Evaluating PR's Return on Investment - Part 1
Working inside an agency like Capstrat presents a whole host of new analytical challenges. A thorny, but recurring, one is "How can we measure the effect of Public Relations (PR) efforts?" This blog post below is part of a series that details some on- and offline approaches to measuring PR's ROI, reflecting the increasingly blurry line between New Media and traditional communications.
1. Create an objective tied to a business goal - As with any strategy or tactic, you have to define what you hope to accomplish and you have to define it in terms of things senior management thinks are important. You can't just do PR aimlessly and expect good things to happen. This is true with any marketing campaign, web page, collateral, etc., and PR is no exception. For example, suppose you have a growing problem with negative sentiment towards your brand/company/persona. Your objective is to combat that negativity through proactive PR. It may seem like a trivial exercise, but we often find ourselves in execution mode before we've even accurately defined the problem we are trying to address. Take the time and define the objective.
2. A gree in advance on how you will measure the objective - Without this, you are going to have problems understanding if you have been successful and securing future funding to do this kind of work. You might propose web analytics to determine how often people are searching for your brand, or you might turn to surveys if you want to assess your brand's reputation. Think through what you need to measure and choose the right tool for the challenge at hand.
3. Establish a baseline - You need to have an idea of where you currently stand in order to determine if your efforts have had the desired impact. Don't solely rely on intuition or an apparent consensus among the powers that be. Start with a real number on your organization's current performance, whether it comes from surveys, sales or lead generation. Keep in mind that the bottom line for the C-suite is, well, the bottom line. Financial measures can be difficult to tie to PR efforts directly, but people will really sit up and take notice if you can find a way to do that.
4. Be sure your PR campaign strategy and resources align with your objective - This may sound obvious, but you'd be surprised how often organizations get caught up in silos, fall back on "how we've always done it," or just get lost in tactics at the expense of carrying out a comprehensive strategy. Be sure your strategy aligns with what you already know: what customers have told you they think is important, how geographic differences come into play, and what you've learned from demographics and marketing research that your company has probably spent a lot of money to accumulate. You may have to invest in surveys for questions that are new to the organization, but don't neglect the low-hanging fruit: existing customer data, web analytics, and data on competitors from tools like compete.com or Hitwise. Using the data to craft the PR strategy will help ensure that your message reaches the right audience.
Part 2 will explore the next steps: How to Measure and What to Measure...stay tuned later in the week.
Comments
This is a great post, with excellent points that have been long overlooked. So many people are now going back to number 2 in an attempt to figure out how to measure success, which makes it even more cumbersome and pretty much impossible because they never really did number 1. I am of the belief that without a mission, you can't possibly know what to do in the social space and you will flounder. Many believe that 2010 is the year that companies will come to terms with this and start all over or at least learn from their mistakes in 2009 and get it right the second time around. Looking forward to your next post.
I really enjoyed your post. I couldn’t agree more with #3 and the importance of establishing a baseline. After all, how do you know if you have effectively moved the needle if you don’t know where the needle originated? If you take your example regarding negative sentiment and look at your brand positioning in the media, it’s essential to know your negative exposure for the previous period and versus the competition to better understand and demonstrate the impact of PR efforts.
Also, it’s great to read such an emphasis on defining objectives when discussing PR measurement.
Thanks for the post.
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