The Case
Miller/Shandwick Interactive PR was asked by heads at Kodak to pinpoint the exact number of users PR brought to their Picture Playground site, an online store that allows users to personalize photos. Providing this information meant the Miller/Shandwick team, headed by Mike Spataro, senior VP of the firm's interactive division, had to filter out all traffic stemming from advertising and marketing efforts - a task that was enormous in scope and daunting in execution.
The Strategy
As with most measurement tools, the customized software provided to Kodak by Accrue Software couldn't pinpoint why a specific user had come to a site. Spataro and account executive Simone Valois overcame this hurdle by spending four hours a day during the 53-day promotion manually poring through the top 100 URLs that linked users to the Kodak site. For example, if a visitor came to Picture Playground via a news chat room, and that room displayed a press release created by Shandwick (which, more than likely, was put there by a Kodak investor), it would stand to reason that the visit was a result of PR.
In other words, Spataro and Valois hoped to find conclusive evidence linking a person's visit to Picture Playground to one of Shandwick's promotional efforts, which consisted of the usual suspects: wire releases, aggressive media relations and a virtual online briefing where 30 editors toured the site before it launched. If the findings were inconclusive Spataro and Valois omitted them from their report to Kodak.
Findings
Between the promotion's timetable of May 19 and July 10, 5% of the total traffic coming to the Kodak site stemmed from online PR efforts.
Starting out, Spataro had estimated that traffic generated by PR would fall between a half and a whole percent, considering the click-through rates on banners. "When I told the people at Accrue [the actual return], they were blown away," he says.
Kodak was also pleased by the results, trusting Spataro's findings as fact. "It was a testament to PR making a difference [in the amount of traffic to the site]," says Kristine Thompson, PR manager of Kodak.com.
The budget for the whole Picture Playground campaign was under $40,000. Spataro thought the results were extremely encouraging in terms of how his firm's efforts affected traffic to the site.
Other findings were:
- Niche sites, like USA Today and the Christian Science Monitor drive long-lasting traffic.
- Regional news sites and wires are good for short traffic spikes.
- Photography sites rarely drive traffic.
Finding a Web site that catered specifically to Picture Playground's niche was as labor intensive as monitoring the 100 sites. Spataro's team found them by scouring Web page after Web page, and tracking down which position would benefit Kodak the most. Appropriate sites were contacted to see if their traffic numbers were worthy. Some site owners were unwilling to share details, making Spataro's job even more rigorous as he was forced to calculate educated guesses on how many users visited the sites that were run by the secretive owners.
But, if he had to do it all over again, Spataro says he would have doubled his efforts in contacting those niche sites. Such places were key to the longevity of the promotion. Sites like Yahooligans and Cybertours kept the Kodak word alive for over 30 days.
What Didn't Work
The invitation to 30 editors to tour the Picture Playground included some online reviewers. Spataro's team found that courting them was not nearly as productive as they would have liked.
"There's probably only half a dozen of them out there that mean anything in the sense of what they say helping to build traffic," says Spataro. Next time he plans to limit the number of site reviewers they court.
Taking It Forward
Without a doubt, Spataro says, Kodak will repeat the study in near future. This measurement effort proved to them, as well as those in Shandwick, that money spent on online PR is a worthy investment. If promotions costing less than $40,000 can generate 5% responses, he says, think what a multi-million-dollar push might accomplish- particularly when armed with the information from this study.
The groundwork laid by this project:
- Being able to forecast what part of ecommerce sales will be generated from online PR.
- Deciphering how online PR spending benefits the ROI.
"This project was a very small first step in the right direction of understanding these points," says Spataro.
Warning: don't apply this at home
Results from measurement, like snow flakes, are very individual. Research must be customized to fit what each particular project will cover. Taking the findings from one project and applying them to another will not work. For example, Kodak's Picture Playground got ink because it generated a specific amount of interest from a specific group of reporters. But, if Kodak released another online store and followed the same steps, the buzz generated would be very different.
"I would never generalize and say these findings would be the same if a different company had done them," says Mike Spataro.
Life @ Miller/Shandwick Interactive PR
The Players: Mike Spataro, senior VP interactive division; Simone Valois, account executive
Total Picture Playground Budget: Under $40,000
Hours Spent on Measurement: 208
In the Hopper: Streaming audio - which involves taking the comments from a CEO or another quotable person and placing them on the Web or in a press release in less than 30 seconds. "Now," says Spataro, "when announcements go out of the press room, live quotes go with them."