Corporate managers understand numbers. They judge the success of business operations, including public relations, in terms of hard numbers. Therefore it should come as no surprise that PR pros who can validate their efforts by focusing and measuring their work in terms of the bottom line will earn a better seat at the strategy table.
Bottom line strategy development and measurement techniques were among the topics discussed by Angela Sinickas of William M. Mercer, Inc. at the IABC Annual Conference held in Los Angeles (June 7-12).
The key is to view all communications efforts, especially measurement, as a means to improve the bottom line and solve measurement problems, according to Sinickas. Gearing a program toward the bottom line can help PR pros to quantify program effectiveness, improve crisis management and planning, and ultimately expand the role of PR in an organization's internal management process.
Illustrating Program Effectiveness
But demonstrating the value of a campaign to bottom-line oriented managers is one of the most difficult tasks facing PR professionals.
The oft-used advertising comparison analysis of media story clips often underestimates and oversimplifies PR's true value and does little to help justify the PR effort.
Sinickas instructs PR people to work hand-in-hand with organization managers to implement an overall or integrated measurement system that tracks bottom line results from PR, advertising, direct mail and other marketing and communications efforts. In other words, the impact of a PR campaign has to be viewed in a broader context than clip analysis.
A simple measurement system should provide for various customer reply phone numbers and addresses to track leads generated from different marketing and communications programs. Divide the number of leads from each effort by the cost. Next, determine the quality of the leads from each program by dividing the revenue generated by the cost.
According to Sinickas, this type of measurement and comparative analysis is precisely the information managers are looking for to justify marketing and communications costs.
Such measurement analysis, however, is not without its risks. While a positive analysis can bring increased stature and budget, a negative assessment can bring the reverse.
Improving Crisis Management
Measurement techniques also can be employed to significantly improve crisis avoidance and management. By measuring crisis risk and becoming involved in an organization's operational management process, PR pros can better prepare themselves to handle a crisis, and may perhaps even be able to help prevent one.
A simple measurement analysis should determine such factors as 1) how serious a crisis will be (from a PR perspective) if it happens and 2) how likely is it to happen. By assessing each factor on a scale from one to five, and totaling the combined score for each potential crisis, you can determine where a crisis is likely to develop, and how it can most effectively be planned for with a PR crisis management plan.
How to Expand Your Role
To always focus on the bottom line impact of your efforts:
- Learn more about the organization's internal operating and management process, even if such information initially seems unrelated to the day-to-day PR tasks at hand;
- Identify the operational issues of most concern to managers by askingthem to participate in internal interviews, focus groups and surveys. To truly understand how managers think, try more hands-on techniques such as operational "ride-alongs," which allow you to follow a manager around as he/she performs daily job functions;
- Establish a long-term relationship with a potential new client by offering to make an investment in the company by conducting nonbillable research. This won't only make your new business pitch stand apart from the competition, but also improve your efforts in the long-term.