I’m not the biggest fan of Broadway musicals, but I must admit, “Wicked,” the story behind the story of “The Wizard of Oz,” was pretty entertaining.

If you haven’t seen it, “Wicked” is a prequel to Frank L. Baum’s classic tale about life over the rainbow and explains what caused the Wicked Witch of the East to become so darn nasty. Without ruining the ending for you, “Wicked” actually serves as an excellent case study about the power of public relations. Midway through the story, the Wizard of Oz hires Madame Morrible to implement a PR campaign to boost the image of Glinda the Good Witch and destroy the reputation of Elphaba (who is officially dubbed the “Wicked Witch of the East”).

The story actually brought back memories of “Wag the Dog,” another cautionary tale about PR spin starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. While I prefer to see PR used for more noble purposes (like helping technology companies become market leaders), from a return on investment (ROI) standpoint, there’s no doubt the Wicked campaign worked. After all, Glinda gets what she wants (power and fame) and what child isn’t scared of the Wicked Witch of the East?

Wouldn’t it be great if all PR campaigns were as easy to measure? Unfortunately, this is an industry of self-proclaimed Wizards, fuzzy metrics and folks who don’t understand PR is a process that requires time, focus and measurement to produce meaningful results.

I can’t tell you how many times prospects have approached Tech Image with a single public relations objective – get me ink! But placements are only an outcome of activity – they won’t necessarily generate sales leads, particularly if those stories aren’t appearing in publications your prospects are reading.

That’s why I urge clients to align PR campaigns with sales. Ultimately, if your PR program is not generating sales leads for your company, it probably isn’t very effective.

Sales acceleration helps align PR with sales. An effective sales acceleration process helps shorten the timeline from suspect to prospect to customer and PR supports the process in three ways:

• Initial awareness from articles reduces the number of cold calls and helps pre-qualify leads
• High-impact placements should be merchandised to prospects along with regular marketing communications efforts
• Special events can be created and promoted as lead-generating devices to help build your sales pipeline

So does this mean a PR program should begin generating sales leads from day one or that companies should rely on PR as the primary source of leads?

Absolutely not! Effective campaigns take months to begin building traction and require buy-in from your top executives, key customers and a handful of outside third party experts (such as industry analysts, pundits and even a competitor or two). Like the Yellow Brick Road itself, the path is long, and taking shortcuts can lead to danger. You have to remember that the goal is the Emerald City, and that staying on the right road is the way to get there.

At Tech Image, the first few months of a new relationship are spent building the foundation, which includes refining a company’s messaging, media coaching company spokespersons and targeting the media that will have the greatest impact reaching prospective customers.

Sales acceleration begins after we have generated the first wave of key placements (usually about four months into a new relationship). The objective is to maximize the value of our PR efforts beyond the actual placement or event. Activities might include:

• Creating targeted email campaigns to merchandise placements to prospects, partners and customers
• Supporting online communications efforts like website updates and optimization as well as HTML newsletters and blogs
• Developing ongoing lead generation and/or direct market campaigns that may include everything from telemarketing to special events

Clients that aggressively merchandise their effective PR results through sales acceleration campaigns receive incremental value long after the fact – and therefore improve ROI on their PR spend. If you track leads closely and get into the habit of asking prospects how they learned about your company, you’ll begin to see patterns emerge and can use this information to constantly fine-tune your program so that it delivers optimal results.

Sales acceleration is not magic. There’s no “man behind the curtain.” It’s simply a logical means for taking your public relations program to the next level and is a secret weapon few of your competitors use effectively.

Best of all, the next time the CFO asks why you’re spending $250,000 per year on public relations you can confidently respond, “Because our sales acceleration program proves that we generate $1 in sales revenue for every dime we spend on PR.”

Even the scarecrow could calculate that ROI.

Anyway, that’s my two-cents’ worth.