The PFG Impact Scorecard: How We Measure Purpose-Driven PR Results
Ask most PR agencies how a campaign performed and you'll get a number that sounds impressive and means almost nothing. Impressions. Reach. "Potential audience." Numbers designed to look big in a report, not to tell you whether the work moved your business.
I've never believed in that kind of reporting. If we're asking a purpose-driven brand to invest in visibility, the least we can do is measure whether that visibility actually did anything. So we built our reporting around the metrics that matter. The ones that tell you whether your mission is reaching people, being believed, and driving results.
Here's how we measure purpose-driven PR, and why each category earns its place.
1. Reach that means something and not just impressions
We start by throwing out the metric most agencies lead with. Impressions tell you how many people theoretically could have seen something. They don't tell you whether the right people did.
What we track instead is qualified visibility: placements in the specific outlets, podcasts, and publications your actual audience pays attention to. A feature in a trade publication your buyers read is worth more than a million impressions scattered across audiences who will never become customers. We measure the relevance and authority of where you show up, not just how many eyeballs were nearby.
2. Referral traffic and conversion
Coverage that doesn't drive action is just applause. So we track what happens after a placement runs. We monitor the traffic it sends to your site, and what those visitors actually do once they arrive.
Using referral tracking and source analysis, we connect specific earned media to real outcomes: site visits, sign-ups, inquiries, sales. This is where purpose-driven PR proves its worth in terms a founder can take to their board. We're not measuring whether people saw your story. We're measuring whether seeing it changed what they did.
3. Share of Model: your visibility inside AI
This is the metric almost no one was tracking two years ago, and the one that increasingly determines whether you get found at all. Your customers are asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity to recommend brands like yours and we measure whether you're the answer.
We call it Share of Model: how often your brand appears when buyers query your category across the major AI platforms. Using our AI Search Scan, we document where you currently show up, how accurately you're described, and who's appearing in your place. Then we track it over time as our work moves the needle. It's the clearest measure of AI-era visibility there is, and it's built into how we report from day one.
4. Authority that compounds
A single placement is a moment. A body of consistent, credible coverage is an asset. We measure the difference.
We track the accumulation of your earned media over time like the citations, the backlinks from credible sources, the growing library of independent coverage that builds your authority with both human audiences and AI systems. This is the metric that captures the snowball effect: each placement making the next one easier, each piece of coverage strengthening the whole. Most agencies report month to month and lose this entirely. We measure the curve, not just the dots on it.
5. Credibility and sentiment
For a purpose-driven brand, how you're talked about matters as much as how often. A wave of coverage that subtly misrepresents your mission, or that reads as performative, can do more harm than no coverage at all.
So we monitor the quality of your visibility, not just the quantity, whether your mission is being represented accurately, whether the tone reflects genuine impact rather than marketing gloss, and how your brand is described across the sources that shape public perception. For brands whose entire value rests on trust, this is non-negotiable. We're watching the line between authentic and performative, and making sure you stay firmly on the right side of it.
Why we measure this way
How an agency reports reveals what it actually values. When the only numbers on offer are impressions and reach, it usually means the work underneath them can't be tied to anything real.
But measurement only matters if it actually changes what you do next. As Amy Lawrence, Deputy Managing Director at GingerMay and a 2025 Ragan Top Women in Communications honoree, put it: "You could have the best PR metrics, really in-depth and insightful but if you're not looking at them and using them to decide what to do next, they become meaningless." That's the standard we hold ourselves to. The scorecard isn't a report we hand over and forget, it's how we decide where to push next.
We measure reach quality, conversion, AI visibility, compounding authority, and credibility because those are the things that determine whether a purpose-driven brand actually grows and not whether a report looks busy. It holds us accountable to outcomes instead of activity. And it gives the founders we work with something most agencies never provide: an honest answer to the question that matters most. Is this working?
That accountability is the whole point. Your mission deserves more than applause. It deserves results you can measure.
See How Your Brand Is Actually Performing
Book a free strategy call with our team. We'll run your AI Search Scan, show you how your brand is currently being seen and described, and map out what a measurable visibility strategy could look like.
