For most of (the planet), 2020 has been a continuous earthquake wrapped in burning hair. We can’t wait to turn that calendar. However, I believe that something good should always come from something challenging…and for those of us in the communications field, I truly believe that this year provides our industry with a natural moment in time to make a change for the better.
We can finally evolve how we measure the value of communications.
Nobody can dispute that epic challenges of 2020 have made a crystal clear demonstration that strategic communications are the lifeblood of an organization navigating change and uncertainty. You played a major role in helping your leadership, your customers and your associates get through a pandemic, social unrest and a highly contentious election cycle. Chances are high that your business also changed in some substantial way. And all of this places you – as a communications expert – into a well-deserved spotlight and squarely at the C-Suite table.
However, that seat comes with a cost –or more precisely, an expectation. How are we impacting the business? What (new) insights are we delivering? And how are we leveraging the investments into communications?
Don’t Break the Budget. Break the Mindset.
“Last year, your budget was (X). This year, your budget should be (Y). Send me your new plan by the end of the week.” Sound familiar?
While this process sorts out nicely for those who live their lives on a spreadsheet, it doesn’t track back to the most important thing we must evaluate each year– results. Is it important to work within the confines of the budget? Absolutely. However, we’ve got to get upstream and do our part to insure that budget request is well informed by strategy and linked to metrics.
Now if your organization was already tracking annual metrics, chances are you were being evaluated on impressions, ad/publicity values and volume of placements. I get it. We’ve all got muscle memory on this stuff, and frankly, that’s how our industry has been wired for decades. So, naturally, those are the metrics that we wrapped into our plans, goals and objectives each year. However, those metrics only paint (at best) half the picture.
And it’s clearly not working any more. According to the 2020 Comms Report, one quarter of PR professionals don’t feel they can quantify their hard work’s impact to the business. We must embrace new measurements. We must make the very most of this moment.
We can drive efficiencies. We can boost morale. We can simplify new dynamics. And most important, we can impact the business in ways never before imagined. But, you better plan for it. Like, right now.
Three Things to Think About
The Proof is in the Action: Transcending measures of (potential) reach is imperative. Does reach still have any relevance? Of course. It will always be valuable to understand penetration of messaging among your target audiences, but we need to demonstrate how we’re driving actions and ween ourselves from an over-reliance on potential readers and viewers. Spoken more simply, how can we prove engagement? We must design our programs to measure actions taken –even if those are as simplistic as clicking on a link, or registering for a product demo.
According to research conducted by Gallup, companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147% in earnings per share.
We should be able to answer questions such as these:
- What percentage of our audience responded to a call-to-action?
- Are we positively influencing sales conversion?
- Are we deepening engagement across platforms?
Read Between the Lines: Monitoring the news cycle and collective sphere of broadening media channels has always been an implicit responsibility for us — and it always will. However, we can no longer depend upon volume and reach as the insights we’re offering to the leadership team. With 2020 being a year charged by emotion, the need for context in media monitoring has never been more profound. Further, the number of business changes that had to be made in real-time, in addition to the increased pressure faced by organizations to take a definitive and public stand on social issues, has dramatically reduced the value in reach-centric insights. Our CEOs need context. They need to understand the shades of grey in social media commentary and industry coverage. Most important, they need to be demonstrably shown how our efforts to align messaging are impacting brand perception and resonating with your core customers and stakeholders.
We should be able to answer questions such as these:
- Are customers and industry thought leaders buying into our message platform?
- Is our messaging amplifying points of competitive differentiation?
- How is our competitive set evolving their messaging platform(s)?
Go Deeper in the Funnel: The link between PR and top-of-funnel awareness is intuitive — and it’s clearly driven the perceived role of PR within the marketing mix for quite some time. However, it can do so much more. And (finally) the technology that can link our efforts to increased conversion and sales is becoming more readily available. I try to stay current on this issue, and I’m pleased to report that Cision is doing some interesting things with their Impact Reporting for Attribution. Check it out! That said, you don’t necessarily need to invest in a new platform (yet). You can start changing perceptions and expectations simply by tracking – and measuring against – more tangible metrics.
Do you manage events? Then track annual registrations, the average speed of response to the registration and provide a feedback mechanism for attendees. You can also create distinct offers for event attendees and measure engagement and conversion for those. Product launches are another good example. How much traffic to the product launch web page did you drive? How much time was spent on the page? How many inquiries did the Customer Service team field as a result of your efforts? Work with your IT and/or Marketing teams to insure that you can track against distinct offers and calls-to-action to isolate those variables. Does it take more time in the planning phase? Yes. It is worth the extra effort? Absolutely.
We should be able to answer questions such as these:
- Are we generating more sign-ups for product demos?
- Are we connecting our sales teams to increased conversion opportunities?
- Are we supporting growth in event attendance?
Have a question or thought to share? I’d love to hear it. Now, let’s get back to work.