It’s the beginning of January and many people have pledged to improve by exercising every day, eating bushels of kale, and losing tons of weight. Over here in Measurement Land, New Year’s resolutions take on a slightly different form. For any of you data geeks, measurement Sherpas, recent graduates looking for a job, or professional communicators who just want better metrics, we have a few suggestions:
1. When confronted with a problem, data will be my guide.
For years, PR professionals have operated on gut instinct, mostly because they didn’t have sufficient data to draw meaningful conclusions. But with the proliferation of lower cost listening tools, Google Analytics, CRM, and social data, it is now ridiculously easily to determine what content and what stories drew the most engagement or the best responses.
So the next time someone asks you for your opinion on a project of dubious merit, look at the data first. Figure out what projects generated engagement in the past, and rank them from best to worst. Use the data to decide if this latest request is worth doing, or maybe the problem shouldn’t be solved with communications at all.
2. I will not promise ROI. I will promise cost efficiency: “I’ll deliver better results at 20% less cost.”
A decade ago, Procter and Gamble, Miller Beer, and a host of other brands figured out that they could generate more sales at far less cost with good PR efforts. Some might call that ROI, but it is really cost savings. And you too can show that you can communicate key messages to your target audience at less cost than paid efforts. You just have to know the cost of getting a message across with PR efforts vs. the cost of buying space for the message. If you want to learn how read this great paper by Fraser Likely.
3. I will join the good fight against bad metrics.
If you haven’t already, sign the pledge supporting the Barcelona Principles and the new standards for measurement. Terminate your contracts with any vendors who are not supporting the Barcelona Principles and anyone who is pushing Ad Value Equivalency (AVE) or “Earned Media Value.” Trust me on this one: The numbers are getting so bad that you’ll save yourself a lot of embarrassment by doing this before the CMO laughs you out of his/her office.
4. I will use data to develop my next strategic plan.
Whether you’re planning the next product launch or a complete repositioning of your brand, in 2016 you will use data in that planning process. Whether it is last year’s engagement data, or the degree to which you got messages across and in which outlets and vehicles, dig up the data and check your hunches before you submit your plan. It’s a lot easier to sell your plans and ideas with data than if you merely have a gut instinct.
5. I will develop at least 3 metrics that show my contribution to the organization — and track them quarterly.
If you’re already part way to becoming a Measurement Maven, you’ll have already written down your SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) objectives. Now you just have to match those objectives to three key metrics that tie to your organization’s business goals.
Get consensus from your boss and boss’s boss on how they expect you to contribute to those business goals: What specific benefit does PR/Social Media/Internal Communications or whatever it is that you do contribute? Now develop three metrics that make the connection between what you do every day and what your expected contribution is. If you have trouble defining them, then bring them to the next Paine Publishing Measurement Hour and we’ll help you craft them.
6. I will improve my mind by learning data analytics or Google Analytics.
Most community colleges offer courses in data analytics and many offer courses in Google Analytics. Take one, you’d be surprised how easy measurement is after you can successfully navigate conversions and correlations.
7. Data doyennes who dine: I will take my data colleagues to lunch.
Before you even start that New Year’s diet, book a lunch reservation in a nice restaurant in town and invite a few folks from marketing analytics, human resources, and market research or competitive intelligence. Hell, include a few from sales and accounting as well. All these folks have access to more data and better analysis tools than most communicators can even dream of. These people do correlations the way most of us breathe air. So buy them an expensive meal and tell them the problems you’re having gathering data and developing meaningful metrics. I bet you’ll get some help in solving them.
8. My next hire will be a data geek.
More and more of the really smart companies are hiring measurement experts into PR departments because they’re finding that is a lot easier to teach analytics types about PR than it is to teach PR people about math. So the next opening you have, make sure the job description as well as the perfect candidate comes with a lot of data analysis and research.
9. I will build an integrated communications measurement dashboard.
If you haven’t already developed an integrated dashboard, then 2016 is the year to check that item off your to-do list. Whether you’re ready or not, the time to integrate your internal and external, digital, and social metrics into a single platform so that you can easily keep track of all your various metrics in one place. If not, then you’ll take longer to make decisions and the competition will be way ahead of you. Lots of new technology is hitting the marketing as I speak, and more and more companies are moving to dashboard platforms like Tableau or CyberAlert to bring all their key metrics into a single desktop.
10. I will read The Measurement Advisor and complete the exam in Paine Publishing’s Measurement 101.
Okay this is blatant self-promotion but, if you read our newsletter and take our courses, you’ll be a lot closer to achieving Measurement Mavenhood. ∞
