Engagement is often seen as the holy grail of marketing and communications. Yet for most organizations, engagement has been a tough to nut to crack. Even setting a standard definition for engagement has been elusive.

Defining engagement used to be fairly simple: mix some broadcast and print advertising with some earned media and see if that affects sales.

Ah, those were the good old days. “Engagement was measured as someone coming in the front door of a business and buying something,” says Alan Webber, partner at Altimeter Group, a research-based business advisory firm. “It’s a lot more complicated now—they’re not just coming in the store, they’re talking with each other about what’s going on with your brand through a variety of platforms.”

“Engagement is about interaction,” says Don Bartholomew, VP of digital research at Fleishman-Hillard, St. Louis, and author of the popular PR measurement blog Metrics Man.

“While the mechanics might be different, there’s not a ton of difference between offline, a Web site and Twitter,” says Bartholomew.

The conundrum is, continues Bartholomew, that there’s no agreement within the PR community on what engagement is, which makes it difficult to set a standard set of metrics. His definition? “In our measurement model, on the highest level we ask who is interacting and engaging—and how—with products and services.”

But setting standard definition—one which everyone can agree on—has long been a goal of measurement experts. “We’ve taken a stab at a more concrete definitions of engagement within digital channels,” says Eric Peterson, CEO and principal consultant at Web Analytics Demystified. “Still, everybody picks and chooses their own definitions, which makes engagement difficult to talk about with clients, at business conferences and with the press.”

For some clients, says Peterson, “measures of engagement are measures of sales, which begs the question, why not call engagement ‘sales’?” he says. Other clients want to increase general brand satisfaction, “so maybe we should call it ‘satisfaction,’” adds Peterson.

ENGAGEMENT RULES HAVE CHANGED

The challenge of setting a clear definition of engagement is magnified because the world in which we communicate as changed. Today, customers are:

• Increasingly distracted

• Have increased expectations

• Listening to new models of authority

• Establishing new communities

In short, customers have the power, says Altimeter’s Webber. In addition, they are getting their information through multiple channels.

“It would be great for PR there were three channels, but today it’s really complex, and people move from channel to channel,” says Webber.

ENGAGEMENT TACTICS

There’s not much use for engagement measurement without getting customers engaged. For Sarah Martin, VP of corporate communications at B2B technology solutions and services company CSC, it’s a work in progress. “For us engagement is about relevance,” says Martin. “We have to prove our relevance to our customers and potential customers. Why is our product so important in their world? I think a lot of companies struggle with relevance.”

To get that message of relevance across, Martin says valuable content and conversation is critical. Even at traditional events, CSC ensures that customers interact with experts and their peers. “It’s an environment where they can put their issues on the table, and we can explain why we’re relevant.”

As for measurement, Martin says CSC’s metrics are a combination of the traditional (share of voice, overall media coverage, key message penetration, for example) and digital (click-through rates, calls to action, response rates).

One particular metric that Martin uses that’s not generally talked about is “reference-ibility.” “Is your client willing to serve as a reference for future work?” she asks. If not, engagement isn’t that high.

B2B companies like CSC have more to gain from precise measures of engagement, says Peterson. “They generally sell to a smaller, more sophisticated and highly engaged audience,” he says. “And when you have an engagement, an action quickly follows, like sales picking up the phone and calling.”

GOING DOWNSTREAM

Peterson’s company is currently putting together an executive dashboard for a well-known U.S. retailer. “The key measurements are interactions, positive feedback and engagement,” he says.

The retailer has a number of Web sites, and the goal, continues Peterson, is to increase engagement across all of them. The big question is: What on a site is most engaging to visitors?

“It may be pieces of content, or referring sites that create the most engagement,” says Peterson. The next step, though, is the tricky part. “It’s analyzing and correlating these engagements to business outcomes, such as sales.”

That’s the real holy grail, says Webber, and while measurement companies like Radian6 are getting closer in making such correlations a reality, it’s not quite there yet.

Some companies, like Nike, Dell and Cisco, are on the right engagement track, says Webber. In addition, some industries engage better than others (see Altimeter’s engagement rankings below, culled from the Top 100 Worldwide Brands list and including the number of channels they engage in; media and technology score the highest).

But most organizations don’t have the resources of a Nike. Here are some tips from Webber for better customer engagement:

1. Understand what’s driving your customers/stakeholders to change—is it cultural changes, the recession?

2. Know what channels they’re in, and why they are in those channels.

3. Analytics will only give you part of the answer. You need to connect data points, and qualitative information will put these data points together. What is their story, what is your story and how do those stories interact?

4. Focus on metrics and measurement tools that make sense for you. Sentiment analysis is great, but it might not be relevant.

For good or for bad, says Webber, PR people need to be more like sociologists and anthropologists. “We have to better understand what drives customers,” he says. “If I can figure this out, I’ll be a rich man.” PRN

CONTACT:

Alan Webber, [email protected]; Don Bartholomew, [email protected]; Eric Peterson, [email protected]; Sarah Martin, [email protected].

Engagement Scores by Industry
Industry	Channels	Score	Companies
Apparel	4.1	20.0	7
Auto	6.3	31.5	12
Business services	5.7	40.2	3
Consumer electronics	7.3	40.9	7
Consumer products	4.0	23.5	12
Financial	3.8	13.8	13
Food & Beverage	3.8	21.0	11
Leisure	5.5	27.6	4
Manufacturing	5.5	20.5	4
Media	8.5	76.7	6
Retail	5.1	43.8	8
Technology	9.3	70.0	12
Source: WetPaint/Altimeter Group Engagementdb Report, by Charlene Li