When a country music network launched a major event marketing campaign, sending 18-wheeler promotional trucks to Wal-Mart parking lots to boost the network's visibility, its
measurement program was a perfect example of how not to get accurate, meaningful results.
The PR team was having truck drivers return numbers on how many people were in the parking lots participating in the event. "The drivers had every reason to inflate the
numbers," said Katie Paine, president of Delahaye Medialink, during a PR NEWS Webinar last week on "Quantifying Your Contributions: Measuring the Impact of PR on Your Company's
Bottom Line." Because the drivers' livelihood depended on having enough consumer interest to continue sending out the trucks, there was every possibility they were returning bogus
numbers.
Paine and company instead directed the network to hire independent surveyors, warning the network's PR team that "the fox was guarding the henhouse."
During the Webinar, she identified other key warnings that your measurement may not be returning the results you - or your senior management - need to consider your PR efforts
successful:
Unparallel universes - "Companies will come to us and say, our agency will send you the clips of our coverage, you get the competitors' [clips]," Paine said. The agency may be
using Luce to get its press clippings, while Paine's organization may be using LexisNexis, meaning the data is coming from two different sources, making for faulty comparison.
Apples and oranges - If you're in the beverage business, and you want to measure yourself against Coca Cola, be sure your promotional budget is in line with Coke's megabucks.
If they have $1 billion for PR and you have $1 million, it's not a worthwhile comparison.
Data contaminated by unreliable sources or subjective researchers - "PR people are the world's worst researchers," Paine said. "We can spot our key messages a mile away."
Instead, you need someone objective and unfamiliar with your key messages to analyze your media placements and see if they uncover core messages.
Right answers, wrong questions - Is your survey asking the questions you need answered? Define up front the goals for your campaign and tie the questions to those goals.
Too small a pool of data for analysis - Be sure you've collected enough data on the campaign to see reliable results.
Editor's Note: If you missed "Quantifying Your Contributions" but would still like to check out Paine's presentation, go to http://www.PRandMarketing.com/seminars/webinar/paine.htm to order an audio recording of her presentation and a copy of her PowerPoint
presentation.
Getting Management Buy-In
Many in-house communications shops are scrambling to tie their measurement efforts to the company's bottom line in order to endear PR to senior management. Though Paine said PR
pros and management don't necessarily speak the same language (management wants hard numbers, ROI, charts and graphs, while PR pros think in terms of busy trade shows, awards or
front-page media placements), she identified ways PR can visibly contribute to the bottom line:
Contribution to bottom line
- Serve as a life preserver during a crisis
- Lower turnover and recruitment costs
- Increase trial and likelihood of purchase
- Communicate messages cost effectively
- Reach broader audience
- Enhance reputation
- Lower sales costs
Measure of Contribution
- Media monitoring, awareness and preference studies
- HR stats
- Media monitoring, customer loyalty study
- Media monitoring, analysis of cost per message
- CPM comparison
- MRI, reputation study
- Pre/post awareness study