Data and Measurement, A Communicator’s Dilemma

Today communications professionals are flying blind if they are not thinking about outcomes and measurement. Whether you’re an agency pitching new business or you’re the head of communications inside a major financial institution, in this day and age you have to be able to tell compelling stories, and prove their worth via solid metrics.

Beyond benchmarking success there’s an even larger conversation taking place within most organizations around who – PR, Marketing, Advertising – ultimately owns the ‘organizational voice.’ While all disciplines have a hand in this at an organization, I firmly believe that PR is at least a majority owner. To gauge any measure of success there is a critical need to use data, metrics and analytics to inform any efforts. Mike Bloomberg always says, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” And that concept certainly applies here.

A 2012 Neilsen study iterated that brands and trust are more influenced by what individuals say than what a company says about themselves. That is a fairly significant development coupled with the 2013 Harris Interactive Brand Perception study that stated for the first time how a customer feelsabout a company is a key perception driver. This is particularly relevant to communications professionals in the Financial Services and Banking industries which rank at the bottom for overall industry reputation. Only the Government and Tobacco industry, respectively, place lower.

The Harris study also reveals that for the first time a group known as “seekers” is now the most powerful group in terms of influencing perception. Seekers are individuals who actively seek new information about a brand, products or companies, and actively share much of that information with others via their social networks.

The number of social and digital media platforms continues to proliferate. In some cases just showing up on those platforms is important but we still need to know when, where, how and which ones? And that is where data gathering, metrics and measurement can help us see the forest for the trees. For more on my thoughts in this area, please check out my recent presentation at the W2O Pre-commerce Summit at SXSW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKjMrgPnC9A

(This piece originally appeared on Finsider.com.)