Up until last year when I started my marketing consultancy, I was always on the client side of the PR-agency equation, either as internal corp comm or marketing. I have always had measurement at the top of my list. Still do. <\/p>\n
Sure, the measurements change, as it is important to choose a relevant measure<\/strong> for the task at hand. But we always understood the importance of being able to justify our PR results quantitatively as well as qualitatively. Didn’t always LIKE having to do it, but that’s life. <\/p>\n You have to measure, and it doesn’t have to be a big deal. But whether your campaign is for a product or for an idea, you do need to know if the audience "bought it." Gut feel just isn’t enough, and it definitely doesn’t give you the ammunition to defend your work in the boardroom or a competitive situation. More on that in a minute. <\/p>\n For some campaigns — let’s call them awareness campaigns, even though my readers know I really don’t believe in awareness-only objectives \ud83d\ude42 — it is still perfectly fine to count clips, look at reach and do a little evaluation of website traffic around the campaign. If your budget permits, do some baseline and post campaign surveying. <\/p>\n BUT the best measurements are tied to sales results — that is after all why most companies are in business \ud83d\ude42 Yes I know it is hard, and yes I know it isn’t going to be perfect, but to the extent possible you should tie PR campaigns to sales objectives. Now, it doesn’t have to be revenue. After all, there are a lot of steps between a PR hit and a sale. But for B2B in particular, looking for PR to deliver some number of sales leads<\/strong> is not unreasonable. After all, in may cases (tech in particular), the PR budget comes from the old ad budget because we believed in a correspondingly higher value of the PR hit versus an ad. <\/p>\n Now that I am a marketing consultant who handles PR for some of her clients, I still want measurement. Why? Because I know the qualitative is vulnerable to attack. Another agency can easily come in, tell a good story, foster doubt in the client’s mind and lead to agency review. <\/p>\n A steady diet of good quantitative results is a bit harder to beat. <\/p>\n The key is to understand what is important to your client<\/u>. Then measure your effort in that context, show how PR contributed to the results<\/strong>. The measurements may change over time, as objectives change over time. But there’s always a desired outcome, and if you look hard enough, you CAN find a way to demonstrate quantitatively (as well as qualitatively) the PR impact on results. It may take a while to convince your client to give you access to the information you need, and that is a whole other story. Willingness to measure without the means can be frustrating, but if you work at it long enough, even the most recalcitrant can be won over. <\/p>\n So, in the current PR measurement conversation (see Shel Holtz’s most recent post<\/a> for the summary) you can put me squarely in the "FOR MEASUREMENT" column. <\/p>\n