Our metrics are a mess: Why PR must rethink measurement
Weber Shandwick's Brian Keenan argues that ever-tightening marketing budgets and the expectation of airtight ROI are leaving PR agencies with no choice but to sharpen up their metrics.
Ice cream. Massages. Flowers. Public relations. What do these things have in common? Once upon a time, they were all goods/ services bought solely because they made someone feel good.
In the case of public relations, our discipline existed for many years solely to make clients feel good when they opened their paper and saw themselves or their company in the headlines. For all the clippings counted, press releases written, media packs sent or samples distributed, the one metric that mattered was the client feeling good about coverage secured.
This is still true in whole for some PRs and clients, and in part for many others. A positive volume of earned media relations is and will remain a core part of the raison d’être for public relations agencies.
However, the ever-increasing integration of agency disciplines and fragmentation of content channels is forcing a much different expectation for measurement upon PR consultancies.
When agencies from many disciplines claim theirs is the best way to relate directly with the public, the capability to prove a client spent their money effectively is becoming mandatory for all agencies including public relations professionals. Emotion, once central to our measured success, has largely left the equation. Data is now steering decisions.
Ironically, this shift leaves many PR agencies and practitioners feeling some negative emotions – unease, uncertainty, confusion, dread – as they face the prospect of having to calculate hard value for not only day-to-day tangible outputs but also some of their most important intangible assets such as long-term relationships, sage counsel and earned media acumen.
Clients don’t want to hear it. Organisations across many industry verticals are slashing overall marketing budgets; even small projects require airtight justification and expected ROI for approval. For our clients to protect their budgets, and in some circumstances their jobs, all of their agencies must prove value – or they will find another who can.
A tough challenge, no doubt. And while I applaud the energy and effort of the PR industry to respond, I’d like to explain why I believe our current collective response is doing more harm than good for proving the value of earned communications and public relations within the marketing mix.
First, a caveat. This a long-term, complex challenge facing the entire public relations industry, one that we collectively are making great strides to answer. Innovation and vision are coming across the spectrum from lone practitioner to global agency, an encouraging sign. Collective investment in and endorsement of consensus standards on best-practice measurement, like the PRIA framework and Barcelona Principles, is essential to progress and should continue.
Now the bad news. In my experience and conversation across the industry, PR practitioners and agencies are still not measuring the right metrics to properly allow the value of PR to be compared against other disciplines.
While we are measuring more than ever, we are still measuring mostly or only things that matter to PR such as coverage volume, coverage sentiment, share of voice, earned impressions, earned engagement. These are all valuable metrics but when presented alone they make it difficult for clients to compare our value in the integrated environment.
As industry guidelines like the PRIA measurement framework suggest, we must keep striving to measure impact and outcome whenever possible. Not only because impact and outcome prove value but also because they are the gold-standard measures used by advertising, media buying and digital agencies.
Measures of impact and outcome – ie. sales, donations, votes, hires, stock price, public rating, endorsement, feedback – are the measurement battleground on which public relations may finally win a seat at the proverbial table with or even in front of other agencies.
It will not be an easy feat but I’m convinced that once PR can consistently measure against other disciplines, our true value will rise above the rest.
Brian Keenan is VP, planning at Weber Shandwick Australia
Agree.
..but this can be time consuming/expensive.
Clients can say they want to do this, but they don’t want to spend any money to do it properly (in light of shrinking budgets).
I am also consistently shocked at the lack of sophistication at the client end in keeping track of basic metrics/outcomes, such as web traffic and enquiries.
MOO
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Sigh. I left PR in 2001, when the industry said exactly the same thing.
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Just like ‘nobody ever got fired for buying ibm, no women ever got fired for talking about gender diversity in the workplace, in fact if you are vocal enough about mythical unconscious bias (you know, talk about your interest in inspiring the next wave of young females, be part of the usual diversity groups launched by your company…..), you eliminate roughly 50 % of your competition when it comes to getting that promotion.
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What we find is that agencies aren’t going to change things until they are forced to, especially something that takes the team away from DOING. We, as an industry, are so used to “measuring” by reporting activity – vs outcomes. Several mindshifts must take place:
1) Stop reporting only on activity (something that stems from the hourly cost model around which retainers are built), and start reporting on resulting ROI
2) Measure outcomes beyond media hits, analyst briefings, etc. What else is PR doing? What happened as a result of these efforts? How much did they cost and what was the return?
You can set up an entire media tour, meet with 30 journalists and have no coverage as a result. Or, you get 10 articles as a result but what did they do for the company? Did they increase traffic to the site, increase butts in seats at an event? Fill the funnel with MQLs? PR has moved beyond just brand awareness, so it’s essential to capture those returns.
3) Stop avoiding conversations about what isn’t working. This is a crucial step in PR measurement. Instead of waiting for a campaign to end and then grading it, track what’s happening during the campaign, and if results are not meeting expectations, pivot mid campaign. That way, you have an opportunity to still meet goals.
Too many PR executives are afraid of measurement. For too long we’ve been able to dance around what’s working, we’ve based our strategies on experience hunches, and we haven’t used data to inform and structure strategies. Data is now. Data is the future. Those who do not embrace it are going to lose business to the firms that do.
More and more, brands expect analytics and data across all marketing disciplines. With the technology available today, there is no excuse to not truly measure PR.
Christine Perkett
SeeDepth
PR analytics software for brands and agencies
http://www.seedepth.com
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