Your PR Numbers Look Great. So Why Is No One Impressed?

THE METRICS THAT IMPRESS YOU ARE BORING EVERYONE ELSE

You landed a feature in a top-tier outlet. The messaging was crisp, the headline was favorable, and the piece actually moved the narrative forward. You did everything right. You compile your report, stack up the impressions, maybe throw in an AVE figure that sounds enormous, and walk into that meeting feeling like a rockstar.

Then someone in a suit says, "Great. But what did it do for revenue?"

And the air goes out of the room.

This is the trap PR has been stuck in for years. According to Allison Carter, editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com, the core problem is that the metrics we default to — media hits, impressions, AVE — are great for PR teams and largely meaningless to executives. They tell leadership what you did. They don't tell them what you contributed.

WHY AVE IS STILL AROUND (AND WHY THAT'S A PROBLEM)

Let me be clear: counting placements isn't inherently wrong. It tells you whether your pitches are landing, whether your angles are resonating, whether your team is executing well. Those things matter internally. Impressions and AVE, though? The case for those gets shakier every year, and most serious measurement folks will tell you as much.

The deeper issue is that these numbers exist in a vacuum. An executive sitting in on an earnings call, staring down a tight budget, isn't thinking about how many eyeballs saw your client's quote in Forbes. They're thinking about pipeline, retention, reputation risk, and market position. If your PR report doesn't speak to any of that, you're not speaking their language — and eventually, you'll stop getting invited to the conversation.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR PR STRATEGY

Here's the uncomfortable truth: there's no universal metric that solves this. If there were, as Carter puts it, she'd be on her own private island. The connection between PR activity and business outcomes is going to look different for every organization, every campaign, every quarter.

So what do you do? You ask. You listen. You do the unglamorous work of actually understanding your organization's priorities:

• Listen to earnings calls. Leadership will tell you exactly what they're worried about if you pay attention.
• Read annual reports. The language in there reflects what leadership values — borrow it.
• Build relationships with other departments. Sales, marketing, customer success — they're sitting on data and context that can help you connect PR activity to things executives actually track.
• Ask what problems PR can help solve. Not in a vague, brand-awareness way. Specifically. Concretely.

Is this harder than adding up your clip count? Absolutely. But the payoff is that leaders start seeing you as someone who solves business problems — not someone who generates reports they skim before moving on.

That shift in perception is what gets you called into the room earlier. It's what protects your budget when cuts come. And it's what turns PR from a line item into a strategic asset.

GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO FIGURE IT OUT AS YOU GO

You won't nail this immediately. The right metrics mix takes time, experimentation, and probably a few awkward conversations with people in finance who look at you like you have three heads. That's fine. Try anyway.

The goal isn't a perfect measurement framework from day one. It's a genuine attempt to connect what you do to what your organization cares about — and the willingness to keep refining that connection until it sticks.

Because at the end of the day, the best PR metric is one that makes an executive say, "Oh, I get why this matters." Everything else is just homework you're doing for yourself.

Need help building a PR strategy that speaks to the right people in the right language? Winsome Marketing works with brands to develop communications approaches that are built around real business goals — not just coverage counts. Let's talk.

This post was originally inspired by PR can't stop measuring the wrong things via prdaily. We encourage you to read the original piece for full context.