Media coverage is always at the editor's discretion so public relations cannot guarantee coverage. If you want to definitely guarantee a message gets published, perhaps advertising is a better alternative.

However, while there are risks, there are also great rewards. For instance, in the last quarter, three Blue Click PR clients have been rewarded with double page spreads in their chosen publication, in exchange for spending a little time with the journalists concerned. For the sake of a few hours, they have each earned media coverage worth over £50,000. People say we make our own luck. We think it's about creating opportunities.

Does Public Relations generate sales?

Yes, it warms up the sales leads. In 1998, an article in Marketing Week quoted the Virgin Financial team as finding that editorial placed beside advertising (on the same page/double-page spread) generated 40% more responses than an advert appearing on its own).

We have examples in our portfolio of a 2.5 min slot on primetime evening television selling 3,000 day places for a holiday play scheme in 5 days - in fact it was so successful we cancelled the planned advertising campaign.

The best way of getting PR to generate sales leads is to coordinate the advertising with editorial at the same time. Ensure a planned marketing approach where your article and advert are in the same magazines and land on desks on the same day/week as the direct mail campaign.

Media coverage in the form of articles, news snippets, radio and TV clips will not always directly provide an increase in sales. But if you make a habit of always mentioning your phone number, web and email addresses, you stand a better chance. Journalists are trained to remove them to avoid it sounding like sales copy. So if you do get that message through you have done very well.

Results

As a medium, public relations is more difficult to measure than advertising or direct mail because it does not always contain a direct call to action. You cannot always work out a number of direct responses, a cost per lead or a cost per sale. It is difficult to guarantee results because the decision to run a story lies with the editors, i.e. beyond your control.

Having said that, the coverage that is achieved can be measured. One way to measure your company's return on investment is to monitor the number of column centimetres achieved by each release. Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) is a basic measure. There are clippings agencies that provide a press cuttings service. Monitoring and evaluating can tell you what works best, and where to focus future efforts. Or you could try OTS; Opportunities to See as another measure.