How The National Cowgirl Museum Proves the Power of Earned Media with Truescope

At a Glance

Challenge: No media intelligence in place and had no way to show value of earned media, making it difficult to demonstrate ROI to the board.

Solution: Truescope’s ability to show the value of earned media, collaborative keyword setup, and responsive customer success team gave the museum full visibility into its media coverage and influencer effectiveness.

Impact: The museum can now quantify earned media in hard dollar terms for board reporting, track coverage from Sunday Night Football and Travel+Leisure, and validate the return on influencer engagements.

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The Company

The National Cowgirl Museum in Fort Worth, Texas is a one-of-a-kind cultural institution dedicated to honouring women of the American West. The goal is to transform a “hidden gem of Fort Worth” into a must-visit destination and the museum has found itself at the centre of a renewed national interest in Western lifestyle and culture.

Leading the charge on marketing, communications, and membership is Julie Bryant. Julie is the Director of Marketing, Communications, and Membership and brings with her more than 30 years of marketing experience across not-for-profit organisations, agriculture, and equine sports.

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The Challenge

No way to measure or report earned media value

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When Julie arrived at the National Cowgirl Museum, there was no media monitoring in place whatsoever. The organisation had no way to quantify its media exposure, track where coverage was appearing, or put a dollar value on earned media.

For a not-for-profit that depends on donations and public generosity to keep its doors open, this was a significant gap. Without data on earned media, Julie had no way to demonstrate the return on her team’s PR and communications efforts to the board. As she explains, “When you’re a not-for-profit and you’re dependent upon people’s donations and generosity, being able to gain that ground through earned media is super important.”

Julie had experience with competitors like Muck Rack and Cision, but found their data quality lacking. “There are so many, and a lot of times their information isn’t that good,” she says. She needed a platform that could actually show where the museum was being effective and where it was not.

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The Solution

Truescope provides earned media tracking, valuation, and reporting

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While Julie evaluated alternatives for media intelligence, she knew Truescope delivered on the data that mattered most: the ability to see the value of earned media, track the outcomes of PR efforts, and drill down into specific coverage. When it came time to set up media monitoring at the museum, Truescope was the clear choice.

Onboarding was smooth. The Truescope team came prepared with initial keyword research based on the museum’s profile, saving Julie valuable time. Day to day, Julie uses Truescope to monitor earned media mentions, quantify their value, track the outcomes of PR efforts, and build reports for leadership. She also uses the platform to validate the effectiveness of influencer engagements and to follow coverage from journalists and friendly media contacts.

In one instance, Visit Fort Worth brought 14 social media influencers through the museum. Julie sent their handles to her Truescope CS manager, who set up tracking so she could monitor when the influencers posted content. The result: only 4 followed through. “That helps me to have true intelligence on what these influencers are doing in terms of posting,” Julie says. Without Truescope, the museum had no way of knowing whether the time invested in hosting influencers delivered any return.

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“I can now show our board exactly what our earned media is worth. Our advertising budget is a drop in the bucket compared to what we’re gaining, and Truescope is how we prove it.” — Julie Bryant, Director of Marketing, Communications, and Membership, The National Cowgirl Museum

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The Impact

Board now sees the dollar value of every media mention

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Truescope has fundamentally changed how the National Cowgirl Museum understands and communicates the value of its media presence. Where there was previously zero tracking, the museum can now quantify the value of its earned media, especially to its Executive Director and for board reporting.

An example came when the museum secured a 15-second mention during the third quarter of Sunday Night Football, one of the most-watched programmes with around 24 million viewers. With Truescope, she was able to see the value of the Sunday Night Football segment for business and report this media coverage to her board of directors. “That was one of those things that kind of had to have all the pieces come together to know the value of that whole moment,” Julie recalls.

Truescope has also transformed how Julie reports to leadership. Julie now delivers a brief but impressive monthly report to the executive director, showing where the museum is appearing in the media. When a reporter from Travel+Leisure visited, Truescope helped Julie track exactly where the resulting story was published, something she would have had no way of knowing otherwise.

As Julie puts it: “I find it important to have an organisation like Truescope in my back pocket. Truescope is worth the money to know the outcomes of the work,” she says.