6 ways to maximize your PR ROI

Evan Zall is president of Longview Strategies.

Since the dawn of man, two questions have guided our evolution.

1. Can I eat that?
2. What’s the value of public relations?

The first one is easy. The answer is probably yes.

The second question still inspires vigorous debate. But this much is true: if you’re still using pure reach or ad equivalency as your north star, it’s time to shake off the 20th century.

In an era where trust is the ammunition and attention spans are the battlefield, not all coverage is created equal when it first lands online. That mention in the Wall Street Journal is gold, but let’s face it, 3.2 million people didn’t actually read it. Meanwhile, the byline in a trade publication might only reach 5,000 readers, but the depth of knowledge conveyed might have a bigger impact.

When either of these results gets rolled into a managed amplification process, it gets closer to having meaningful, measurable ROI.

So let’s stop treating each PR outcome like a vanity exercise and start treating it like the business asset it is. The expanded ROI of public relations often comes from what happens after the hit.

Landing a quote in a top-tier outlet or being featured on a podcast is a legitimate win. Visibility, credibility and narrative control all matter. But many teams make the mistake of treating coverage like the final destination. It’s not. It’s raw material, just like any other great piece of content.

And just like great content, PR outcomes are most powerful when they’re plugged into the broader marketing engine. They are fuel for marketing, sales, recruiting and search visibility.

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Turning press into progress

Think about press coverage as having six lives. Just like in content marketing, the real ROI starts to show up when the asset achieves both goals of a strong PR effort: awareness and engagement.

1. Make it easy to find
   That podcast interview, mainstream quote or deep trade op-ed? Admit it — plenty of the target audience didn’t see it organically. Use owned channels to reshare and reframe the coverage in ways that fit your voice and audience. Keep the pulse going by including your coverage on your blog, LinkedIn, newsletter and even internal Slack or Teams channels.
2. Help sales get to “yes” faster
   Media coverage brings third-party credibility that reduces friction. Prospects need to trust services, products and the company providing them. Sales teams get great value when they have a credible source helping to tell the story on behalf of the company.

Much like testimonials, a quality piece of coverage gives business development social proof, differentiation and a reason to re-engage leads. A recent article or podcast clip can be the perfect follow-up to a quiet prospect.

3. Build your leadership brand
   For growth-stage companies, executive visibility is a huge part of the brand. Use media mentions to build momentum, support speaker bios and shape the narrative on LinkedIn. Your leaders have great stories and insights, personally and professionally, that meld with the company’s goals. Media coverage demonstrates that those stories resonate with audiences outside the company. Let that be inspiration to circulate them more broadly, creating more opportunities for visibility.
4. Strengthen your talent magnet
   People want to work at companies that are visible and making moves in the marketplace. Sharing earned media reinforces that your company is credible, growing and has a story others find compelling. It can be a morale boost when employees see their company’s message getting out there — even more so when rising employees are quoted in the media themselves.
5. Build reputation before you need it
   Trust is cumulative. By building a steady drumbeat of credible press, you create reputational equity that can protect you when things get rocky. Think of it as armor earned over time. A library of on-message media brings positive credibility that can blunt the edge of crisis communications.
6. Influence how you show up in AI and search
   This one’s new and growing fast. Tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and LinkedIn Recruiter put weight on credible third-party sources to inform responses. That means media coverage shapes your discoverability, giving you prominence with large language models.

Measure what matters — but only after you’ve used it

Impressions and views are fine as directional signals. But they’re just the beginning. The sales team wouldn’t go silent on a prospect after the first meeting. So why leave so much value on the table with PR?

Instead, build systems that cycle coverage into the broader machine. That means:

• Creating a PR-to-marketing workflow so coverage doesn’t sit idle
• Mapping earned media to sales enablement and recruiting moments
• Tracking influence across search visibility, lead quality and talent engagement

The real ROI of PR shows up when everyone in your organization knows what to do with a great piece of coverage.

So yes, celebrate the visibility you earned this month. Then ask the key questions:

What are we going to do with it next? And what’s for lunch?