By Mark Weiner
If "proving value" remains one of PR's greatest challenges, why do so many people get it wrong? The difficulty may be that values are subjective: They change from organization to organization but also from person to person within the same organization. As such, the process of proving value begins with defining value and evolves from there.
The key to discovering the often secret value system in your organization is in the hands of your clients, whether internal or external. While the discovery process may take different forms, this much is certain: Creating a workable, risk-free value system will involve principles that are measurable, meaningful and reasonable. The mistake made by many is to assume that the fundamental value metrics are inherently weaker than business measures.
Do I believe that public relation's impact on sales is a stronger indicator than counting clips? Absolutely--but my definition of meaningful may be different than your client's and my designation of reasonable may be different than what the resources at our disposal will allow.
What follows is a brief review of the "value continuum" along with the relative importance given to each as expressed through scores of executive surveys with which I've been involved.
Fundamental Measures
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Proof-of-performance: Commonly taking the form of "activity reports," proof-of-performance measures demonstrate that you did what you said you would do, for example, "pitch calls were made."
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Execution metrics: Showing the extent to which you delivered on time and in quality, an execution metric example expands on the previous example: "Pitch calls were made to 100 leading journalists at our top 50 media." Some clients who don't understand PR find comfort here.
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Reach: A form of execution metric, reach indicates how many people were given the opportunity to read, watch or listen to your message, whether it came through news coverage, employee conferences or event attendance.
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Valuation: A common but controversial measure of PR value seeks to apply a dollar figure to news coverage in the form of an ad value on an "if purchased" basis. Using the underlying drivers of ad values--amount of space or time, circulation or audience, prestige of the media outlet-- one will arrive at more meaningful measures of quality performance than simple ad values.
The Bottom Line: Fundamental measures are simple, inexpensive and expected even if they are not always highly valued.
Comparative Measures
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Benchmarking: One of the most salient measures of value is to compare your current performance against the past, versus competitors and in light of best practices. While benchmarking in these ways helps the PR person toward better results, it is a straightforward means to show value there as transparent as "continual improvement" and no greater rallying call than "beating the competition."
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Return-on-objective: Within reach of every PR person who sets quantifiable objectives, R-O-O is consistently one of management's most important measures of PR performance. Given its high value, it's amazing that more PR people don't set measurable objectives to start.
The Bottom Line: Comparative measures are meaningful because they provide useful and simple context; they are somewhat inexpensive and within reach for most PR organizations.
Business Measures
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Return-on-investment: This key measure quantifies the degree to which resources were either attracted to or retained, such as making the PR-to-sales connection, doing more for less and avoiding catastrophic cost. Even though the terms are often used interchangeably, "demonstrating ROI" is not the same as "proving value" because ROI is a financial term with strict monetary implications, while "proving value" can take many non-monetary forms.
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Marketing Mix Modeling: This statistical analysis allows marketing and communications investment decision makers to discover a program's impact on sales. The process requires spending data, which includes advertising, direct marketing, price promotions and PR along with sales revenue data segmented by week and by individual geographic market to indicate the degree to which each marketing element works.
The Bottom Line: Business measures are always considered the most valuable even if they are not always reasonable. While marketing mix modeling is complex, costly and perhaps too involved for every situation, "doing more with less and for less" is within the reach of every PR person.
In the final analysis, "proving value" requires the PR professional to understand the value drivers of the organization and its executives. Rather than assuming that clip counting or marketing mix analysis is the optimal solution, better to conduct a simple audit among your organization's leadership to assess and align their definitions of what is meaningful, measurable and reasonable and go from there. While it may be difficult to achieve 100% alignment once the feedback is collected, many value propositions are easily agreed-upon and within reach. PRN
CONTACT:
Mark Weiner is the CEO of PRIME Research North America and the author of Unleashing the Power of PR: A Contrarian's Guide to Marketing and Communication. He can be reached at [email protected].