If Jaba the Hut provided the spin to a recent PR NEWS Webinar on how to tie PR measurement to the entire company he might advise: Be one with your search engines.
As Greg Jarboe, co-founder of SEO PR puts it, "Google was a little late to the dance, but it's changing the rules" in terms of posting press releases and being able to generate
sales leads.
Making search engines work for your communications efforts was one of the many themes of the recent Webinar, titled "Integrating PR Measurement with Organizational Success."
For communications executives, especially on the corporate side, measurement has become the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Boards, managers and clients can't get away from it --
nor should they -- and are constantly trying to figure out how to better measure PR campaigns so that the results are directly tied to overall business goals. "We constantly audit
the different audiences that matter to us, whether its analysts or the press contacts, and we engage their progress over time to see if we're making a shift in their perceptions,"
says Gwen Gulick, director, with the Horn Group, which handles mostly tech clients. "Extending that out to sales, customers and other different audiences is really important to
see if the PR program is impacting the business."
Step 1: Who are your publics and why do you care about them?
- List all the publics you spend resources "relating" to
- Define the benefit your organization receives from a good realtionship with each one.
- Prioritize the audiences based on the benefits your organization receives and the importance of those benefits
Step 2: Define your dashboard metrics
What drives your organization?
- Sales
- Leads
- Membership
- Donations
- Applications
- Market share
- Share of choice
- Reputation
What is your contribution?
- Improve relationships
- Communicate messages
- Drive membership
- Increase donations
- Generate Applications
- Lower turnover rates
- Improve employee attitude
- Lower legal costs
- Shorten expansion cycles
Step 3: Define your benchmarks
- Past Performance
- Other disciplines
- Peer companies
- Whatever keeps the Martians up at night
Integrated measurement criteria and benchmarks
|
Benchmark
|
Criteria
|
| Other marketing methods | CPM |
| Cost per message communicated | |
| Cost per minute spent with prospect | |
| Peer organization | Share of quotes |
| Share of visibility | |
| Share of positioning | |
| Past performance | % increase in impact |
| % increase in behavior |
Step 4: The 4 Must-C's for integrated measurement programs
- Consistency
- Comparable
- Correlative
- Continuous
Rules for relationship measurement
- Measuring failure is more important than measuring success
- Monitoring the internet is as important as monitoring the media
- The cost of NOT measuring your relationships is higher than the cost of any measurement program you implement
How to get your measurement done free (or almost)
- Become a research project
- Tap into state and local research
- Add on to an omnibus study
- Use on-line surveys
- Tap into local boards and organizations
- Use someone else's budget
- Share cost with peer organizations
- Use sponsor resources
- Research something that IS in your budget
Step 5: Analysis
Research without insight is just trivia
- What works, what doesn't
- What needs to be done?
- What are you communicating?
- What tools work best?
Source: KDPaine & Partners
Go to Google: In the next 12 months, Google expects more than:
- 2.5 billion entertainment-related search queries
- 1 billion technology-related search queries
- 1 billion healthcare-related search queries
- 1 billion retail-related search queries
- 1 billion manufacturing-related search queries
- 600 million automotive-related search queries
- 500 million videogame-related search queries
- 140 million airline-related search queries
- 120 million hotel/lodging-related search queries
Source: Greg Jarboe, SEO PR