Over the weekend the famous ‘measurement’ question was discussed quite a bit by Scoble and Owyang. A few months ago we talked about the monitoring and mining aspect, but Scoble asks the direct question, “how will doing this help my sales?”
Like Robert says, this question is asked quite a bit by some of the large firms we talk to. What’s the quick response? “How are you currently measuring your PR/Comms/Marketing programs?”
The answer usually can go one of two ways:
1. A company describes how they currently measure the ROI of their PR/Comms/Marketing.
2. A company admits they really don’t have a good measure on the ROI of existing programs.
If 1: then part of your work is already done for you. Find out how to apply some of the existing methodology to the project. After all if X is the standard they use to measure all other programs, then how can you integrate a way to measure X in your project?
Kami Huyse did this with the SeaWorld Journey to Atlantis project. Many of the existing programs are measured by exit surveys, why not use the same tool to ‘equally’ measure the different programs.
If 2: then you can set the precedent for measurement within and organization. One of the great things with online content is that you do have plenty of data to work with. The trick is what to do with the data, and how to determine what’s relevant to the client. Is it RSS subscribers? Comments? Links? Bookings?
If you know how and what you’re measurement goals are to begin with it’s easier to build in the proper components from the start.
Filed in 
Josh; So true. Measurement is only hard if you are trying to reinvent the wheel.
Posted on June 9th, 2008 at 11:18 am
At my last position, I watched Paul Biggs and David Greenberg logging many hours dialing in the sales funnel. In order to measure the social media efforts, I just had to hook into their set up, which was pretty straightforward.
It’s not hard to tell stories about how many people viewed a blog post or how many comments it got. It’s hard to say if any of the visitors turned into leads. That is particularly challenging when a lead comes into the funnel from the blog, but comes back through other avenues.
Measuring multiple touch points from a single visitor and mapping it back to their progress in the buying process is nearly impossible without tools like Salesforce and Eloqua. Even those tools aren’t bulletproof.
Posted on June 9th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Scoble’s question is wrong.
How to measure a PR and Communications plan is a good questions, “how can this help my sales”, is a wrong question, or at least a question that needs further development…..with the company’s sales department.
Our clients are focused on results and sales and that’s great. But our PR and communications’ efforts cannot be measured with the same standards as sales. If they want to measure our results with the same scales as they do with salespeople, companies should consider:
1.- including a PR expert in every Sales Department’s meeting. (which I usually do)
2.- including the proper commission in our monthly checks.
If I ever get that question: “how will your services help me increase my sales?”, my answer consists of the following steps:
1. Meeting the sales team
2. Understanding their challenges regarding communication and PR.
3. Developing a plan to increase salespeople communication capabilities and PR skills.
If the sales question is posted it’s usually because there’s a problem with sales. Communications can most definitely help in this regards.
But understanding that increasing sales is not the ultimate goal of a communications and Public Relations’ strategy.
We can definitely work with sales teams and every team in a company to establish great communication objectives and help salespeople and every exec in the company increase their communication capabilities and skills.
But our goals and objectives as communication experts are to facilitate every possible communicational resource to create an environment in which a company can fulfil its mission (a great service or experience for its clients, wealth for its stakeholders, a great working atmosphere for its staff, etc.)
The answer to Scoble’s question, “how will doing this help my sales?” is definitely narrowing our work as comm. experts and is not related to measurement but to a communication and PR strategy in which salespeople should be the leading characters.
Lara Bersano - communications and online PR advisor - Latin America.
Posted on June 23rd, 2008 at 1:52 pm