My Advice

My Advice

My advice for the PR director who brought me into this situation would be as follows:

Work on the first question first (Does the total program pay for itself?), because it is the more dangerous question. You need to "cover yourself" with a provisional answer to this question.

This provisional answer will buy you time to develop a fully developed answer to this question, as well as time to answer the second question.

Prepare a Provisional Answer to Question 1

Sit down with your staff. Work with pads, pencils and the whiteboard. Try to recall any "home runs" in your program last year. For example, did any tactic help close a big sale or two?

For example, one of my clients, a PR manager, heard that a certain executive speech had provided the decisive leverage in closing a $30-million sale. (I can't resist mentioning here, with a blush of pride, that I had ghost-written that speech.)

The report about the speech had come not from the PR manager or from me, but from the vice president who gave the speech and closed the sale. This kind of report is very credible to senior management. Two years went by before anyone dared challenge the PR budget in any way.

Buying Time

Back to the theoretical example. If the staff finds a home run, or many singles and doubles, and these examples are acknowledged outside the PR department, this information may be enough to protect the PR staff and program until the director can set up a more formal measurement program.

Meanwhile, if the CEO ambushes the director, the director won't have the proverbial "deer in the headlights" look. Instead, he will have a confident look, because he will have in his hip pocket (figuratively or literally) a two-minute report that will impress the CEO.

Remember, CEOs generally don't want a lot of detail. Just a few solid numbers and some evidence that the numbers can be backed up by facts. That's why my advice is not to get worried sick about scientific accuracy at first. If management is satisfied with the accuracy, that's all you need for management.

So, be reasonable. Don't think of marketing metrics as some utopia in which you know the exact ROI of every single tactic. Just be able to prove that the overall program generates a healthy return.

Eventually, you'll be able to measure the ROI of any significant advertising or PR tactic.

So, it's on to the second question (Is the PR program optimized?).

Make a Small Start on Question 2

Unless you have a lot of time on your hands (unlikely), my advice is to start by measuring only one tactic now. Then, keep evolving your measurement program by measuring additional tactics. Slowly and safely, you can build up a very strong measurement program.

And while you're building it, you are protected against ambushes. You can keep tuning your advertising or PR program toward higher profitability.

The point is, once you build the momentum and gain the confidence of senior management, constant improvement becomes routine. It becomes a low-risk affair.

Measurement reduces the risk of marketing. If you doubt this, ask anyone who works in direct-response.

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