Setting meaningful public relations objectives: authority interviewed
By Craig on Jul 28, 2010 in Blog guests & critiques, interviews, Public relations, Research & evaluation, Strategic communication | View Comments
Setting public relations objectives that are directly related to an organisation’s mission and operating or business plan is, so it seems, one of PR’s great challenges. It simply does not occur with any consistently applied methodology. But there are ways to create objectives – or KPIs – that are inherently and profoundly relevant to what an organisation is actually trying to achieve – let’s learn some ’secrets’…
Angela Sinickas is an internationally renowned public relations exponent and a passionate advocate for the setting of objectives – that have utility and are consistent in their application. Angela has been awarded 17 International Association of Business Communicators Gold Quills, teaches a graduate class on communication measurement and is widely published.
Angela Sinickas
Prior to her presenting a half-day workshop on Measuring ROI on communications (see below for free ticket if you are quick and have an insight) on 3 August for IABC NSW (sponsored by Ogilvy Public Relations Australia and St George Bank), Angela kindly answered a number of questions on this vexed issue.
A consistent KPI methodology
CP: Is there a straightforward methodology that can be applied to setting KPIs for public relations?
I think so. Start with a business goal.
Figure out which stakeholders need to change their behavior to better reach that goal. Research what knowledge and attitude messages will encourage the changed behavior, and which channels are most preferred for those messages.
Set targets for all of the above. Measure results through surveys and/or pilot/control groups.
Behaviour at the heart of PR KPI setting
CP: Considerable PR discussions and articles talk about PR KPIs being linked to organisational objectives, as well as them being “meaningful, reasonable and quantifiable.”^ To me, a lot of this discussion doesn’t provide anything of real substance and utility. What are your thoughts on the academic and business discussions on best practice meaningful KPI setting and the effective measurement of public relations activities?
I agree with you. They describe characteristics of good KPIs but not what you should set KPIs for. That’s why I always go back to my mantra above of knowledge, attitudes and behaviors—but created in reverse order. First figure out the behavior desired to make sure you’re working on the right knowledge and attitudes.
What are the primary notions to bear in mind when crafting KPIs for public relations strategies and programs?
Focus on measuring the desired outcomes first. Then measure only the activities (inputs) that your research identified as leading to those outcomes.
CP: Evaluation and KPIs tend to focus on the practical manifestations of a communication strategy (e.g. media relations, sponsorship). What are the implications of a relative lack of focus on measuring the strategy behind the tactics? How can we reduce the emphasis on the messenger being examined when, often, it should be the entity that crafted the message?
I don’t think we stop often enough to ask ourselves what we’re hoping to achieve, what will change, because of tactics like media relations and sponsorships. Until we clarify how we want to change the behaviors of people touched by our tactics, we won’t structure the events properly, or have the right key messages.
If we’re not doing the right things with our tactics to create intentional audience changes, it’s useless to measure the tactics themselves.
CP: You have written about how behaviour is the most important of the three potential dimensions resulting from communication-related activity (behaviour, perceptions, knowledge). Do you think this is forgotten in PR KPI setting sometimes and what are the fundamental reasons for prioritising behaviour over perceptions and knowledge?
If you don’t start with behavior, you’ll miss some of the most important key messages.
I often use an example from Malcolm Gladwell’s first book, The Tipping Point, where he describes a university health care clinic where the communicator wrote a brochure will all the key points the clinicians wanted on why students should get a tetanus vaccination:
- They even pretested the brochure, and the students scored very high on knowledge of all the key messages
- However, only 4% actually got a vaccination
- When they asked some of the original students why, with all this correct knowledge in mind, they didn’t get vaccinated, the most common answer was that they didn’t know where the clinic was.
Now that was a key message for the audience, though it never occurred to the internal client and communicator because they worked there. Once they added a map to the brochure, with no other changes, 28% of the students reading the brochure got vaccinated. If they had just asked five students what they needed to know and believe in order to get the vaccination, at least four of them would have said, “I need to know where to go.”
Many of our clients’ key messages are usually totally unnecessary, and they’re often far enough out of touch with their stakeholders that they don’t know what messages might be missing.
How to evolve KPIs on an ongoing basis
CP: Once KPIs are set for PR programs, what methodology should be applied to their ongoing evolution from, for instance, year to year? I think a factor especially relevant to the change in KPIs is that knowledge, perceptions and behaviour can, arguably, only change so much. How do you determine when the change that has been achieved is optimum and from that point it might be more relevant for the knowledge/perceptions/behaviour to be maintained, rather than changed? What are your thoughts on this?
It’s easy when you start from a low baseline to set targets, but as you say, the annual increases will become smaller and smaller as you reach more of your audience successfully. I’ve covered this in more detail in an article.
The “optimum point” would very well be different for different things you’re measuring. For example, if you’re trying to improve the knowledge of employees on something, your best possible percentage score is going to be seriously limited by the rate of annual employee turnover.
If only 75% of the people with your company in January when you start your campaign are still with the company by the next January, 75% would be your maximum possible target (though still not a realistic one). You need to work down from levels that reality limits.
Another way to look at the optimum, or highest realistic, target is to look at benchmarks.
I have clients where we index their success on metrics captured through surveys by determining that they would receive the maximum number of points for an item if they reached the previously highest score achieved by any company on that same metric. They’d be doing an average job if their score was near the norm (average) for that question.
For metrics based on things like online usage, we’ll look at the number of page views or visitors for the previous year. We look at the highest number of visitors/visits for any particular webcast or publication and set that as the top possible score that we could receive the following year as the average for the year.
What did you think about what Angela said? Do you set what you consider to be meaningful KPIs for your communication strategies and programs? What are the issues you have in setting these KPIs; what are your challenges? NB. Angela also talks about a lack of measurement holding PR back in a future post.
Attention: a free ticket to Measuring ROI on communications, being presented on 3 August by IABC NSW, with the support of Ogilvy Australia and St George Bank, will be given to the person who provides the most interesting, value-adding comment to this post.*
About Angela Sinickas
Angela Sinickas, ABC, IABC Fellow, is president of Sinickas Communications, Inc., an international consulting firm that helps organizations plan and measure successful communication, including 23% of Forbes’ Global 100 largest corporations. She wrote the manual How to Measure Your Communication Programs and has earned 17 IABC Gold Quills. She also teaches an online graduate class on communication measurement for Northeastern University. Over 130 articles on communication planning and measurement can be read at www.sinicom.com
*The comment must be submitted by 9am Monday 2 August, Sydney, Australia time. I (CP) am the sole judge so don’t moan if you don’t like the arbitrary and subjective adjudication process! The winner must also be able to make the workshop, so unless you are willing to fly from Perth (Australia or Scotland), Southampton or Athens, don’t expect to win the ticket.
^Guidelines for Setting Measurable Public Relations Objectives: An Update; Anderson, Hadley, Rockland, Weiner; Institute of Public Relations; 2009
