1. Focus on value. One of the first lessons of the recession is to find and eliminate spending bloat. Too often, I think we do things simply because it’s how we’ve always done them. For example, I strongly suggest everyone take a look at your press release distributions. Releases still serve a purpose, but they don’t drive coverage and don’t need to be spammed to the AP News desk at every regional newspaper (agencies are huge culprits of this). If you’re still spending over a grand on your releases, you’re easily wasting $10,000 a year. Now is the time to look at your budget line items to make sure you’re spending levels align with the value received.

2. Know what you’re paying for. When you’re finished looking at your budget, take a look at any existing contracts you have – and read the fine print. It amazes me that some of the old school PR firms still pass on their costs of doing business to companies. Reread your contract and make sure you’re not paying for phone usage, magazine subscriptions or the agency’s access to analyst firms and databases. Other agencies will bill back the donuts they provide for a 10 a.m. planning meeting. The charges may seem small, but often they can eat up almost 10% of your annual agency budget (which could potentially cover your revised release budget). You may decide you’re okay with the fees, but realize you’re paying an added premium. And know that many agencies dropped this billing practice in the last few years.

3. Measure, measure, measure. The fastest route to getting a budget approved is having the numbers on your side. Unfortunately, many PR pros wait until budget time to look at measuring their program. You always pre-define success and measure yourself along the way. And, just as importantly, the results need to be communicated to your execs (whether they ask for it or not). It’s the only way to ensure that what you’re measuring resonates with them. If not, you can adjust along the way. Then, come budget time, ROI is an easy topic to discuss.

But now I’m finally getting around to sharing the key themes that resonated with me from sessions on social media, marketing in a recession and measurement. Each session built on one another, and as a result my notes felt more like a Twitter stream than the linear notes I usually take. Subsequently, I wasn’t able to directly attribute each piece of marketing wisdom to a speaker. However, at the end I have provided links to all the sessions and speakers I attended — and definitely recommend you check them out.

Without further ado, here’s my Top 10 list from the event (in no particular order):

1. Perspective matters. I’ve attended events focused on “just” communications/PR and always found them to be preaching to the choir. While the event had its fair share of preaching to the choir, there were enough marketing and B2B buyer perspectives represented that added a ton of value. Too often, communications silos itself from marketing and loses sight of the larger, collective goal.
2. There is still a battle over control when it comes to social media. A lot of questions during the sessions highlighted a fear of losing control of the messaging from marketing departments. At the same time, a lot of responses from self-described social media experts took the tone of “the point of Twitter is …” I think they’re trying hard too to dictate the usage the tools when the reality is that the usage depends on the goal – and (gasp) not every campaign is designed to engage directly with a customer.
3. Use social media tools to complement existing marketing/comms/PR campaigns. As Sandy Carter of IBM said, “we don’t have a social media strategy, we have a marketing strategy.” Look at social media tools as new mediums to execute against your strategy. For example: include a link to the blog in banner ads; use Twitter to drive booth traffic; supplement a whitepaper with podcasts, etc.
4. If you pay attention, social media gives you valuable insight. With today’s information overload, everyone agrees that customers and influencers are more savvy and more skeptical – and they can easily detect marketing “hype.” Use videos and blogs and twitter and <insert your customers’ favorite medium> to understand how they want to be marketed to. Listen to the words they use and update your messaging accordingly.
5. 2009 is about doing better with less. As measurement maven Katie Paine told us, “Measuring isn’t always about proving value, it’s about knowing what’s working and what’s not.” Forrester’s Laura Ramos added in one session, “Without understanding your strategy and having measurable goals, social media can easily become ‘purpose-less’ activity.” A quote from Peter Drucker summed it up: “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” Focus on using measurement to see what works and then dial up/down your mix accordingly (listen, learn and change).
6. Stay true to your company’s goals. Define upfront what success is and how you’ll measure your efforts, including your social media tactics. And don’t confuse popularity with influence. Target your efforts. It’s not necessarily about getting thousands of followers on Twitter, it’s about connecting with people who ultimately influence your sales cycle. Particularly in communications, popularity metrics are an easy out when we don’t have “real” results to report on.
7. Recognize that social media is different. You can’t take traditional content and just “plug” it into social media and be successful. Most presenters also agreed that social media is hard in B2B because you have to find where your customers are, and how (or even if) they want to be engaged.
8. Remember your audience is not necessarily your peers. In several sessions, questions were asked about LinkedIn versus Facebook for marketing efforts. The consensus – from an audience of marketers – was that Facebook had more users and was more fun and was therefore better. But over and over, presenters from B2B companies reminded us that our goal isn’t to get in front of marketers, and many B2B buyers don’t want to be sold to on Facebook. In fact, IBM actually surveyed its SOA customers and found out, hands down, that they preferred to hear about vendors on LinkedIn. They don’t necessarily post and interact with vendors there, but they do join groups and read the Q&As to get informed.
9. Counting is not ROI. Move your metrics framework from the very tactical to being strategic. That’s how to impress the c-suite, but it requires that you can speak in business terms (and if you can’t, focus more on learning about business than social media). Measure business outcomes (market share, share of voice, adoption rate, etc.) not your tactical activity (coverage numbers, leads, downloads, etc.). Realize this means siloed metrics need to feed into broader measurement reports.
10. Don’t be afraid to “fail” once or twice. Time Magazine’s Steve Johnson told us, “Right now, there’s a tolerance of failure [in social media] that we should embrace. Experiment and innovate now.”

Overall, it was great event – one I’d love to attend next year. As promised, here are links to the presentations I listened to, as well as the speakers’ blogs and Twitter feeds:

• All the handouts are available at http://www.marketingprofs.com/events/7/handouts/?adref=ematt528
• Marketing 2.0: Integrating Social Media into Your Marketing Mix with Sandy Carter of IBM (blog, @sandy_carter)
• 2009 Economic Impact on B2B Marketing Budgets & Practices with Carter; Laura Ramos of Forrester (blog, @lauraramos); Roy Young of MarketingProfs (@RoyProfs)
• Day 1 Keynote with Steven Johnson of Time (blog, @stevenbjohnson)
• Make Every Investment Count: The Measure of Marketing with Laura Patterson of VisionEdge Marketing (@LauraVEM)
• Social Media Hot Seat with Jason Baer of Convince & Convert (blog, @jaybaer)
• Tales from the Trenches: How Organizations are Measuring Value in Social Media with Katie Paine of KDPaine & Partners (blog, @KDPaine)

At the same time, though, we need to face reality. Companies are definitely tightening the purse strings and reacting conservatively to the market. The PR industry needs to react, too, continually educating clients and executives about all of PR’s values. David Culver provides six great points in a Manage Smarter piece called “Recession-Proof Your Business with PR.”

David reminds us that that measuring PR is “a must during a recession.” I don’t think our industry can hear that advice enough. Ultimately, PR (along with marketing) is a line-item cost, no matter how strategically it’s approached. So if you need a reason to focus on measuring your PR program, here it is. 2008 needs to be the year of PR measurement. And I don’t mean the simplified metrics like number of articles. I mean substantive analysis that measures PR programs against business objectives. Then, perhaps, we can recession proof our industry (a bit)!

What do you think? Is the current economic uncertainty affecting how you approach PR?

In the midst of my digging for ideas to map PR results to business outcomes, I received a direct mail piece from a NY-based PR firm claiming last year they “achieved an average ROI of 500% on behalf of its clients.” It’s quite a claim and it definitely caught my attention. But then the letter went on to claim that “for every dollar [X PR company's clients] paid for public relations, they would have had to have spent at least five times that much to achieve similar results with advertising.”

(sigh)

Okay folks, I know a lot of PR people fall back on the advertising value equivalent as a measure of success. As an industry, we struggle to attach dollar figures to our results – something that the c-suite wants. So I can understand the appeal of this comparison. But it is flawed on so many levels.

First, let’s accept that a comparison chart is not proof of ROI. ROI, as you know, means return on investment. Specifically, it’s defined as: the ratio of money gained or lost on an investment relative to the amount of money invested. The key words in that sentence are money gained. NOT money saved. NOT money that could have been spent elsewhere. Simply, money gained. To show true ROI on a PR program, you’ll need to attribute sales to that program. When the amount of sales exceeds the entire cost of the program, you’ve got positive ROI. Of course, this is difficult to track specifically to PR, so the PR person who can demonstrate ROI is few and far between.

Assuming you accept all of the last paragraph, I’ll admit I can still see the why folks try to show that PR is more cost efficient than advertising – because many times we must compete for the same finite budget. That’s where the practice of calculating advertising value equivalents comes into play. This is the practice of measuring the relative size of an article, mapping that to the cost of a similarly sized ad in the same publication, and then claiming that the article was worth the same amount of the cost of an ad.

Even if you’re trying to show why budget should be allocated to PR over advertising, it’s still a very flawed practice for oh-so-many reasons. First and foremost, ads are created by the company. That means they’re on message, positive in nature, typically have a call to action and the company in the headline, and don’t mention the competition, except to bash them. How much of your editorial coverage fits that exact description? Exactly, so you can see how quickly the comparison falls apart. Also consider how much an ad on the front cover of BusinessWeek would cost, since it’s impossible to get. Or the value of PR results in the form of analyst endorsements, industry awards, speaking opportunities, and even a presence in the blogosphere. How much would advertising there cost? You get my point. (For a great list on why this method is incredibly flawed, check out this post.)

I still agree with Jarboe that we must start mapping PR outputs to business outcomes, but we can’t take the easy look-at-how-great-these-numbers-are way. We also can’t simply push coverage numbers and call it a day. I think the right answer is a hybrid of good ol’ fashioned PR results, such as coverage and industry accolades, measured against business outcomes, like increased traffic or leads, with a quality overlay to account for improved perception. I’ve been experimenting with several ways to do that (with zero budget), and will present those in my next post for your feedback. I don’t claim to have the answers, but I’m hoping as an industry we can figure it out (and soon).

On the measurement side, I’m surprised at how often the archaic “advertising value” vs. “pr value” comes up. Not to digress, but I stumped as to why any PR person would go along with this measurement. Perhaps if someone were evaluating whether to invest in PR vs. advertising, but even then, PR always loses, no matter how you spin the numbers. First, no one ever pays the rack rate for advertising. So whatever figure you assign to do your math should automatically be cut – sometimes in half. Second, in order to provide a true apples-to-apples comparison, you need to level the playing field. Advertisements are created by companies, so they’re typically 100% on message, focused on the company/product, include no mention of competitors, feature the company in the headline and insert any quality-related criteria we place on editorial. Now, pull out all your PR hits that are also 100% on message, focused solely on your client, etc. IF you have one, include your cost for the year vs. the advertising cost. I guarantee you’ll lose, no matter what numbers you come up with.

On to ROI – here’s another area that I don’t think enough PR people understand. Comparing the costs of PR vs. any other type of marketing doesn’t point to return on investment. Let’s go back to the flawed ad value comparison. Say a company was able to prove that a PR program cost 40% less than an advertising program. So what? It may be cheaper, but that doesn’t mean it’s more effective. It also doesn’t mean any ROI exists.

Now, let’s move on to this blog’s actual topic – measurement and ROI. All PR programs should be measured because if you can’t measure your results, how will you know if you’re succeeding? And measuring PR is actually very easy to do. The challenge is knowing what your objective really is, in order to tailor the measurement. Looking for broad exposure? Count your clips. Trying to build thought leadership? Track how often reporters call for commentary. Building a brand? Validating a product? All of these can be measured across multiple areas, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Spend more time at the beginning of any effort to truly understand the objective and agree on what success is, and the measurement falls in place (monitor and measure as you go).

None of these metrics, mind you, prove ROI. Why? Because in my opinion — and I’m sure some of you will disagree — there are two ways to show ROI. First, is with the money. Most marketing programs are closely tied to to ROI goals. Spend $5k on an ad for $50k in sales. It makes sense, and it’s easy to track. PR, by it’s very nature, doesn’t always lead directly to hard ROI, though many would argue it seeds the market for the rest of marketing. So, we often move on to other ROI qualifiers — increased traffic, shorter sales cycle, more demo requests, etc. There’s literally countless ways to measure the ROI of a PR program because (I think) ROI is really in the eye of the beholder. The challenge, again, is knowing what your objective is as early on as possible. Going for broad market exposure? Increased traffic, increased “buzz” and coverage, incoming calls, etc. — all can measure that. Too busy to devote time to the program? Having someone else do it could be enough ROI.

What do you think? Are measurement and ROI different or the same?

One of the more controversial ranking comes from Edelman’s European office, and is their take on ranking the influencers of the blogosphere. Dubbed the Social Media Index, it looks at 30 blogs, from media sites like TechCrunch and Search Engine Watch to PR/Marketing blogs like Logic+Emotion, to corporate-to-consumer blogs like direct2dell. The Index measures each blog’s “influence” based on their Facebook ranking, Twittering activity, and even the number of contacts on LinkedIn.

In the past week, this index has generated a lot of discussion and responses. My take on the index follows:

• First, I’m still not sure I understand what Edelman is measuring. It’s not clear if they even understand what they’re measuring, which leads to poor data. Just look at the collection of blogs they bunch together – it makes me wonder who TechCrunch and Dell’s consumer blog and a marketing executive are collectively influencing. The answer, of course, is they’re not. Their audience, and ultimately their purpose, varies. So how can a company claim to measure and compare their “influence” in a standardized way?

• The Index is naive in that it assumes quantity and exposure = quality; activity = value; and popularity = influence. For example, it gives credit to the number of contacts on LinkedIn – without confirming whether those are people who have met at a tradeshow, or if a real relationship exists. Look at it this way: can you imagine a company basing a salesperson’s commission on the number of business cards they collect each year vs. the number of deals they close and customers they retain?

• It forgoes any real research that measures influence, listing a site that focuses solely on tech startups as one of the most influential on the Web — yet it cites no evidence that public companies or consumers or any other stakeholders outside that universe have been “influenced” by it. It also neglects to define what influence is.

• I could see value in Edelman trying to standardize how its clients rank the influence of the bloggers relevant to them. But even then, giving weight to effort over results creates flawed rankings.

Another listing that has appeared copies Todd And’s Power 150 approach. The Friendly Ghost’s Power PR Index measures the popularity of the FG’s blogroll. It bases the rankings on a mixture of traffic, linking, etc. Because it only looks at PR blogs, it also applies an apples-to-apples comparison. The one challenge of the list (which I love, btw, and not just because I’m on it) is that it only looks at the PR blogs that the Friendly Ghost reads. But, it’s still a great start.

And finally, we come to possibly the most in-depth ranking list, as well as the most thought out. Check out the Onalytica Blog, which has two great posts about measuring the influence of PR blogs. I’m not sure if this was a response to Edelman’s list or just a very timely post. It takes a look at the science behind measuring influence, recognizing that influence varies by audience, and attempts to measure the influence of PR blogs.

If you haven’t read the posts describing the process and thinking of quantifying influence, you really, really should. Clearly, a lot of thinking went into this list, and it sounds like even more work is planned. Depending on how it develops, it could become a model for actually measuring the influence of other topical blogs. At some point, I’d love to see this list merge with the Power PR Index, to compare popularity and influence side by side.

One metric I’d add to several of her answers is website traffic (for dot coms, anyway). The key is determining whether your goal is broad market awareness, or to drive sales, or both.

The author, Greg Miller, concludes the piece by saying PR programs should combine traditional and new media strategies. He also makes the point that every PR person should do an online audit of the company. I wholeheartedly agree with both these points. But, there are several key points Greg makes that I completely disagree with, but the two biggest ones are:
1. “Your audiences get information about your company as quickly as you do” If this is the case, then your company needs to rethink its internal communications strategy (or get one), and you certainly need to get yourself inserted into more conversations. If a company views PR as strategic, then this statement should always be false.

2. “The media is now using Google as a primary news source—and often the only one—in its coverage about you and your company.” Wow, if this is what you think of the media, it’s time for a new career. Google is a conduit to information — if anything, search engines are merely pointing media to more information than they’ve ever had. PR’s job is to make sure the search results are positive, on message and help build a better story for the company.

I agree that search engines have changed the PR landscape, but I think for the better. Now, anyone — anywhere — can access information on the web via a search engine. That means that a once low-level piece of coverage suddenly has much broader exposure. With search engines, it also means that 20 of those smaller pieces of coverage can now have the distribution (and redistribution) of the “holy grail” hits. When used to your advantage, search engines can act as a conduit, aggregating all our work for a cumulative, massively impactful, single result.

I own the PR and communications for a business information search engine, ZoomInfo. We’re an Internet property, so I want to make sure we’re easily found. I also want to make sure that if someone looks for us on Google (or any of the search engines), all our great coverage and blog mentions and customer case studies appear for that “wow, I need to check them out” affect.

Personally, I’ve always considered the Google results page to be a real-time snapshot of my PR portfolio. PR people only need to fear search engine results when there aren’t any.

He points out the flaws in using advertising equivalency and circulation numbers. I agree – these are two metrics that many firms use, but I have to question their validity. First, comparing a media article to an ad only works if you understand that ads typically are 100% on message – verbatim – and no news article will ever be. Circulation numbers get trickier. I don’t think they prove the value of a piece so much as they illustrate the potential influence of the medium.

Thomas calls for an industry-wide “standards of excellence” formulaic approach to PR measurement. It’s an interesting debate that hopefully will continue. But I for one would love to see more time spent discussing how to better connect PR to pre-existing tracking mechanisms. Because at the end of the day, our job is to 1) increase the value of a company (through market awareness, reputation, etc.) and 2) drive sales. Companies track both already – the real challenge is how to tie those results to PR.

What do you think?