A classic Catch-22 situation

I was reading through MS&L/PRWeek’s latest Marketing Management Survey findings. Not surprisingly, the measurement section caught my eye because it rehashes many of the same weary and misguided perceptions that are bantered about year after year. Here are a few specifics:

-  “PR is a difficult one to measure.”
-  65.9% of respondents cited difficulty to quantify ROI, lack of effectiveness, or inability to measure PR efforts
- “ Clients value PR, but question its value because they think it can’t be measured”

And then there’s my favorite, “In an economic climate where budgets are tight, research and measurement are very often the first portions of a PR budget to be cut. Yet measurement is necessary to prove ROI, which can help increase budgets, providing a Catch-22 situation…”

People, public relations can be measured. Just like a corporate advertising campaign, or a direct marketing program, our discipline can show a measurable return on investment (or not).  MS&L CEO Mark Hass is mostly right when he said, “It can be measured; they’re just not willing to spend the 5% or 10% of the program budget to have it measured.”

I’m just not sure it needs to cost 5-10 percent of the budget. But, putting that issue aside, I think that the bigger problem is that most practitioners simply can’t speak intelligently about how a measurement program should work. If our industry can’t become more proficient in articulating how a tailored program can both measure the program’s success (or outputs) against how it impacted a bottom line business or communications goal such as reputation, sales leads, crisis containment, etc. (which are called outcomes), then let’s stop this fruitless discussion. Because it really has become tiresome.

Our outputs (media stories, visibility at events/trade shows, traffic to blogs, etc.) are simply points of data. Much like the points of data obtained in direct marketing or advertising, we can track, weight and create a tailored (and verifiable formula) that measures the specific data we care about. Scores then can be developed (which mean something) and through proper analysis both the agency team and client should be able to understand whether the program is producing outputs that matter. Then, the fun really begins when we compare these outputs to business or communications outcomes that matter (I mean real ROI.)

For example, if the communications goal is to increase the client’s image among a certain audience, then (much like an ad agency would do,) we should conduct a periodic brand tracking study that asks the right questions to understand whether the public relations campaign is making a dent on reputation.

As I’ve written many times before, it’s actually quite simple. If we have the right mechanism in place to track the data, then it can be measured. End of story.

I’m happy to report that we are doing this with many clients. There really is no excuse for this classic Catch-22 attitude that our industry lives in every time a bad economy comes about. Measurement doesn’t need to be expensive and it can easily become a part of every client program from the beginning.

Comments

[Steven Zweig]

Does the ROI dial go up to 11 for that little extra push?

[ed]

11 1/2...