That contribution is profound, and not accounted for enough. If a policy or programme is implemented without strong communications, then it doesn’t exist in the minds of the audience. They don’t engage. Or worse, it’s perceived negatively.
So often, I hear comms people say that the organisation doesn’t always value communications; that it’s treated as an afterthought.
And senior executives are deeply interested in the value that communications brings. They want to know the impact. They want to see what kind of traction they are gaining in the minds of the people; what behaviours are being shaped; where the overall sentiment is tracking.
In talking to senior executives, I hear that the comms reporting they receive doesn’t answer these questions. It isn’t strategic. It doesn’t really tie into what matters.
The gap is meaningful measurement
When we measure comms, we demonstrate value. We decide, based on evidence, to do more of what’s working and less of what isn’t.
When we measure, comms teams and the wider organisation can have more constructive conversations about what resources are needed — and how to make the best use of those resources. Is it creating another set of PDF fact sheets that sit, languishing on a website like the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark? Is it creating corporate social media posts to demonstrate that we too are fun?
What are the people we serve asking for from us?
Measurement could be so much more powerful and useful.
The state of measurement
When comms measurement is done, it’s often just packaged data. There’s a continuum from data to information, information to knowledge and knowledge to wisdom. Measurement that just presents metrics such as shares, views and downloads is stuck at ‘data’.
This is part of the reason that, when comms teams share the raw metrics up the line, they don’t get traction. Measurement needs to be more than just sharing the data. There needs to be a process of bringing intelligence to that data to:
- filter it: we’re only capturing what’s actually relevant to the organisation
- correlate it: identify how one metric conditions another (for example, what was the bounce rate on from people who viewed our website on mobile?)
- action it: set out what to do as a result of what we’ve heard.
When we do these three things, we close the communications loop. It’s shifting away from a sequence of disconnected outputs or disconnected campaigns and actually building on what we learned the last time we did this.
Doing measurement better
For both comms teams and for senior executives, we should ask for more from measurement. This means building purposeful measurement into our budget, alongside research, strategy and delivery.
It means asking for more from the measurement products out there. I see so many digital measurement products that either overwhelm with reams of raw data, or lock you into a one-size-fits-all set of canned metrics.
How can you bring those metrics together to answer the questions that are crucial for your organisation?
You can read this post to learn how we’re doing that for one of our long-standing clients.
Get in touch
If you want to learn more about measuring comms for your organisation, get in touch.
