Drafting this piece gave me an acute attack of blank page fever. I am passionate about measurement and I really, really believe that the establishment of appropriate goals and measurement up front in any marketing campaign is essential – but passion doesn’t translate into easy words, at my fingertips.
So I noodled around, looking for quotes about measurement and came across this one by a man named Lord Kelvin: “To measure is to know. If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.”
I now know a lot more about Lord Kelvin than I did before. He had a temperature scale named after him, but what mattered for me was that he laid (or was part of laying) the first transatlantic telegraph cableway between Ireland and Newfoundland in 1858-1866.
So clearly, he was a communicator – and equally clearly, he knew the importance of measurement.
Empty noise
It is my firm belief that any communication that doesn’t align marketing objectives with business objectives, doesn’t decide, upfront, how success will be judged and isn’t driven by strategic decisions, is nothing more than empty noise.
I’d go so far as to say that, in the worst-case scenario, it’s a waste of budget akin to just burning money.
Mind you, when I first started my career, I had never heard of metrics and measurements. Discovering advertising value equivalent (AVE) was a revelation – at last, I had a way to demonstrate what I knew in my heart: that publicity is a good return on investment.
Barcelona Principles
But then I discovered that everybody worked it out differently, that there was no global standard and that in any case you don’t have to pay publications the amount on their rate card – not if you’re a good negotiator, anyway.
And then, in 2010, at a gathering I wish I’d been present at, the Barcelona Principles were adopted. They were the first globally accepted guidelines for measuring the effectiveness of communications – and they were revelatory.
Those Barcelona Principles state:
- Goal setting and measurement are fundamental – in other words, decide up front what success looks like and then check when you are done if you were successful
- Measuring communication outcomes is recommended – not how many media releases did you write, but were your media releases effective? Did the media publish them, and did people act on the information they contained?
- The effect on organisational performance should be measured – communication that doesn’t serve a purpose is empty communication
- Measurement and evaluation require both qualitative and quantitative methods – numbers matter, but it’s not just about the numbers. If 100 people are all panning your project on Instagram, you didn’t create 100 ambassadors
- AVEs are not the value of communication – because they lack context, they don’t consider engagement, you cannot compare the value of earned exposure to paid exposure, they often make use of misleading financial data, and they do not measure business outcomes
- Social media can and should be measured consistently – because social media is an essential part of communication and not a nice-to-have
- Measurement and evaluation should be transparent, consistent and valid: using the same standards and measurement consistently allows for learning and experimentation
We apply these principles in all our work at Flow Communications. We define SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely) goals up front.
We ensure those goals align with business objectives and strategic communication objectives. We use third-party tools and providers, such as Google Analytics, media monitoring services and social media analytics tools to keep us honest.
Tracking goals
We check in periodically to see if we’re tracking to hit those goals, and we adjust our tactics if we’re not.
I look back on my junior self, entering the PR world, and am grateful for the journey my profession has gone on – a journey that makes it much, much easier to do work that makes a demonstrable impact in the world.
And I look forward to my more senior self discovering more and more about effective measurement, as exciting tools such as artificial intelligence and machine learning offer us opportunities for more and more effective measurement.
Caroline Smith is the head of public relations at Flow Communications, a multi-award winning marketing and communications agency. She has over 30 years’ experience and is one of South Africa’s leading public relations practitioners. Flow tackles marketing and communications challenges with a full suite of services, including public relations, social media, media and communications training services, brand, print and digital. Flow was founded in 2005 and now has a permanent team of about 60 professional staff. The company has won over 150 industry awards.
