You just looked over the results of your last proactive media campaign to get the word out about your new product or service. The numbers look pretty good: there were millions of media impressions, both print and broadcast coverage was about the same, and a major national paper wrote three stories about the launch. Could it have been better, though?
Think about this
The first big step to really understanding a communications success or failure is to look at the issues or campaigns involved. Most of the time, media analysis doesn't happen because people are too busy or their clients have tight budgets. A lot of money is spent on collecting media content, but not on measuring and analysing trends, successes, and places where things could be better. Stories are often put away right away or given to a small group of people and never looked at or thought about again.
If you're already analysing the news on a regular basis, you've already won half the battle. If not, you can be sure that your client or director will soon ask for it. Analysis is a must, not a should, because of new analysis tools and higher expectations for figuring out the ROI (Return on Investment) of communications.
What do you do after you decide that analysis is needed or important? This is where things can get confusing. As you might expect, everyone has their own idea of how to analyse media content based on their own life experiences. And PR standards and formulas usually come up, which is when things can often come to a halt.
But before you can figure out how you're going to analyse, you need to know what you want to analyse. Here are some things to think about:
Track your success in key publications and media based on how well they reach your target audience.
Evaluate key message penetration in media stories
Keep track of the quality, not just the amount, of coverage
Determine success vs. competitors
Success of the pick-up of a spokesperson
Find out how much money a campaign made.
If you have to, you can measure the advertising equivalent.
Monitor regional penetration comparisons
Make a list of media mentions and audience sizes
Compare important issues and/or product reach
Resulting editorials, letters to the editor, or other media commentary
There are a lot of ways to look at and compare the information. But you should know that you don't need confusing PR multipliers or complicated formulas to do any of the things above. The key is to decide what you want to evaluate and set benchmarks so you can compare things in the future. You can still add PR multipliers if you want to, as long as you always use the same formula. So, whether you multiply by a factor of 3, 5, or 10, the coverage is always evaluated in the same way, so it can be seen as a fair and accurate representation.
Go Electronic, Go Real-Time
Reviewing the success of a new product launch, the effects of a crisis on your organisation, or a monthly comparison after the fact can give you valuable information for planning the future. But think about how you could change things if you had real-time data at your fingertips right away. Using real-time data you could monitor:
What parts of the country are doing well and which ones need help?
If wrong information gets out, you can fix it.
Which publications need more attention?
Which problems are being talked about the most?
How well and how they covered it
The effect on your business
What strategies work and which ones don't?
How you can use recent media trends or the strategies or successes of your competitors
Real-time analysis has a lot of important and useful benefits. Knowing that you can have an immediate effect on how a new product launch turns out is empowering and shows how powerful PR really is.
With a combination of real-time analysis and benchmarking, you'll have the tools to improve the results of a campaign in the middle of it, and you'll be able to measure its success using a consistent set of goals and criteria. So, make 2005 the year you start comparing your analysis to others. This will give you a chance to learn more about how your communication strategies are affecting people and will pay off for years to come.
