Unbeknownst to many in the business world, there is a quiet “measurement uprising” that is changing how PR professionals view their careers and perform their work.
“There’s a saying in business, ‘you get what you measure,’” said Jenny Thomas, Director of Marketing and Communications for Keppler Speakers, in Arlington VA. “If you don’t have a way to quantify your work, how can you make progress? While quantification doesn’t fit every kind of work (writing, for instance, although I’m sure some would argue), it fits most projects.”
Since the social media market emerged, the dot-com economy-bubble burst, and the recent recession, many organizations are slashing their budgets as fast the falling economy to survive. Leaders of the private and independent sectors want to know how PR impacts their bottom line and whether or not PR and marketing departments and firms should be cut from their annual budgets.
To keep their jobs, PR professionals like Thomas have discovered the best way to prove their value to organization leaders is with un-biased and irrefutable numbers.
Finding what needs to be measured.
Currently, the bulk of PR professionals are following popularized trends in the field to quantify their work. The more prominent of these measurement trends involve tracking metrics in the form of outputs, such as media impressions, AVEs (AD Equivalencies), Facebook-likes, etc. However, many experts are now promoting the importance of measured outcomes such as awareness, comprehension, attitude, and behavior. What’s the difference between an “output” and an “outcome?” Consumer impact.
When measuring outputs, it quickly becomes clear that quantifying created products does not necessarily correlate to the products’ impact. However, measuring the impact of a product on the consumer reveals an inherent link between business results and the product.
For example, measuring the number of press releases that were “picked up” by media outlets does not effectively measure PR’s influence on business results while measuring a change in awareness, attitude, or behavior caused by the press release does.
“You always need to look at the bigger picture . . . rather than simply just counting outputs,” said Thomas “They can be the means to an end, but they are not the end itself. You need to solve a problem or make a difference in the lives of your constituents and clients to be sustainable.”
Knowing what to measure is half of the battle—the other half is figuring out how to effectively quantify the impact.
Finding the impossible number.
Effectively quantifying the outcome of PR work proves to be a very difficult task. The most difficult problem facing PR professionals, in terms of measurement, is the task of quantifying the impact of specific campaign tools.
“There is a lot of ‘art’ in marketing,” said Thomas. “It’s difficult to measure the impact of the creative stuff, be it a well-crafted sentence or a brilliant video edit, that makes up the message.”
The June 2010 2nd European Summit on Measurement, in Barcelona, Spain sought to diminish the field’s confusion between helpful and non-helpful metrics,. At this summit (comprised of quantification experts), seven measurement principles were created for, and adopted by, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and other PR societies throughout the world. These principles are referred to as the Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles.
These seven principles are:
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- The Importance of Goal Setting and Measurement
- Media Measurement Requires Quantity and Quality
- AVEs are not the Value of Public Relations
- Social Media Can and Should be Measured
- Measuring Outcomes is Preferred to Measuring Media Results
- Business Results Can and Should be Measured Where Possible
- Transparency and Reliability are Paramount to Sound Measurement
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