avoid

1. Connecting Every PR Initiative to Sales Leads

I swear if one more person asks me how PR will help drive sales leads, I’m gonna flip a table.

No, but in all seriousness, I get why someone (read: technical Founder — you know who you are!) would want to know this. Everything a business does should ultimately help with sales in the long run.

The reality is that most people aren’t in the market to buy today. Research from Professor John Dawes at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute shows that only 5% of your total addressable market (TAM) is actively looking to buy in any given quarter. That means 95% of potential buyers won’t be making a purchase decision anytime soon — but that doesn’t mean PR isn’t working.

For example, I secured a major feature in CIO Magazine for a well-known data science tool several years back. The team was thrilled, and a few months later a prospect brought up the article unprompted in a sales conversation. This was shared back with me anecdotally, but it was a huge validation of PR’s role in shaping buyer perception. Could this be measured regularly? Sure, in theory. Is it likely? Well, knowing what we know about sales documentation, most likely not.

PR isn’t for measuring leads. It’s for building trust and credibility with your core personas over time. When that 95% eventually enters the market, they need to already know, recognize, and trust your brand.

2. Tying PR to MQLs
   For companies stuck in qualified lead sales cycles, distinguishing marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) from sales-qualified leads (SQLs) is crucial. There’s often pressure on marketing to deliver more leads, even when more isn’t always better. PR should support a strategy that prioritizes lead quality over sheer volume.

This applies across conferences, webinars, and other marketing efforts, where the focus can sometimes skew toward driving sign-ups rather than attracting the right audience. Instead of chasing numbers, companies need to define what a high-quality lead looks like and how to reach those decision-makers effectively.

The key question isn’t just how many leads PR generates, but what those leads need to hear to trust you. A strong PR program ensures the right messaging lands with credible, industry-specific storytelling, helping marketing not just capture leads, but qualify and nurture them more effectively from the start.

3. Tracking Backlink Traffic To Your Website

I hate to break it to you, but this one is long gone. Not only do very few publications even include backlinks anymore, but most web teams aren’t tied at the hip to PR teams. This means even if the PR person had 10-20 stories with backlinks included, the web team has no process or function to report on it.

If you do happen to snag a nice backlink you can definitely consider it a win, but don't expect a 5-page presentation on user journey from your Fortune article. It’s just not gonna happen (I wish though).

PR as a Long-Term Investment in Market Awareness

One of the biggest misconceptions about PR is that it should drive immediate sales impact. But the reality is that most people aren’t ready to buy today—and PR plays a long game in building brand awareness and credibility.

Marketing science backs this up. According to research from Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, up to 95% of business clients are not in the market for many goods and services at any one time. The study, based on the average B2B purchase frequency window of five years, shows that only 5% of your serviceable addressable market (SAM) is actively in-market in any given quarter.

This means that PR isn’t just about capturing demand—it’s about creating it. Strong PR programs continually expand brand awareness and saturation across the total addressable market (TAM) so that when buyers do enter the market, your company is already top of mind.

At the end of the day, PR measurement isn’t a pass/fail test. It’s a tool to refine messaging, strengthen media relationships, and keep your company relevant in a noisy world. Measure the right things, and your PR program will be humming before you know it — without the guesswork

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