4 Ways to Calculate What a Visit from the President is Worth -- Without Using AVEs

 A Measurement Makeover for Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth, NH

by Katie Delahaye Paine

It was the ultimate measurement irony. Twenty of measurement's best and brightest were gathered in my living room for the Conclave on social media measurement standards and the future of measurement. Then, that very morning, the local paper ran a front page story about the "value" of a nearby visit by President Obama. And how did they calculate the value of said visit? In AVEs, of course!

The calculations were done by the marketing director of the host venue, Strawbery Banke Museum of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It is a vibrant and valuable local nonprofit, and I once served on its board, so I couldn't really just condemn them as a Measurement Menace. Instead, we'll offer them a Measurement Makeover.

How could they have measured the value of the President's visit using more reliable and valid techniques than AVEs?

First, let's assume that the organisational objectives for the Museum are to increase its members, increase revenue, and increase ticket sales. The increase in public awareness thanks to the President's visit would help achieve those goals, and we can measure that progress as follows. 

Short term ROI

If Strawbery Banke wanted to measure short term ROI for this event (or most any particular event), they could set up an event landing page on their website, to track interest in the event. And they'd include a link to a "buy tickets" page so they could track ticket sales. For their ROI calculation, Revenue would be ticket sales plus any other event-related income (like from the gift shop and grants). Investment would be costs (like promotion, security and clean-up) and any lost revenue from normal ticket sales that were not made during the visit. Then ROI = (R - I)/I.

Increase in membership due to first time visitors

Now if they were taking a longer term perspective, they'd view the event as an investment in attracting new members. Organizations like Strawbery Banke typically calculate what percentage, on average, of first time visitors become members. According to news coverage, there were 6,000 visitors for the event. They'd determine how many of these were first time visitors, and then compute how many of those were likely to become members. Then, based on the average lifetime value of a member in terms of ticket sales, donations, and other income, they could calculate the eventual value of all those new visitors that the President's visit brought in.

Publicity-gained bump in revenue

Additionally, publicity from the event is likely to generate increased public interest in the Museum for some period of time after the event. So the Museum would want to track ticket sales and revenue growth in the immediate six months following the visit, to see if there was a a significant bump that could be attributed to the event.

Public awareness of the Museum

Many organizations are eager to generate public awareness of themselves and count increased awareness as a goal in itself. If this is the case for the Museum, then they'd start with whatever existing community awareness research they have, or conduct a quick awareness poll prior to the event. They they'd repeat it a week or a month later to calculate whether in fact people remembered the name of the venue and its mission.

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Katie Delahaye Paine is Chairman, KDPaine & Partners, (a Salience Insight company), and Chief Marketing Officer of News Group International. KDP&P delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements. Katie and Beth Kanter are authors of the book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” to be published this year by Wiley.

The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine, CEO of KDPaine & Partners, will be glad to talk with you about measurement for your organization.

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