Measurement is one of our industry's most controversial topics,
with experts debating everything from the relevance of Ad Value
Equivalency to the impact of automated media analysis. But
measurement thought leaders do agree that this year, more than ever
before, measurement is growing by leaps and bounds, and
sophisticated techniques are catching fire not only among the
Fortune 500, but in most successful PR departments.
Mandatory Measurement
Reliance on a clip book and a list of media impressions is
increasingly becoming a thing of the past for a variety of reasons.
Slashed budgets necessitate a clearer understanding of what's
working and what's not, meaning PR chiefs are looking for more than
what Bud Grebey, VP of PR for Siemens USA calls "the anecdotal
evidence" (for more on Grebey's efforts to quantify Siemens' PR,
see "Custom Tool Helps Siemens Tie PR to Broader Marketplace").
And if the PR department itself isn't looking for better
measures of success, company executives are. When You Mon Tsang and
company started Biz360, about 25 percent of the company's prospects
were shopping for a measurement solution because of "top-down
pressure." Now, more than 50 percent tell Biz360 execs that the
mandate to measure is coming from above.
"With the growing visibility PR is gaining within
organizations," says Mark Weiner, president and CEO of Delahaye
Medialink, "the [senior execs and client groups] funding PR
programs are looking for ROI."
PR pros are learning quickly, as they defend their own roles and
ensure that PR's visibility continues to grow. And one of the best
ways to do that is by backing up their claims of more cost
effective promotions with hard numbers.
PR and the Bottom Line
What PR pros are learning is how to establish a solid
relationship between PR and the bottom line - or if not the bottom
line, then some measurable business goal. In-depth media analysis
is great, says Katie Paine, president of KDPaine & Partners and
chair of the Institute for Public Relations' Commission on
Measurement, but if media doesn't drive your business, how else is
PR contributing? Instead, the PR department should be measuring
other business outcomes.
Tying PR to sales is in popular demand, but linking PR and
purchases may not be a panacea for every company. And in some
cases, it's just not possible. Although Paine points to companies
like Sam Adams, which sold its first million cases of beer solely
on the force of its PR, and Southwest Airlines, which goes into
every new city first with a PR push that generally sells a whole
lot of tickets, PR typically comes at the front end of a larger
promotional effort - and can't always be directly linked to
sales.
If your company wants to see a relationship between PR and
sales, you may have to rely on simple tactics like an 800 number
established exclusively for PR leads or a Web site whose URL is
included only in PR materials. For large companies with a wide
variety of markets and extensive data on each type of promotion
conducted in those markets, it's possible to conduct a fairly
complex analysis, sorting correlations between sales and different
types of promotions. Or, you can establish what Bob Steen calls
"surrogates." Steen, VP of Fleishman-Hillard Knowledge Solutions,
says the strength of PR lies not in sealing deals but in raising
awareness. "You have to make sure that when you select things to
measure, you measure things over which you have control. If you're
raising awareness [but measuring impact on sales], you can have a
negative ROI if the action mechanism isn't in place to close the
sale." In those cases, Steen advises, use alternative measures as
FH Knowledge Solutions did in the case of the U.S. Mint's
distribution of the Sacagawea Dollar. The firm tracked attitudes
and awareness of the dollar over time through surveys. "The key is
to do baseline research so you can compare afterwards," Steen
says.
Don't Downplay Media
All the talk about ROI is not to say that measuring your results
with the media is a thing of the past. Measuring media is more
important than ever, and very often is how thought leaders are
linking their work to business success.
Today's media measurement goes way beyond the massive, outdated
clip books of the past. With a variety of technologies available to
track numbers of media hits and even automate the process of
analyzing those hits, companies can do more with their media than
ever before. Tom Galvin, VP of corporate communications at
Verisign, for example, is using technology from Biz360 to correlate
spikes in the company's mindshare among the media with spikes in
Verisign's marketshare.
But the human factor is still important, and almost every
high-tech solution also offers a human back-up to discern what
computers cannot in terms of the tone of coverage and other
factors. For many organizations, in fact, hand-analysis of media
remains a key measurement tactic, whether because the volume of
media does not indicate an automated solution, or because the price
is out of reach. "We have a lot of b-to-b clients where the number
of clips is not huge and we do a lot of hand analysis," says Alice
Brink, SVP with Vollmer PR.
Watching the Web
Whether you count key messages by hand or through a high-tech
service, be sure you're not ignoring the importance of media hits
online. The industry is still up in the air on how best to measure
these hits (see Media Metrics), but understanding your online
coverage and the kinds of audiences you're reaching is an important
first step.
In fact, understanding your presence online, whether in the
media or on your own corporate site, is critical. "You've got to
get in bed with your Web folks, and they've got to be giving you
the right data," says Paine. Get traffic numbers and work with your
Web team to find out where traffic is coming from - if 75 percent
of traffic is coming from NYTimes.com where you've just placed an
article, odds are you have some tangible numbers to present to
management.
In the end, despite the dramatic advancements in technology and
the creative solutions measurement experts have advanced, there is
no Holy Grail of measurement. Key metrics vary from company to
company, as do the most sensible, cost-effective methods of
tracking those metrics. Working with your colleagues and senior
management to understand which measures will best benefit your
department and your organization overall and how to go about
getting them is the first step to building a measurement system
that works for you.
Your Measurement Blueprint
It may seem a bit redundant, but the best way to build a great
measurement program is to do plenty of measurement on the front
end. Mark Weiner, president and CEO of Delahaye Medialink, suggests
a simple survey like the one his company conducts with its clients
when they come on board. The Delahaye survey is conducted by phone
with key executives, but it would be just as easy to create and
distribute such a survey among internal clients. The survey asks
execs to rank various business functions according to their
importance in achieving the company's goals:
- Customer Service
- Sales
- Marketing
- Training
- PR
- HR
- Finance
- Legal
Then the survey drills down to ask questions about how important
various elements of the PR function are to success:
- Increasing awareness of the company and products
- Changing attitudes about the company
- Delivering key messages
- Enhancing reputation
- Increasing sales leads
- Generating a high volume of media
- Keeping management apprised of stakeholder concerns
- Attracting potential customers ...
The results of the survey allow Delahaye to uncover the
company's corporate values as well as the executives' views of what
is most important in the PR department, making it much easier to
identify key metrics for the PR department to track. If attracting
potential customers is a key goal for PR, for example, tying PR to
sales leads becomes the measurement priority.
Contacts: Bud Grebey, [email protected]; You Mon
Tsang, 650/373-3310; Mark Weiner, [email protected];
Katie Paine, [email protected]; Bob Steen,
314/982-1700; Tom Galvin, [email protected]; Alice
Brink, 713/970-2100