How To Measure Public Relations Success for Small Organizations

Measurement Tactics

How To Measure Success by the Gram Rather Than by the Ton
Five simple measurement steps for smaller organizations.

by Katie Delahaye Paine

Here at KDPaine & Partners, we've recently seen more and more non-profits seeking ways to measure their marketing success. Organizations as diverse as the The American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the ASPCA are now using KDPaine & Partner's DIY Dashboard as a cost-effective way to track their PR performance. But even these organizations are large and well funded compared to many of the startups and small businesses that we talk to on a regular basis.

Think differently
For these smaller organizations, it's not a matter of counting or analyzing thousands of media clips--getting 10 media clips would be a huge victory. So how do you measure success by the gram rather than the ton? It's actually a lot simpler than you think. You just need to think differently.

In any small organization, public relations and marketing are far more closely tied to business outcomes than they are in large organizations. Can GM measure how many more cars it sells as a result of its CEO's blog? No. But can the owner of a gardening shop track how much more business comes in as a result of starting a blog? Absolutely. The key is in knowing where to look, and knowing what motivates your customers.

Here are five simple steps for smaller organizations to get started in measurement:

1. Understand what motivates your customers.
If you don't know, ask them. Ask them for their email address in exchange for a discount coupon or free gift. Better yet, send them a coupon every month. Email them a survey, and, for people who don't use email, do a paper one at your checkout as well. What you want to know is:

• Why did they walk in the door?
• How did they hear about you: Web site? Blog? Newspaper article? E-mail? Regular mail? Friend?
• What motivated them to stop?
• Did they buy and if not why not?

When you get the responses back, separate the answers into two categories: buyers and just shoppers (non-buyers). Then look at what got them into the store and why they did or didn't buy. You can set up a salesforce.com account for as little as $10 a month to start tracking your customers and prospects. Pay particularly close attention to the repeat visitors. They are the most profitable, so you want to know what got them in the door in the first place, and what keeps them coming back.

2. Make it someone's responsibility to count and measure.
If you're a one-person shop this gets difficult, I know. But if even if there are only two of you, make sure someone owns the job. Without regular tracking of outputs, outtakes and outcomes, measurement isn't possible

3. Know your Web analytics.
With 95% of American's now using the Web and the vast majority of them making buying decisions based on what they find on the Web, this should be where all measurement begins. Whether you use Google Analytics or WebTrends or ClickTracks or some combination of the three, you need to know where people are going on your site, where they're coming from, how long they are spending and what they're doing while they're there.

4. Don't just ask questions, collect data.
Don't just ask someone where they're from or how they found you--write it down! Ideally, you should have a standard form on hand to collect the data. Better still an automated, computerized way to track it on a dashboard. But failing that, at least write it down. Collecting data is the key to knowing what works and what doesn't work. Sure you get busy and forget, but once you realize how valuable the data is, you'll never go back to chit-chat again. As the Victorian genius Francis Galton said, "Whenever you can, count."

5. Report back, even if it's just to yourself.
The big difference between most large organizations and smaller ones is the presence of a board of directors or other governing body that requires regular reporting of data and numbers on your success. Even if you don't have a board, it is critical to the success of any organization to know what is working and not working. Especially if you are a smaller business, because, if you don't have a lot of marketing dollars to waste, you better know just how well each one is working for you. So make sure you spend 5-10% of your time and/or budget collecting and analyzing the data so you can tell whether the other 90-95% of your time and/or budget is working properly.