Many of you have laughed at the start of our ad, where Fran tries to explain how their PR campaign reached 12 billion eyeballs (check it out here if you haven’t seen it).
Joking aside, have you ever presented a report with an audience in the millions or billions? (I’ll admit that I have).
It sounds impressive until you stop and think about what the numbers really mean. This thread on Reddit shows how they can be referred to as fake or inflated 😬.
Recently, I chatted with Colin from Bottle PR about the challenge of dealing with such big numbers in PR. He shared with me a great video that uses grains of rice to represent 1 billion, with each grain of rice representing 100K.
By the end, you’ll gain a jaw-dropping perspective on Jeff Bezos’ wealth and a clearer understanding of the scale of big numbers!
What does Jeff Bezos’ wealth have to do with PR reporting?
Like Jeff’s bank balance, in PR, we often deal with large numbers.
You might think bigger numbers will get more attention from the boardroom. However, Colin shared an interesting stat – 10% of senior marketers admit to yawning during presentations.
Yikes.
But it’s not surprising – larger numbers are harder to grasp.
I’ve received emails from customers asking why, after adding new coverage, their audience figure still hovers around 1.4 billion. The reason is simple: a few pieces of new coverage won’t significantly move the needle from 1.4 billion to 1.5 billion.
Just like Jeff’s wealth doesn’t change when he buys a Lamborghini.
What is happening here is that these numbers are so crazy high—that they are being read as 1.4 and 1.5. The billion part is being ignored.
So how useful are these massive audience numbers?
Presenting reports with audience figures in the millions or billions might seem impressive. Until you think about the scale of what you are presenting and realise there’s no way you believe your coverage reached that many people. In fact, in reporting so, you might be losing credibility.
When we report on audience figures, it gives you an idea of the scale of publications in which your coverage appeared. But you can’t claim all these people saw your coverage.
Take websites like Yahoo Money and Yahoo Lifestyle, for example. They often contribute to these impressive audience figures due to their large monthly traffic. But they also have thousands of pages. And each visitor will not be reading all the pages.
Using a site’s total traffic is definitely not a reliable measure of your campaign’s success.
Potential reach vs. actual views
We wanted to give you something more realistic to use — which is why we calculate an “estimated views’ figure. You can read more about how we calculate this here.
Estimated views give you a better sense of how many people are *likely* to have seen your coverage.
Making the switch from reporting potential audience numbers to estimated views is a big switch, especially if you’ve been used to reporting these bigger figures for years.
There’s a lot of internal teaching; you’ll be asked why these numbers are much lower than in past campaigns. But the shift is essential because, while it’s great to say your campaign *could but probably didn’t* reach an unrealistic figure, wouldn’t it be more meaningful to report how many people are likely to have seen it?
I often suggest reporting on both for a while and gradually shifting the importance from audience to estimated views. This way, you can still draw parallels from past campaigns while improving your reports.
Bringing your (smaller) numbers to life
While we have been caught up in million-sized numbers, it’s been easy to forget the significance of smaller ones. For instance, 50,000 people may not sound like much in comparison, but that’s roughly the size of the crowd at the Super Bowl! Suddenly, it feels like a lot, right?
Bottle PR has released a free tool that can really help. It’s called ‘How many People’. It’s a nifty calculator that turns your reach into an equivalent number that can be easily visualised.
It’s free and open to anyone to use. Simply type in your audience number and industry, and the tool will give you a relevant comparison that you can use in your report.
You can even add them as visual slides to make your CoverageBook report more engaging. And make the shift to ‘views’ easier!
The next time you’re preparing a report, think less about how large the numbers appear and more about how meaningful they are.
Concentrating on smaller numbers, like estimated views or even smaller numbers, such as engagements (the number of people who saw your coverage and DID something), can help you tell a more compelling and relatable story. The board will be more engaged with your report. No more yawning—hurrah!
Remember, it’s not the number that counts—it’s the story it tells 🙂
You can catch the full webinar here.
And here is a link to the presentation Colin ran through.
