Hypertext

Tom Foremski at Silicon Valley Watcher has an interesting view on measuring the value of PR. He thinks PR is opening up Pandora’s Box by moving further into ROI measurement. I’d argue that box is already wide open. Moreover, it’s necessary (and probably unavoidable) for PR to move in that direction as everything that happens online is increasingly performance-based.

 Tom’s view:

But be careful what you wish for this is a Pandora’s box. With social media metrics you have to agree on what those numbers should be. What is an acceptable number of YouTube views for that “viral” video you made? What is the value of those 10 re-tweets? How many pageviews is great?

Completely agree with Tom’s take here. Let’s take that further: even if a client agrees with you on the value of, say, a re-tweet, that “value” is still removed from bottom line ROI. Values for page views, video views, etc. are all derivative unless they’re mapped to actual business metrics.

Focusing on outcomes that clients understand and pay for (i.e. leads, sales) is more valuable than just focusing on outputs (eyeballs). In some of our early client work in this area, we’re already finding that “earned media” can be more effective than “paid media” in driving outcomes such as conversions to actual sales, so the greater measurability of outcomes can be a good thing for PR. That’s a positive sign, especially since those results are before any campaigns – whether social media, traditional media or both – have been optimized for targeting influencers and driving conversions among specific audiences.

Likewise, I think this progression will ultimately be better for the audiences our clients want to reach since campaigns will be less focused on blanketing people with marketing information and more on facilitating useful interactions. Same trend has been happening in advertising for a while – that’s nothing new.

Every discipline’s wasted spend will gradually be exposed (just wait until TV ads become performance-based) but in a world of information overload and endless media content, real influence matters that much more. I’d assert that PR has as good or better an opportunity to own the business of influence…IF we get ahead of understanding metrics and mapping PR to bottom line outcomes.

Anyone in the PR industry who simply assumes they’ll change fast enough or that metrics won’t pose major challenges probably isn’t paranoid enough…

Joseph Kingsbury

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1. What PR Professionals Need To Know About Web Analytics
2. Social Media Lessons for Your Brand from Lady Gaga’s Digital Romance
3. Why the “last click” model is flawed (hint: getting me to buy takes more than 3.2 ads)