Executive Summary: PR News’ Measurement Conference
May 15, 2013, National Press Club,
Washington, D.C.
Starting on the Same Page: What You Must Know Now About PR Measurement
Speakers:
Jackie Matthews, Research Strategist, General Motors Communications
Sandy Malloy, Senior Information Specialist, Business Wire
Jackie Matthews and Sandy Malloy kicked off the conference by acknowledging that the range of measurement experience in the audience was vast – the audience was comprised of metric novices, analytics pros and everything in between.
“Almost anything can be measured, but what are the right measures for you?” Matthews asked the audience. “Just because the chart may look good doesn’t mean it gives you the information you need.” Citing the second Barcelona Principle, Malloy stated, “Measuring the effect on outcomes is preferred to measuring outputs.” Don’t keep track of the amount of press releases your team is producing on a weekly basis. Instead, use those releases to increase registrations to an upcoming event.
Malloy closed with a word of warning about counting clicks. “It’s not a bad thing to do, but is not enough by itself to show how your efforts are paying off,” she said. “Take into account benchmarks, share of voice and sentiment as well.”
Develop Business Metrics That Resonate With Senior Leaders
Speakers:
Marla Bace, GM, Marketing and Operations, Circles, a division of Sodexo
Pauline Draper-Watts, Global Head of Measurement and Analytics, Edelman Berland
Eric R. Warner, Head of Americas, Public Relations Services Group, Thomson Reuters Corporate Services
“If you can’t measure it,” began Marla Bace, “then don’t do it.” The C-suite wants facts and figures, and if you don’t have any to validate your point, good luck getting upper management’s support. Measurement creates focus for you and the organization, gauging efficacy and proving accountability for projects—they’re an absolute necessity for businesses.
What are your business objectives and how do you develop them?
All metrics should begin with the following business objectives (S.M.A.R.T.):
- Specific
- Measureable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
The speakers provided the following checklist for meetings with the higher ups:
- Explain
- Match objectives with expected outcome
- Track
- Communicate obstacles
- Engage subject matter experts (SMEs)
- Integrate
- Drive ROI
Key Takeaways
1. Business metrics begin with business objectives. Make your business objectives S.M.A.R.T.
2. Set expectations that make sense and directly tie into the goals of senior leadership.
3. Connect metrics to business results and compare against previous PR programs.
4. Achieve buy-in to communicate campaign successes and challenges.
5. Speak the language of business to the business.
Create a Social Media Measurement Strategy That Clearly Ties to Organizational Goals
Speakers:
Don Bartholomew, SVP, Digital & Social Media Research, Ketchum
Angela C. Jeffrey, APR President, Measurement, Match.com; Senior Counsel, CARMA International; Member, IPR Commission on PR Measurement & Evaluation
Don Bartholomew explained that business measurement is no longer just sales. “It can be tied to employee loyalty, corporate reputation and customer service and satisfaction,” he said.
Communications professionals need to align goals with business processes and outcomes, focusing on “what happened” instead of “how much.”
Here is Bartholomew’s step-by-step social measurement process:
1. Set measurement objectives aligned with business processes/outcomes.
2. Define the key metrics and KPIs necessary to assess and measure performance. Set targets for goals.
3. Populate the measurement model with programmatic, channel-specific and business metrics.
4. Gather and analyze data. Evaluate performance against stated objectives.
5. Regularly report results on a dashboard or scorecard that contains the most important metrics.
“Forget the usual metrics soup,” advised Jeffrey. “Explore cool financial metrics and link to the outcomes.” After taking attendees through the results of the PR News/CARMA 2013 Measurement Survey, Jeffrey delved into the eight-step social media measurement process employed by the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC).
The Eight-Step Social Media Measurement Process
1. Define organizational goals.
2. Research stakeholders and prioritize.
3. Set specific objectives for each prioritized stakeholder group.
4. Set social media KPIs against each stakeholder objective.
5. Choose tools and benchmark (using the AMEC Matrix):
a. Public relations activity
b. Intermediary effects
c. Target audience effects
6. Analyze the results and compare to costs.
7. Present to management.
8. Measure continuously and improve performance.
Here are Jeffrey’s takeaways:
1. Social and web metrics are great, but link your full PR effort to business outcomes.
2. Master a few comparative financial metrics instead of “ROI.”
3. Try your hand at setting financial goals in Google Analytics.
4. Measure social and traditional media by quality and quantity.
5. Correlate to outcomes.
Find and Earn the Trust of Influencers—and Measure the Success of Your Communications With Them on Social Channels
Speakers:
Johna Burke, EVP, BurrellesLuce
Margot Sinclair Savell, Senior Vice President, Global Measurement Research+Data Insights, Hill+Knowlton Strategies
Johna Burke hit the ground running with solutions on how to find the influencers among general customers. The first step is, of course, defining who the customers are. Not only does this give communicators the confidence to market successfully, but it also enables them to listen and develop products and services accordingly. From there, you can pinpoint the influencers.
Burke used brand examples to illustrate how they connected with influencers. Finally, she stressed the importance of clear and concise terminology: “It builds trust, fosters understanding, promotes prioritization, and minimizes risk,” she said.
Margot Sinclair Savell picked up where Burke left off, exploring the definition of influence in the communications context. She provided the audience with five steps to identifying and engaging influencers.
1. Listen and identify: Listen to relevant conversations, identifying influencers by keyword and social footprint.
2. Strategize: Use your findings to inform your engagement strategies.
3. Engage: Engage with these influencers about topics important to them.
4. Measure: Measure the results and use the information to develop future strategy.
5. Repeat: Update your influencer list monthly; measure on an ongoing basis.
Key Takeaways
1. Influence is more than the number of friends and followers.
2. Measure conversations by people who have the ability to change another’s opinion or behavior.
3. Influencers talk frequently about the subjects that matter most to your company/client.
4. Find them using simple keyword searches in free tools, online listening platforms or influencer identification tools.
5. Then engage, and measure the outcomes.
6. Update influencer lists monthly.
7. Repeat
Interactive Clinic: Develop Key Performance Indicators Tied to Organizational Goals
Speakers:
Katie Paine, Chief Marketing Officer, News Group; Chairman & Founder, Salience/KDPaine & Partners
Dane Wiseman, Digital Marketing Manager, Critical Mention
Katie Paine framed her presentation around “The 7 Steps to the Perfect Measurement System,” which begins with defining a goal. “What outcomes is this strategy action or tactic going to achieve?” Paine asked. “What are your measurable objectives?”
Identifying the target audience is the next step. The key to this second step is to understand communication’s role in getting the target “audience” to do what you want it to do.
Steps three through five deal with establishing metrics and benchmarks based on variables like past performance and peer review. What keeps leadership up at night?
Perfect measurement is impossible to achieve with the wrong tools. Number six on Paine’s list addresses the issue of measurement hardware by defining three buckets of tools:
Content analysis: If you want to measure messaging, positioning, themes, sentiment.
Survey research: If you want to measure awareness, perception, relationships, preference.
Web analytics: If you want to measure engagement, action, purchase.
The final step to the perfect measurement system is all about insight and action. “Research without insight is just trivia,” Paine said.
Dane Wiseman helped lead the interactive clinic on developing KPIs and objectives. Wiseman equipped attendees with numerous tips to aid them in their assignment:
Always be tracking: Google Analytics now allows you to build audiences based on various conditions. Measure various audience conditions with new campaigns.
- On business goals: Stay organized, and you can revisit the audience and KPIs of a successful campaign in the future.
- Diversify: Use and test various mediums, including video to engage with your social channels and site visitors.
- Always be testing: Incremental gains can mean thousands or millions of dollars in added revenue for your company.
- On exporting analysis: Most data can be automated to send in Excel.
In addition, Wiseman broke down measurement into four parts:
1. Audience: Identify which stakeholder group you want to target with your PR program.
2. Objective: Set specific objectives for each stakeholder group.
3. Analysis: Benchmark and present results to senior leaders.
4. Execution: Set traditional, digital, social media KPIs against your objective.
How to Create Effective Measurement Scorecards
Speakers:
Marianne Eisenmann, Head of Communications Research and Measurement, Chandler Chicco Companies
Mathilda Joubert, Research Vice President, Cision Global Analysts
Nick Tabbal, Vice President of Analytics, Bulletin Intelligence
“The marketplace is demanding standards,” Marianne Eisenmann said. “Not only do they enable us to compare across programs and organizations, but they also establish a common language and foster innovation around developing insights.”
She guided the audience through numerous graphs illustrating organizational goals aimed at doing everything from improving the quality of media coverage to increasing online registrations. Here are her key takeaways:
- Translate business goals into measurable PR program objectives.
- Design metrics to measure those objectives and track them over time to show progress.
- Consider what you can demonstrate beyond impressions and clip count (e.g. quality of coverage, tone, pick-up in agenda-setting media).
- Build a call-to-action into your program, track progress.
- Look to use integrated metrics (multichannel, etc.).
- Tell a story by building in metrics for all channels into one scorecard.
Mathilda Joubert spoke about translating PR jargon for senior leaders, explaining, “It’s about translation and understanding.” She also advised attendees to use relevant, defendable metrics rather than easily accessible ones.
Here are her key takeaways:
- Translate PR measurement into a language senior leaders will relate to.
- Don’t overuse jargon for the sake of using jargon.
- Demonstrate credibility and success by benchmarking against business goals through defendable metrics.
- Design your dashboard or scorecard with your audience in mind.
- Less is more when it comes to charting.
- Use narrative to provide context.
Nick Tabbal finished the presentation with an exploration of accurate impression numbers. “Impressions are like spelling,” he said. “Bad impression numbers undermine your credibility, but accurate impression numbers do not necessarily make actionable dashboards and scorecards.”
Here are his final thoughts:
- Understand how your data is collected.
- Be aware of skews and limitations of the data.
- Test your assumptions.
- Data is not a substitute for common sense.
- Leverage smart data.
- Make sure your metrics and business goals are aligned.
- Measure business outcomes where possible.
Case Studies: Real-World Applications of Successful Measurement Tactics
Speakers:
Cherreka Montgomery, National Vice President of Corporate Development, SAP NS2
Amy O'Brien, Senior Analyst, Social Media, American Airlines
David Woolwine, Director of Reputation Leadership, Allstate Insurance
Perspectives from SAP National Security Services (SAP NS2)
Cherreka Montgomery took attendees through a typical progression from strategizing to execution. In most cases, the process goes as follows: Strategic planning leads to strategy implementation, which is followed by budgeting and strategic and operational reviews. The final two steps are employee reviews and data gathering.
Montgomery went on to explore the reasons behind a consistent gap between strategy and execution, providing the following culprits:
- The assumption that employees understand how the strategy affects them and how their decisions impact others.
- The failure to make clear who is accountable for ensuring execution of initiatives, projects, and tasks.
- The implementation of applications that won’t help empower employees to make their own decisions.
- The failure to establish a formal mechanism to influence strategy or to share best practices.
- Forgetting to link budgeting and strategy and performance metrics.
- Managing strategy with inadequate tools that require much manual tracking and updating.
American Airlines Case Study
Amy O’Brien opened up her case study with five questions companies in the midst of a crisis should be asking about their social media metrics:
1. What is the volume of conversation?
2. Where is the conversation happening?
3. Who is driving the conversation?
4. What are the main themes of the conversation?
5. What is the tone of the conversation?
In order to answer these questions, O’Brien said, “You need to have a reliable social media monitoring tool and have proper training on it.”
Here are her key takeaways:
- Use the five key questions as a framework for your reporting during a crisis or during normal operations.
- Understand your audience, and tailor the content and frequency of reporting to their needs.
- Offer concrete benchmarks to put the crisis metrics into context.
- Provide a complete picture, don’t try to sugarcoat reality.
- Qualitative/anecdotal data can help tell the story and make it more real.
Allstate’s Story
David Woolwine explained that, as an insurance company, “We sell trust. We sell a promise—to be there to restore people’s lives when they need us,” he said. “We sell a product that we hope you never have to use.”
Through extensive research, Allstate found that companies with stronger reputations have a higher financial value. The key to a better reputation is understanding what stakeholders expect — and their perceptions. With these lessons in mind, Allstate began identifying and prioritizing its stakeholders, creating a reputation scorecard framework. With that in hand, the insurance company also came up with a “Reputation Initiative Enhancement Tool” that it used across all of its endeavors.
Woolwine showed how Allstate put its new initiatives to use post-Katrina, breaking the results down into the following bulletpoints:
- Established $700,000 Hurricane Recovery Fund
- Employees and the company contributed $4M to Red Cross
- Partnered with Urban Institute and LANO
- Launched Little Hands playground initiative
- Committed to long term involvement
5 PR Measurement Lessons From the Obama Re-Election Campaign
Speaker: Amy Gershkoff, Global Director of Analytics, Burson-Marsteller
Amy Gershkoff offered her five measurement lessons from the Obama re-election campaign right off the bat:
- Don’t focus on Big Data: Focus on building a best-in-class business intelligence tool so you can make use of all the data you already have.
- A best-in-class business intelligence tool is key: It should be a combination of owned, earned and paid media.
- One KPI: Don’t get bogged down by dozens of different goals. Isolate a directive and focus your efforts on achieving it.
- Daily war room: Daily measurement is key here. Implement an early warning system for crisis detection and identify opportunities to capitalize on.
- Content is king: If you’re only measuring dollars spent, you’re missing more than half of the story.