The public relations industry has long dealt with the nettlesome fact that much of what PR accomplishes — such as generating buzz and creating affinity toward a brand — is difficult if not impossible to measure.
Meanwhile corporate executives are hot for hard numbers that determine how PR helps specific organizational and project goals. It’s a show me the money mentality.
Naturally, PR people strive to devise ways to create those numbers. Some of this stems from authentic interest in wanting to gauge the real outcome of the effort. Also, in the wake of corporate cutbacks and rising unemployment, the imperative to identify demonstrable results drives the initiative.
Hence the timeliness of a program announced last week in a press release issued by the Public Relations Society of America, which is readying to issue a set of “recommended metrics and approaches for evaluating public relations’ influence on key business outcomes.”
PRSA posted the proposed recommendations and is soliciting comments via its comPRehension blog.
One overall recommendation is to “shift the conversation away from volume of clips, social media activity and advertising value equivalency, etc., to outcome measures that show how public relations drives business performance.”
Financial Outcomes
To connect PR with elements of financial performance — revenues, profit, efficiency in delivery of message — PRSA says to employ surveys to determine consumer exposure to PR and then correlate that to purchase levels.
Reputation/Brand Equity
To surmise how PR influences customer brand loyalty/satisfaction, enables higher prices, and reduces legal costs, PRSA recommends tying conversations (and tone) in traditional and social media to web analytic data such as registrations, requests for information and sales leads. You should also monitor how PR affects financial analyst opinions and changes in stock price.
Impact on employees
For calculating how PR impacts employee acquisition, retention and productivity, favored tactics include sizing up employee satisfaction, turnover, call response times and sick days, by comparing control groups exposed to PR messages.
Impact on public policy
Means to meter how PR impacts public voter behavior and passage of business regulations include tracking trends, legislative/regulator awareness and voter intent. Then come post-election, conduct surveys to determine actual legislative and voter behavior.
The world is imperfect
FYI, I only covered a smattering of the content.
In a perfect world, it would be great to accomplish all of the recommendations, and have the data collected show a tangible link between the effort and the business outcome.
But outside of online activity, where analytics are readily obtained, it’s tough to truly determine how much consumer activity is related to PR efforts as opposed to being the result of other factors. Even online, it’s not always obvious how and why someone found your brand in the first place. Still, you can count click throughs, links, registrations and requests for information, so there is hard data to be mined.
The public relations influence on a stock price is fleeting; that number is easily affected by general market conditions and what competitors are doing.
I could bang through more examples. The point is, the metrics cited are imperfect and only tell part of the story. There are limits to how well you can measure the numerical (and dollars and cents) effects of reasoning, intent, emotion, loyalty, interaction and conversation. This is why the focus is on surveys, sales figures and public policy. All appear to be good tools for measurement.
Surveys are useful, yet they have flaws. A survey is an opt-in method (this can skew findings). People may misconstrue intent due to how certain questions are phrased. Results can be misread: Just ask the folks who launched “New Coke” about that one.
You can make a correlation between PR and sales, but here again there are intervening factors; like how well the sales-force is trained and whether or not they are communicating the same message as the PR folks are sending.
You can tally up how lawmakers voted, but much of what goes on in politics is, well, political. Legislators are notorious for trading votes (you support my bill and I’ll support yours) hence that statistic is mushy.
A surprising understatement
I was surprised that social media is dealt with only marginally. Really, it feels like attention to social media is tacked on just to show they know it exists.
As noted, the recommendations propose at the outset to shift away from tabulating social media activity. How is this not seen as being related to business outcomes?
The PR industry is undergoing a sea change due to social media. It’s where spheres of influence are deepening. Influence surely affects business outcomes. The proposal, however, is primarily directed at traditional outlets and methods. If the committee that created the recommendations had included someone who is immersed in social media then perhaps they’d have a better handle on its role (the group is comprised of old-schoolers).
There’s no mention of search engine ranking (if it’s somehow implied, it’s not obvious). That’s a big oversight — SEO can play a major role in reputation management.
Meanwhile, I am surprised that PRSA says to steer clear of counting clips. Why not add up how much media attention is received, both online and in print? It’s no more or less a real metric than certain econometric modeling processes (which do get the nod by PRSA).
I do believe it’s worthwhile for PRSA to devise ways to derive quantifiable results connected to corporate performance. However, the organization needs to be more in tune with the reality of shifts in the public relations paradigm.
- Deni Kasrel
What do YOU think of the new PRSA recommendations for measuring the impact of PR? Is it really possible to assign a dollar value to outcomes of PR programs? Comments welcome.
Posted in Commentary, Marketing and Public Relations Tagged: brand loyalty, business case for public relations, buzz, consumer exposure, consumer opinion, corporate financial performance, employee satisfaction, legislative action, measurement, metrics, online conversation, online metrics, PR, PRSA, public relations, public relations influence, Public Relations Society of America, research, return on investment, Social Media, stock price, surveys, voter behavior
