measuring the value of communications
TRANSCRIPT
Measuring the Value of Communications
2016 AASCU Communications Conference
29 March 2016
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How do we measure
our value?
flickr.com/photos/dhanu/252328361
Good afternoon, everybody. Today, we’re going to talk about how we measure value as communicators and how those metrics can be used in a variety of ways. I know, this is not exactly the most interesting topic ever. Trust me, I’d almost rather do anything in my office than work on monthly reports and establish goals for the achievement of greater metrics in the future. However, measuring what we do - especially in the age of increased digital communication - has become critical for us as marketers. After all, we’re a spending unit in a business, right? We don’t teach the classes, and we don’t maintain the facilities, and we don’t take the checks from donors. We don’t actively make the widgets that are sold - if you’ll allow me to compare higher education to a business.
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By keeping track of what we do
and the results of those tactics
But we do help bring in students and donations. We help sway hearts and minds. We put butts in seats. Our work is every bit as important as that of a revenue-producing unit on campus. Metrics help us prove that worth. So if you aren’t putting your calculators, spreadsheets and tools to work every so often - and then passing that information up to your leaders - you’re doing your office and your university an injustice.
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Agenda
▪ Pleased to meet you
▪ Metrics, or you’ve come a long way, baby
▪ What are appropriate metrics?
▪ Processes and tools, with a cost-effective twist
▪ Planning, allocation, strategic planning
So today, we’re going to learn a little bit about one another, and then we’re going to dive into the serious business of measuring our worth. Throughout the presentation, we’ll have activities. I have prizes for answering questions, simply because this presentation is not mine alone. Put your thinking caps on and I hope we’ll all enjoy this ride.
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Who am I? @marleysmom @hendersonstateu @highedweb
#shoes #positivity #behuman
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Who are you?
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What exactly IS a metric?
First, let’s talk about what metrics are. We’re really not going to talk about what they aren’t, because I believe that every bit of information - numerical or anecdotal - that we can pull in about what we do in the Office of Marketing and Communications is valuable to someone somewhere. Strictly speaking though, metrics are a method of measuring something and the results of that something. See? Anything is a metric.
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Metrics are
▪ Measure of performance
▪ Measure of progress
▪ Support for processes
▪ Support for partnerships
▪ Reinforcement for behavior
For our purposes today…
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The soul-crushing nature of metrics?
So…. boring…. soul-crushing even.
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Times have changed
Now, if you have been in the communication business as long as I have, you know that the measurements we use to define the success of our campaigns have changed dramatically. They will continue to change as we follow our audiences into new communication channels.
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Old-school metrics
▪ Number of releases
▪ Inches of copy
▪ Donation amount
▪ Advertising inches
▪ Number of postcards, brochures, etc., produced
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New-school metrics
▪ Number of posts
▪ Views online
▪ Shares
▪ Comments
▪ Opens
▪ Likes
▪ Downloads
You see a difference between these two lists? I do - one is very concrete. The other is pretty virtual. But that doesn’t mean that any measurement on either list is less valuable than another.
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Metrics are not soul crushing.
They are empowering.
#reframe
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The metrics that matter most are those that tell you if your communications strategy is helping you meet your organization’s overall goals.
- Nonprofit Times, 2014
In fact, the metrics that matter most - to any organization - are those that help us know that we’re moving toward achieving our goals. This realization was not quick in coming for me. It took a while to understand that sometimes - to leadership - metrics that matter are different than the ones that matter to my staff. And some of the metrics that matter to one member of my staff make no sense to other members of my staff, but they help that individual determine that he or she is making an impact toward achieving our goals.
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Often a mix of old and new styles - depending on your audience - is the best set of metrics for your office.
So, we come back to this reality. The metrics that I’m going to talk about might not work for you and your audiences. Each group of stakeholders uses different channels and languages, and that’s great. That makes us human. In short, metrics are a vast grey area for all of us, but I’m here to help nail down a few important ones in this day and age.
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Appropriate metrics
▪ Activity
▪ Reach
▪ Engagement
▪ Impact
So, let’s go into talking about the kinds of measurements that we can do in marketing and communications. Activity Metrics. These metrics can help you better understand what you’re doing to implement your communications strategy. Activity metrics can help you evaluate your process of producing and sharing your messages, and whether you’re following through on your work plan and best practices. Reach Metrics. These metrics can help you assess the size of your audience and whether it’s the right audience for your messages, so that you can understand who may potentially hear your messages. Be careful of putting too much emphasis on reach metrics, as on their own they don’t show a complete picture of your effectiveness. Engagement Metrics. These metrics can help you understand the effect your communications messages are having on those that hear them. Engagement metrics are a measurement of when and how others engage with you. Audience interaction is required in these metrics. Impact Metrics. These metrics are all about what you are really trying to achieve. Impact metrics help you measure the behaviors and attitudes you’ve shifted, the wrongs you’ve righted, and the actions you’ve inspired audiences to take.
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Activity break
Now, we have an activity. Write down one of each type of metric: Activity Reach Engagement Impact
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Appropriate metrics depend on:
▪ Audience
▪ Goals
▪ Budget
▪ Channels
▪ Deadlines
Ditto for measurement tools.
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Flashback
I’m going to tell you a story now, of an office that was using no metrics at all. When I joined Henderson State, only one individual in the office was maintaining metrics. Those measurements were only used to determine how much advertising was placed in any given year. There was no centralized reporting of activity in other areas of the office. One hand didn’t know what the other was doing, so maintaining coordinated messaging was so hard. So we had to build a metrics program from the ground up.
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Building metrics reporting from the ground up
▪ Timeline
▪ Messaging
▪ Processes
▪ Planning
▪ Tools
I won’t say that this process has been simple, but it’s been necessary. It has also helped us gain buy-in from the rest of the campus for our work.
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Timeline and Messaging
▪ Communication brief
▪ Key messages
▪ Deadlines
Flexibility is integral
The Communication Brief is intended to serve as a concise statement of what our
organization is trying to communicate to our various audiences. As such, it serves as the foundation for the creation and execution of all messaging.
Subject: Date:
Prepared By:
Communications Objective: (What is the main idea you want to convey?)
Business Objective: (What is the anticipated business result/impact?)
Target Audience: (Who are you trying to reach/influence?)
Action: (Specifically, what do you want the target audience to do?)
Single Benefit / Point of Difference: (What’s in it for the target audience?)
Features or Supporting Facts: (What are the two or three reasons why the benefit will occur?)
Mandatories: (What must, or must not, be included?)
Timing: (When does the communication need to begin and/or end?)
Evaluation: (How will success be judged?)
Timeline
Date Action
Communication Brief
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Processes
▪ Define goals
▪ Tie into strategic plan
▪ Determine messaging
▪ Determine appropriate channels
▪ Produce communication
▪ Measure results
That communication brief also helps us design the process we follow to get to the important measurements for each campaign. We sit down with each of our clients - yes, they’re clients - who wants our help. It’s the most consultative and comprehensive and productive way we can do our jobs. The comm brief helps us get to the point where we can determine which of the metrics matter and make sense for each campaign, so we really can’t accomplish the measurement without the planning beforehand.
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Planning
▪ Communication brief
▪ Brainstorming sessions
▪ Focus groups
▪ Budgeting
So after - or maybe in connection with the comm brief - our office will engage in brainstorming sessions - with or without our client for the project.
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Tools
▪ Meltwater
▪ Tweetdeck or Hootsuite
▪ SM-channel-specific metrics
▪ Google Analytics
▪ Campaign Monitor
▪ Spreadsheets
▪ Narrative
▪ Klout. Yes, Klout. (There’s a story.)
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Meltwater
Meltwater is the tool that we use to monitor our media coverage, but it’s more than that. We also use it to connect with media contacts all over the country - working to specialize our pitches to their interest areas. We can use Meltwater to monitor our competition - to see how they’re getting coverage, as well as to see what the main topics are for our coverage.
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Meltwater
In addition, Meltwater allows us to maintain a record of the media interviews our professors have conducted and how far those reports reach. It helps us maintain with the dollar value of each portion of earned media. The tool also allows us to compare the sentiment of our coverage and the locations for that coverage with the media that other universities get. Overall, Meltwater is worth every penny we spend on it just in terms of being able to get reports easily and then turn those reports over to our leadership.
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Social Tools
Tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite allow us to maintain a hold on sentiment among our stakeholder groups. In addition, just about every social media network has gotten better and better about keeping up with metrics and helping us maintain a grasp on what people are saying about our university.
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Google Analytics
While the majority of the tools I’ve discussed our office using thus far have been ones we’ve had to pay extra for, Google Analytics is perhaps one of the best free tools possible. We use this tool to monitor our web traffic and special web campaigns we set up. In fact, we’ve used this tool to save us money on ad campaigns when we use it in combination with specific URLs to determine if an ad does in fact deliver the ROI that media claim it does. We also use GA to monitor the results of targeted search ad campaigns we do online.
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Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is a tool combined with a service - sending enewsletters. Everyone wants to communicate with a newsletter, right? I mean, how many times do you have a program or department come to you wanting to establish a newsletter? I have them all the time. With Campaign Monitor - and numerous other email marketing services - we can empower units to send their own newsletters and emails on branded templates. At the same time, we are able to determine who, when, where these messages are written and what our audiences are most interested in. We can accomplish all this with a small fee and be assured that we don’t violate Do-Not-Email lists or send more than once to an individual email address.
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Spreadsheet and Narrative
Finally, knowing all these metrics doesn’t help if we’re not able to report them to the folks who matter - our university leadership. Each month, staff members in the Office of Marketing and Communications are required to report such measurements as visits to the website, time on site, number of posts, engagement of those posts, number of press releases and the results of those releases. In turn, I compile the information on these spreadsheets into a narrative that is presented - through my vice president - to the university’s president and then to our Board of Trustees. Through this reporting process, our leaders are able to see that we are working toward achieving parts of the university’s strategic plan as well as seeing that we are utilizing our budget appropriately. The reporting shows that we are being effective stewards of our time, talent and resources in the Office of Marketing and Communications.
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Activity break
So now, it’s time for another activity. What tools do you use? Some of the same as the ones I’ve mentioned here? Different ones? Which are free and which are paid? I’d also like to ask a question of you all - who is responsible for compiling metrics in your offices?
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Caveat: When you start from ground zero on metrics, the going is slow. Getting funding for tools is slow. Establishing buy-in is a process.
Continuing the process of reporting can be tedious for your team and you, but you can use these numbers to reinforce what you are doing and to stop doing things that don’t produce the return on investment that you need.
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Reporting up and down can make this process smoother.
I also ask my folks to report on how well they work together to combine messaging in different channels. I ask them to tie their work to our messaging points in the strategic plan, and when they focus on working together, our integrated marketing communications plan comes together. That itself is one of our priorities in the strategic plan for the university.
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Planning, allocation, strategic planning
▪ Planning - content, channels, deadlines
▪ Allocation - hiring, assignment, spending
▪ Strategic planning - execution, reporting, adjustment
Finally, keeping up with metrics can help us plan. They let us know when things work and when things should be adjusted. Watching when stakeholders respond to content can tell us when we should produce certain types of content and push it out. It can also tell us what different audiences like or dislike. When audiences engage with content, that tells us we need to hire a videographer or restructure the job description for our old school media relations person - which we did at Henderson last year. And there’s nothing better than having solid proof that ads don’t work in one channel - but do in another - to help us stop having to buy legacy placements that don’t make sense with a new generation. Finally, metrics helped Henderson State tremendously when we approached strategic planning. By focusing on statistics for incoming freshmen - about their media consumption and opinion leaders - we were able to focus on integrated media and new media as opposed to declaring our intentions on producing more press releases. We also allow the metrics that we work toward in the strategic plan to guide our adjustments in our work flow.
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Priority Six: Enhance Henderson’s Regional, State, and Na:onal Profile
▪ Traffic to Henderson’s website has increased in quality and quan7ty: ▪ Each month, there are 100,000 visits to the site. ▪ Average 7me on site has increased to 3 minutes per visit.
▪ Henderson’s Klout score and other social media engagement indexes are in the top 25% among peer universi7es.
▪ Dona7ons from alumni have increased: ▪ The number of alumni giving annually is 25%. ▪ 10% of alumni have designated Henderson for a planned giK.
▪ ALendance at select student events has risen 10%.
Strategic Priorities Defined
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Strategic Priorities DefinedPriority Six: Enhance Henderson’s Regional, State, and Na:onal Profile
▪ At least 75% of alumni update their contact informa7on on an annual basis. ▪ US News and World Report peer-‐assessment score has increased to 3.4 out of 5. ▪ The style manual and standards for conveying Henderson's standards, values,
vision, mission, and goals are in place and used across the university and by Henderson alumni.
▪ The number of students who ask for applica7on informa7on averages 150 per month. ▪ 25% of applica7ons are submiLed from students outside Arkansas.
▪ Number of mee7ngs with key external stakeholders increases: ▪ One-‐on-‐one mee7ngs or calls with key opinion leaders and influencers in
the community is one per month. ▪ Group mee7ngs with regional and state reporters on campus are four per
year. ▪ Stories promo7ng Henderson’s iden7fied areas of excellence are placed in news
media five 7mes per week.
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Strategic Priorities Defined
▪ Strategy 1: Develop Branding Guide and Educate Campus on Standards
▪ Strategy 2: Redesign the Website▪ Strategy 3: Launch an Integrated Media
Campaign, Incorporating Elements for Each of the University’s Key Stakeholder Groups
▪ Strategy 4: Strengthen Relationships with External Audiences
And for each of these actions, we’ve started with our known metrics. In order to find a baseline - especially when we didn’t have one - and to see how far we had to go. Actually finding the metrics, purchasing tools to measure, and maintaining pace with industry standards in those areas - they’re all a part of our strategic plan.
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Rewind
Takeaways: Metrics have changed a lot, but sometimes we need to stick with the tried and true. The best metrics are the measurements that help you get to what your strategic plan wants to get to. Metrics can differ depending on the audience you’re speaking to. You have to invest - either money or time - into the right tools that can help you deliver the measurements that you need. Planning, allocation, strategic planning can be impacted by your measurements, but you have to have the measures to start.
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Thanks so much for talking with me about metrics and why they matter so much to our jobs.