Is your public relations (PR) paying off? That’s what the people who pay the bills want to know. But PR has a reputation for being difficult to measure. This article shows asset and wealth managers how to measure PR’s impact.

Why Asset Managers Need Public Relations

Many executives, when they think of public relations, often view it as getting visibility or press. But PR can influence what advisors, allocators, investors, high-net-worth individuals, families, and your employees believe about your firm.

Building brand awareness through effective public relations is one of the early steps in growing revenues and assets. If investors have never heard of you, don’t expect to get on their shortlist. PR can, or should, drive traffic to your website, impact SEO, and build a reputation that fits who you are. Over time, PR can help generate warm and qualified leads.

Plus, public relations can be a great tool for differentiation. Many investment managers look and sound alike. Effective PR can help tell the story of what sets you apart, such as investment philosophy or portfolio construction process.                                                                                      

How Asset Managers Can Measure PR

How do you measure success? Do you want more leads, assets, website traffic, revenues, likes, or something else? Asset managers have access to tools that connect PR activity directly to business outcomes. The challenge is knowing which metrics matter. Check these out:

Leads and referral traffic

Cost per lead and referral traffic connect PR to the pipeline. Cost per lead (CPL) measures how much you spend to generate one qualified prospect through PR and marketing; without it, you’re spending unthinkingly. Referral traffic tracks how many visitors arrive via links in articles, podcasts, social posts, or newsletters.

Referral traffic measures how many visitors arrive at your website by clicking a link from another source, such as a LinkedIn post or print article. This can connect your PR activity directly to business outcomes.

If a placement in a top financial publication drives many qualified visitors to your site, you can prove that PR is building interest. HubSpot, Google Analytics, and Salesforce help you calculate CPL, while Google Analytics, HubSpot, and SEMrush are primary tools for tracking referral traffic.

Website authority

Domain authority shows how often credible sites link to you and how strong those sites are. A placement in the Wall Street Journal carries more impact than a mention in an obscure blog.

Backlinks track which external sites send users to your pages as a result of PR wins. Tools like Ahrefs and Moz show who’s linking to you, while SEMrush scores the authority of those publications and websites.

Earned media and executive visibility

Earned media and executive visibility track how often your firm and leaders appear in trusted outlets. Earned media includes unpaid coverage such as quotes in articles, television, and podcast guest spots.

Executive visibility tracks how frequently your firm’s leaders are quoted, featured, or invited to speak. Meltwater and Cision do this. A cousin of tracking the visibility of your leaders is the concept of media tracking, which helps you know if you are reaching the right people.

Google Alerts is a free, always-on Google tool that scans the web for new content matching keywords you choose, then emails you links to those mentions. Setting alerts on the company name, executives, products, and competitors helps you monitor brand mentions and media coverage. Talkwalker is an effective alternative to Google Alerts.

Reputation and sentiment

Sentiment analysis measures whether the coverage and conversations about your firm are positive, negative, or neutral. This analysis tells you how you are perceived. A jump in negative sentiment around your investment approach, leadership, or performance can challenge investor confidence before you even know there is a problem. Meltwater, Brandwatch, and Sprout Social are three of several tools to gauge sentiment.

Share of voice measures how much of a total conversation your firm owns compared to competitors. This metric matters because visibility drives credibility. If your competitors are often on cable TV, in print, social media, and on podcasts, and you are not, you are left out. Tracking share of voice helps you make decisions about where to invest your communication dollars.

Client advocacy and social engagement

Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures how likely your clients and investors are to recommend your firm to others. It’s based on a simple question: on a scale of zero to ten, how likely are you to refer us? Word of mouth and referrals are great growth drivers. A low NPS means that something is broken.

Long-term tracking helps you identify dissatisfaction early and strengthen relationships before clients walk. Check out Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey, among others, to collect and track NPS data.

Social engagement measures likes, shares, comments, and follows generated by your content and coverage. Sprout Social and Hootsuite, and others, measure these factors.

The Impact of AI on Public Relations Measurement

Artificial intelligence has changed how firms track and interpret PR performance. Most measurement tools use artificial intelligence to analyze sentiment, detect emerging narratives, and surface competitive insights in nanoseconds. This work once required days and hours of manual effort.

Looking ahead, the potential for AI to impact PR metrics is considerably larger. AI will likely allow asset managers to precisely connect PR activity to business outcomes, and to identify which messages and channels are better in influencing investor behavior.

Firms that embrace AI-powered measurement will move away from metrics of the vain, like impressions and likes, and toward intelligence that can build assets under management.

Where to Use PR: Channels and How They Work

Not all PR channels are created equal. Some require upfront capital to participate; others require hustle and persistence. Here are the major avenues to channel your public relations efforts:

Broadcast and cable television interviews

Business news television needs constant content. Kudos if your portfolio managers and chief investment officers can provide it. When your portfolio manager, or managers, appear on a business‑news network or a broker-dealer’s video network, it can position you as a go‑to voice on what you want to be known for. We’ve placed portfolio managers who have become regular contributors.

The impact of being a guest on a business news cable program can be immediate. One of our clients, an investment manager with over $8 billion in assets under management, was recently featured on Charles Payne’s show on the Fox Business Network. Immediately after the segment ended, trading volume in one of his firm’s funds increased nearly five times.

Another client, a wealth manager and asset manager, earned approximately 40 appearances in 16 months in The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Fox Business, and Bloomberg. The firm’s CEO is now a regular contributor on four CNBC business shows. According to their sales team, these media appearances directly led to phone calls from qualified financial advisors.

Bylined articles

An effective way to establish yourself and your firm as an authority is to publish articles in respected publications that your audience reads. Note that publications have their own strict editorial guidelines on length, tone, and subject matter, and the standards for acceptance are high. Many portfolio managers tell us their goal is to be quoted in Barron’s. Well, why not? But you need a great story and a strong relationship with decision-makers.

Social media

Social media, especially LinkedIn, can amplify your PR. You can edit one interview, article, or podcast into multiple, snack-sized posts. LinkedIn also offers paid campaign options that allow you to target specific audiences by job title, firm type, and geography.

We created a visible LinkedIn strategy for one of our clients, an asset manager and RIA, that generated several qualified leads each month, and helped the CEO grow her following by approximately 300% in less than four years.

Conferences

Believe it or not, people still like to be with people. Conferences can help build relationships with your best audience. Attending is the first step to building relationships, but speaking on panels and, where your budget permits, sponsoring a conference in part or in full can more fully leverage your visibility.

Exclusive research

Not everyone can afford to do original research, but if you can, you can become a thought leader that the industry and journalists turn to. Many managers partner with respected research firms to co-brand research papers or surveys. Firms can leverage this intellectual property to pitch interviews and articles with relevant publications, place on their website, and share on newsletters and social media.

Guesting on other great podcasts

Creating a podcast can be a burden, but appearing as an expert guest on someone else’s popular financial podcast can be a great move. On cable TV, you may have two or three minutes, if you are lucky, to make your case. A 25 or 30-minute podcast, however, rewards longer, deeper conversations. Key success metrics include how many viewers downloaded your website, commented on your insights, or better yet, contacted you for a call.  

Media rooms

Journalists frequently visit your website as part of their due diligence. Like a bee to honey, many will look for a media page or newsroom to learn how to contact you. A timely newsroom and content library can support external coverage and search visibility.

Press releases

Press releases remain a basic part of the PR toolkit. However, in most cases, a press release alone will not produce substantial coverage. A standard release distributed over a wire service like PR Newswire or BusinessWire may cost from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on distribution and reach.

Releases work best as part of a broad PR campaign. For decision-makers, the question is not, “Should we issue a release?” but “What more must we do, and what will success look like?”

Frequently Asked Questions About Measuring PR

When can we expect success from public relations campaigns?

Success rate will vary, based on the nature and objective of the PR campaign, and the amount of time and dollars spent. For digital metrics like website referral traffic and search volume, you may see early success data in 60 to 90 days. For reputation metrics, share of voice, and thought leadership, a 12-month horizon is more realistic.

Are webinars an effective public relations tool for wealth and asset managers?

Webinars may generate leads, position you as an expert, and provide content that can be repurposed for months, if not longer. But smaller firms often lack the time and budget to execute webinars well, and larger firms may need buy-in from the executive, investment, marketing, and compliance departments. In practice, fewer asset managers host webinars today. Podcasts have largely replaced webinars as the preferred long-form visual format.

Should we track employee-generated social media content as a PR metric?

Yes. LinkedIn engagement from your employees is part of earned media. According to LinkedIn’s B2B Institute, employee-shared content has received eight times more engagement than content posted from company accounts.

Read All About It: How to Quantify the Impact of Public Relations

So how do you present the results of your PR efforts to the boss (or bosses)?

Consider that leaders need to see how PR connects to the firm’s objectives. Many firms create a quarterly executive report with key findings and what they mean. So focus on what counts. Use only a few indicators, show trends over time, talk cost per lead, and tell stories with numbers that link public relations to leads, assets, and revenue.

Also, set expectations up front so everyone understands what success will look like and how long it may take to see it.

Public relations is measurable, and the measurement is worth the effort. When you analyze PR with the same discipline you bring to your investment strategy, you can give leadership proof that public relations positively impact sales and asset growth.

Schedule a complimentary strategy session with Dan Sondhelm, CEO of Sondhelm Partners, to learn how a public relations strategy can be part of your marketing efforts, and how to measure results.

Frank Serebrin is the Content Marketing Director for Sondhelm Partners. He leads strategic and creative content and marketing services for our asset management and wealth management clients.