10 Best PR Analytics Tools Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 23 tools reviewed.
With so many different PR analytics tools available, figuring out which is right for you is tough. You know you want to provide insights into how PR campaigns influence public perception and media coverage—but now need to figure out which platform is best. I've got you! In this post, I'll help make your choice easy, sharing my personal experiences using dozens of different PR analytics software with brands of all sizes, with my picks of the best PR analytics tools overall.
What are PR Analytics Tools?
PR analytics tools are specialized software used to track and analyze the effectiveness of public relations campaigns. They provide key metrics such as media mentions, sentiment analysis, audience engagement, and reach. The purpose is to help PR professionals understand how their efforts are perceived and received by the public and media.
Overviews Of The 10 Best PR Analytics Tools
Here’s my evaluation of the best PR analytics tools, including the flagship features of each platform, their most significant pros and cons, and their pricing. By the end of this list, you will understand which solution is most suitable for your organization
Brand24 is a PR analytics tool that enables businesses to track and analyze their public relations efforts by monitoring brand mentions and sentiment across various online platforms in real time. With advanced features like sentiment analysis, Brand24 helps PR professionals understand public perception, identify trends, and measure the emotional response to their communications.
Why I picked Brand24: Brand24 excels as a PR analytics tool by offering comprehensive monitoring of online mentions, including news sites, blogs, social media platforms, and forums, allowing businesses to gauge the reach and impact of their public relations campaigns. This real-time tracking capability enables companies to swiftly respond to both positive and negative mentions, manage their reputation, and engage with their audience effectively.
Brand24 Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include presence score capabilities that can help you monitor your product, service, or promotion’s online coverage, enabling you to identify successful campaigns and make necessary adjustments. Brand24 also provides brand comparison tools that help you gain insights into how your competitors are performing in the market by comparing metrics such as mentions volume, sentiment analysis, and engagement rate.
Integrations include Slack and SEMrush.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Customizable alerts
- Valuable sentiment analysis
- Real-time social listening capabilities
Cons:
- Some region and language restrictions
- Data sources are limited
Google Analytics allows marketing teams to measure PR efforts by tracking metrics using simple data visualizations. Organizations can use the solution to discover a significant amount of information regarding their PR campaigns’ performance.
Why I picked Google Analytics: I added Google Analytics to this list because you can use it to track details such as visitors, referrals from various channels, and conversion rates with simple data visualizations. The platform also reveals your visitors’ demographic information, sees how they found your site and how long they spend there, and compares this information to previous times. As an additional benefit, Google Analytics’ visualizations can provide detailed information on your newsroom and online press releases’ feedback.
Google Analytics Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include advanced machine learning models that help you accurately predict visitor behavior, allowing you to customize marketing strategies. The platform also uses real-time alerting and anomaly detection to discover unusual data patterns and immediately notify you of any significant changes, empowering you to quickly address possible issues and make the most of new opportunities.
Integrations include many popular business tools your marketing team may already be using, such as Agency Analytics, CallRail, Databox, Google AdWords, Hootsuite, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Marketo, SEMrush, Zendesk, and other software options. You can use the Google Analytics API or a paid Zapier account if you need custom integrations.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Purpose tracking and conversions
- Real-time tracking
- An enormous array of data visualizations
Cons:
- Too many configuration options
- Steep learning curve
Pr.co provides an online newsroom that helps marketing teams manage press assets, allowing businesses to provide everything journalists need to write stories about their company.
Why I picked Pr.co: I added Pr.co to this article because the platform offers a customizable newsroom for your brand that helps you manage press assets. These newsrooms enable you to easily publish news, build press lists, pitch stories to media contacts, and manage editorial workflows. Pr.co’s newsroom capabilities help you increase inbound public relations, create more media exposure, and ensure your press network finds news about your organization - not just the news that’s pitched to them.
Pr.co Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include collaboration tools that enable everyone to work together effectively and keep everyone updated. Pr.co also provides a PR CRM that helps marketing teams build relationships with media contacts through detailed profiles.
Integrations include connections with a small number of tools to help add new functionality to the platform, such as Azure AD, Celum, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Medialab. You can also create custom integrations through the platform’s API and a paid Zapier account.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Simple onboarding
- Beneficial online resources
Cons:
- Small number of integrations
- Some tools aren’t intuitive
Meltwater is a social media monitoring platform that many PR and marketing professionals use to track online news, analyze public opinions, and evaluate campaign performance. Users can also use the tool to interact with audiences on social media networks, curate content, and track their competition and trending stories.
Why I picked Meltwater: The solution combines media monitoring with management capabilities, allowing you to create engaging posts based on mentions, schedule them effectively, and publish and see how they perform on social media platforms. Meltwater provides brand monitoring tools that track selected keywords and aggregate all matching content. Meltwater’s social listening capabilities will help you monitor multiple social media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, blogs, and discussion forums.
Meltwater Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include media intelligence tools that enable you to understand your market and identify and manage brand emergencies. Meltwater also offers media relations capabilities that help you build media relationships, discover promotion opportunities, and get better results from your campaigns.
Integrations include connections with tools such as Audiense, Data Virtuality, Desktop.com, Google Data Studio, Intelligence2day, Netino, Power BI, Rippling, Semeon Analytics, and Tableau. You can also use Meltwater’s API to make custom integrations with your toolset.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Pulls historical data prior to the initial monitoring date
- Customizable to users' needs
- Shows how brands are talked about across channels
Cons:
- Add-on features can increase costs
- Number of features can be overwhelming
Brandwatch is an extensive social media monitoring tool for large enterprises that offers a dedicated analytics panel to oversee and measure public relations campaigns.
Why I picked Brandwatch: If you oversee a marketing team in an enterprise-sized organization, you can use Brandwatch to effectively monitor relevant topics and social media mentions and share your voice. Brandwatch is beneficial for crisis communication management because it alerts you if someone performs a negative publicity stunt against your brand, product, or services. The platform also not only collects and analyzes real-time data, but it can also provide actionable insights to bring your organization to another level through sentiment analysis, scoring mentions as positive, neutral, or negative.
Brandwatch Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include influence score capabilities that measure an individual’s ability to create engagement and choose whose message to amplify, allowing you to see who’s already talking about your brand and contact them as influencers. Brandwatch offers real-time tracking through a self-service dashboard, enabling stakeholders to monitor daily performance and optimize campaigns immediately.
Integrations include connections with third-party platforms such as Creatio, Domo, Hootsuite, Neurons, Qbank, quintly, Salesforce, Sociuu, StoryStream, Zendesk, and other software options. You can also use Brandwatch’s API to create custom integrations with your current systems.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Simple user interface
- Good customer support
- Easy to use
Cons:
- Some discrepancies in metrics reports
- Text editor can be buggy
Anewstip helps marketing teams connect with relevant media outlets at scale through the world’s largest database.
Why I picked Anewstip: The platform is a pitch automation platform that helps you reach out to media outlets at scale. Anewstip provides a builder tool that enables you to create personalized pitch message templates and an AI-powered matchmaker solution that analyzes your pitch’s content and topic; it then recommends journalists that are likely to respond and hear your story. The software also provides a search engine that helps you find journalists, influencers, and media outlets that mentioned a specific topic on X (Twitter); you can then filter results by profiles, subject, and language and then sort according to number of posts, influence, or the number of times the person mentions your keyword.
Anewstip Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include tools to help you create media coverage reports within Google Slides. The platform also provides alerts that empower you to understand what people are saying about your brand through the media across the web and on Twitter.
Integrations include connections with a small number of applications and platforms, such as Evernote, Facebook, Google Cloud Platform, and X (Twitter). You can also access Anewstip’s API after signing up for the Partners subscription tier to make custom integrations.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Offers appropriate contacts
- Excellent media database
Cons:
- Free trial is too short
- Search logic takes time to learn
Agility PR Solutions is a public relations tool that helps marketing teams monitor online media coverage and measure results. Companies can keep themselves updated on coverage and track all crucial content sources through the platform’s self-serve monitoring tool.
Why I picked Agility PR Solutions: The software allows you to monitor print, online, social media, and broadcast coverage in real time. Agility PR Solutions uses an AI-based image monitoring solution that understands the content of images, allowing you to discover where your logo is being used. It also uses robust machine learning tools to identify objects or famous logos within images and identify relevant pictures based on your keyword search.
Agility PR Solutions Standout Features
Standout features include a database of over 700,000 bloggers, journalists, and influencers from around the globe, along with filters you can apply to search results to ensure the software only recommends content creators that are relevant to your industry. The platform also provides social listening tools to help you monitor topics, keywords, brands, and competition relevant to your company and gain crucial knowledge.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Excellent support team
- Helpful outreach templates
- Simple user interface
Cons:
- Some database contacts can be outdated
- Pricing isn’t suitable for smaller businesses
Cision provides PR reporting tools that help marketing teams share the progress of PR campaigns. The platform can help track, analyze, and report on a company’s media coverage sources, from print to online to broadcast.
Why I picked Cision: I wanted to add Cision to this article because it’s one of the largest media monitoring organizations available. The solution provides integrated media planning, monitoring, and analysis of your PR activity. Cision enables you to organize this information meaningfully for public relations and better visualize metrics such as attribution, media mentions, and SEO’s impact on your work.
Cision Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include monitoring and analytics tools that help you understand who your campaign is reaching, what people say about your company, and who’s saying it. Cision also provides a press release distribution solution that empowers you to deliver your content to a global audience of journalists and influencers.
Integrations include custom connections with various third-party tools and systems you already use through Cision’s API.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Knowledgeable customer support
- Excellent press release coverage
Cons:
- Not very flexible
- Pages can take time to load
Critical Mention is a broadcast monitoring solution that allows marketing teams to search TV, radio, social media, and online news to monitor brand mentions and relevant trending topics.
Why I picked Critical Mention: The system is a leading broadcast monitoring tool that can help your organization discover, analyze, and share content, relevant metadata, and historical archives. Critical Mention scours through an enormous number of TV channels, radio broadcasts, and social media networks to find brand mentions and evaluate your media coverage. When using Critical Mention, you can gain crucial media insights by identifying audience sentiment and trends through the software’s digital reports that are easily shareable, making it easy to include stakeholders.
Critical Mention Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include wordplay capabilities that help you quickly refine high-definition broadcast clips down to the microsecond and then share them with others or add them to a report. Critical Mention also helps access paywalled content from top trade journals and international publishers, empowering you to track stores from highly read periodicals, gain insight on earned media coverage of your organization, and source high-level content from magazines and major news networks program transcripts.
Integrations include connections with Google Analytics and Slack, allowing you to easily pass along essential information between platforms. You can also use Critical Mention’s API to create custom integrations with your systems.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Reports show hard evidence of campaign performance
- Helpful brand mention alerts
- Comprehensive and user friendly
Cons:
- Sometimes doesn’t pick up press mentions
- Pulling large reports can be slow
PRWeb is a press release distribution service that helps marketing teams create and share stories with the public.
Why I picked PRWeb: The platform is a press release distribution service that offers a wide range of media partners and distribution channels. PRWeb, now owned by Cision, permanently hosts press releases on its site, which receives over 12 million annual visitors. After creating your press release, PRWeb automatically applies search engine optimization principles to it to ensure major search engines pick it up; it also offers you the option to target your press release to industry-specific bloggers and journalists.
PRWeb Standout Features
Standout features include a distribution network that ensures your press release reaches over 1,200 websites. The platform also provides comprehensive reports on coverage, views, audiences, and engagement.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Easily manages multiple releases simultaneously
- Expansive media contact database
- Collects competitor data
Cons:
- Pricing not suitable for smaller businesses
- User interface needs work
The Best PR Analytics Tools Summary
| Tools | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Brand24 | From $79/month (annually) | Website |
| Google Analytics | Free to use | Website |
| Pr.co | From $21/month | Website |
| Meltwater | Pricing upon request | Website |
| Brandwatch | Pricing upon request | Website |
| Anewstip | From $160/month. | Website |
| Agility PR Solutions | From $350/month | Website |
| Cision | Pricing upon request | Website |
| Critical Mention | No price details | Website |
| PRWeb | From $105/press release | Website |
Compare Software Specs Side by Side
Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.
Compare SoftwareOther Options
To make this list more beneficial to as many marketing teams as possible, I added more options that are worth consideration. The following are additional PR analytics platforms you can evaluate for your business.
- Prowly
Best all-in-one public relations management tool
- CoverageBook
Best for collecting and presenting media mentions
- YouScan
Best for social listening through artificial intelligence.
- BuzzSumo
Best for media alerts.
- BrandMentions
Best for identifying competitors’ strategies.
- Muckrack
Best for monitoring news mentions.
- CARMA
Best for fully managed media monitoring.
- Prezly
Best for publishing and sharing content.
- Released
Best for customizable, automated metrics reports.
- Determ
Best AI-based online media monitoring.
- Augure
Best for active media relations management.
- Covered Press
Best for simplifying press tracking, reporting, and analytics.
- ReachedReport
Best for quick report generation.
Selection Criteria For PR Analytics Tools
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best PR analytics tools for this article.
Core Functionality
While each option will have varying features and capabilities, the core functionality of every tool will be the same. When researching the best options for this list, I paid closer attention to software that offers the following core functionality.
- Enable users to monitor and analyze media coverage across various platforms, including online news articles, blogs, social media
- Provide comprehensive metrics and performance reporting to evaluate the effectiveness of PR efforts (ex. media impressions, audience reach, engagement levels, website traffic)
Key Features
Here are some of the key features I looked for when adding PR analytics tools to this list.
- Media Monitoring and Analysis: One of the standard PR activities is media monitoring and analysis; this helps your organization see who’s saying what and what’s being said about the company at all times, helping you know when a false narrative needs correction.
- Social Media Management and Engagement: Social media channels are a simple way to engage with current customers and attract new ones; PR software will integrate with every social media account your business operates and monitor engagement.
- Influencer Outreach and Relationship Management: Influencers have access to a dedicated audience full of possible customers; many PR analytics cools will offer influencer tracking capabilities to help you identify which influencer has a legitimate reach.
- Media Coverage Collection: Good PR analytics tools will help users automatically find press hits through built-in monitoring capabilities; entering keywords and filters with this feature allows you to quickly identify relevant media coverage and create press clippings.
- Coverage Metrics: These platforms will automatically provide a wealth of coverage metrics from the media coverage you select, allowing you to see the most crucial metrics and get an overview and monitor overall PR campaign results.
- Outreach Metrics: Some PR analytics tools allow you to measure your media outreach campaign performance - these help you measure your pitches’ performance, inform others about your campaign’s size and success, and evaluate any future improvement opportunities.
Usability
A significant benefit of implementing PR analytics platforms in your organization is saving valuable time instead of manually creating reports. So, I made sure to add tools that are intuitive to use and provide many time-saving capabilities, allowing you to quickly highlight your work’s impact in a few clicks. I also looked for tools that enable you to create client-worthy presentations to deliver fast and in one place.
Software Integrations
When I compared the options in this list, I ensured to find platforms that are compatible with standard business tech stacks and capabilities. I looked for tools that offered straightforward integration with these tools and systems and determined whether the platforms provided the necessary functionalities that aligned with PR objectives. This ensures you’re not investing your budget in new infrastructures or learning new processes, which can be expensive. It also allows for a simplified workflow, maximizes productivity, and creates effective PR campaigns.
Customizable Dashboards
Drag-and-drop tools are necessary for quickly creating reports, but it’s worth having solutions that offer easy creation of tailored dashboards for your brand. Every organization will favor one metric over another, and having the ability to customize your PR analytics dashboard is essential. When creating this list, I looked for software that empowers you to monitor key PR metrics by allowing you to customize your dashboard.
People Also Ask
As I created this article, I found that many people ask the same questions about PR analytics tools and you might have similar queries. So I wanted to take the time to answer the most frequently asked questions about these tools to help you during your search.
How much do PR analytics tools cost?
PR analytics tools’ costs vary depending on factors such as the features each option offers. I evaluated tools with a wide range of pricing that will fit many budgets while providing the capabilities required. Typically, you can access PR analytics solutions for around $21/month, whereas other pricier options offer plans in the $800/month range.
What do PR analytics tools measure?
Below are some of the KPIs PR analytics tools can measure and are worth tracking. You can always start with the metrics that provide the most significant impact and then measure your performance against your competition.
- Media Impressions: Return on investment can be challenging to quantify for PR efforts, so measuring media impressions is a key metric to monitor; impressions may not directly result in sales or generate revenue, but they will show that people are interested in your message.
- Audience Reach: One aspect of public relations is to get the word out about your organization through various media channels and outlets, and you can use PR analytics tools to measure the viewership of your campaigns and websites where your coverage is featured.
- Engagement Levels: Having target audiences share and comment on your campaigns is beneficial to your organization; these platforms can measure and highlight how many shares and comments your coverage receives.
- Website Traffic: Effective PR will generate an increase in website traffic depending on the PR type and story placement; your teams can use PR analytics tools to measure referral traffic and organic homepage traffic increases to measure campaign value.
- Sentiment Analysis: Measuring sentiment will help you oversee the overall tone of the articles that mention your brand or your competitors, allowing you to see if your company is generating positive or negative associations.
- Media Outreach: This is the number of press releases and pitches you send out and their performance, including how much coverage they generate – you can also measure relationship-building progress by monitoring open rates and internal link clicks.
- Domain Authority: The domain authority of a media outlet where you secure coverage is worth consideration because it’s a measurement of a website’s quality and ability to rank on search engines; media outlets with a high domain authority that includes links to your website are incredibly beneficial.
What are the benefits of PR analytics tools
In the fast-paced world of public relations, staying on top of your campaigns’ effectiveness is paramount, and PR analytics tools provide a data-driven approach to navigating this dynamic landscape. Here are some of the distinct advantages these tools offer to help you see how they can reshape how to measure and enhance PR strategies.
- Data-Driven Insights: PR analytics tools provide data-driven insights that lead to a 20% improvement in PR campaign targeting and effectiveness.
- Competitor Benchmarking: PR analytics tools enable competitor benchmarking, which leads to an enhancement in developing unique and competitive messaging.
- ROI Measurement: Businesses using PR analytics tools experience an increase in accurately measuring PR ROI.
- Real-Time Monitoring: PR analytics tools offer real-time monitoring, contributing to a decrease in response time to PR crises.
- Audience Segmentation: By enabling precise audience segmentation, these tools can drive an increase in engagement rates through targeted messaging.
- Content Performance Optimization: PR analytics tools facilitate content performance optimization, leading to a rise in media coverage and article shares.
- Trend Identification: Utilizing data-driven trend identification, businesses gain an advantage in capitalizing on emerging industry trends and opportunities.
- Executive Decision Support: PR analytics tools provide insights for informed executive decisions, resulting in an increase in alignment between PR initiatives and business goals.
Other Analytics Tools Reviews
If you find that your organization needs analytics tools to measure other vital functions, here are other analytics software reviews to help you find something that fits your requirements.
- Marketing Intelligence Software
- Marketing Analytics Tools
- Email Marketing Analytics Tools
- Social Media Analytics Software
- Content Analytics Software
- Marketing Measurement Tools
- Marketing Attribution Software
- Marketing Segmentation Tools
- Marketing Account Intelligence Software
- Social Listening Tools
The Takeaway
As you can see, there is a wide range of options that can simplify PR analytics and monitor relevant articles, analyze the industry, and understand your audience. The search for a comprehensive solution can be a tiring process. Apart from the most relevant features, the best choice will come down to aspects such as budget, customizability, and ease of use. Don’t be afraid to sign up for free trials or demos to experience the platform firsthand and choose your favorite one.
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