Making measurement work for communications professionals

• April 02, 2012

By Caroline Kealey

Some words are hard to love, and I have to concede that “data” is one of them. It doesn’t have any magic that makes the heart of a strategic communicator beat faster. But really, it’s so important that we should all learn to love it a little. Why? Because it’s indispensible to evaluating communications success – and to demonstrating your own contribution as a strategic communicator.

Let’s face it — as a communicator you barely have the time, let alone the budget, to measure your communications activities. Yet, your senior management team is constantly asking for data on return on investment and the evidence that communications has demonstrated a meaningful result.

So what’s a communicator who’s committed to measurement and evaluation to do?

Here are some practical suggestions:

Distinguish between performance indicators and measurement tools

The single biggest mistake communicators make in evaluation is to confuse these two spheres. Start by defining your indicators of performance (i.e. what you want to know to assess your success). The measurement tools (i.e. mechanisms that tell you how to know if you’ve succeeded) will flow logically from that context.

I suggest that communicators assess performance through a variety of lenses to get the fullest possible analysis of results. These four distinct categories of indicators can help organize the process:

1. Process indicators: Metrics of internal efficiency, such as response times or approval steps.
2. Activity indicators: Metrics of reach, such as number of web hits or attendance at an event.
3. Relationship indicators: Metrics pertaining to relational value, such as level of alignment among partners, quality of engagement among stakeholders or third-party endorsements by partners; and
4. Results indicators: Metrics of desired outcomes, such as number of new members recruited, degree of client satisfaction, or sales.

Take time to establish a baseline

In order to demonstrate any kind of progress or change, you first have to know where you’ve started. Have the discipline to capture baseline data, which will be fundamental to your ability to show your results.

Baseline data represent how your organization is performing with respect to one or more indicators at the beginning of a specified time period. The point is to assess how performance changes over time as certain variables — namely, your dazzling communications efforts — take effect.

For example, a baseline figure may be that the 2008 Annual General Meeting was attended by 100 participants. This allows an understanding of what’s been achieved by a communications campaign resulting in a participation level of 300 for the 2010 meeting.

It’s critical to collect baseline data at the outset of a communications strategy in order to demonstrate progress. Unless there is documented evidence of how your organization performed before the strategy’s implementation, it will be impossible to show persuasively how the communications work has produced better outcomes.

Another vital set of data is what’s provided by benchmarking, the comparison of how your organization performs on critical indicators as measured against best practices and performance achievements among peer organizations. By following those comparisons over time, you can assess how your communications efforts help your own organization boost its relative achievements in those areas. You might benchmark your organization against peers with respect to performance in client satisfaction rates, in website functionality or in membership offerings, and then see how those comparisons change over time.

Select measurement tools that are meaningful and workable

A significant barrier to evaluation work is a perception that measurement tools (such as surveys and focus groups) are time-consuming and expensive. The reality is that while many are, there are also cost-effective, efficient alternatives available. Check out Results Map’s Top 10 Cost-Effective Measurement Tools for suggestions.

Are the suggestions outlined in this post easy to grasp and to put into effect? Not always … but indispensible for adding strategic value to your communications work. By focusing on these areas first, you’ll clarify what your efforts are aiming to achieve and how you’ll know if they’re getting the results you want.

So even if you can’t love data with great passion, embrace it anyhow, and then watch how the solid evidence of your accomplishments mounts up as your strategy takes effect.

Caroline Kealey is an internationally recognized communications strategist, speaker, trainer, facilitator and author. She also founded Results Map, an innovative methodology that engineers projects to consistently deliver measurable results.