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Why You Should Measure Communication Outcomes Rather Than Output ©
by Rick Alcantara

Many of the advertising, marketing and public relations professionals you may encounter are more concerned with measuring output than outcome. While this process is convenient for them, its bad business for you. Their inability to demonstrate measurable contributions to your bottom line wastes your time, money and other valuable resources.

While it's certainly helpful to know how many people visited your website, received your brochure, or potentially viewed your ad, the numbers have no real correlation to bottom-line results. They don't prove that your communications increased awareness, enhanced knowledge, or changed attitudes or behaviors. They merely show that the message was sent and in some cases received.

What good are 20 column inches of newspaper coverage or 10,000 web hits, if you can't demonstrate a direct correlation between the communication and achieving your business objectives?

If you want your communications to stand on their own merit, demand measurable results. For example, don't accept tracking data as the true measure of your web site's performance. Instead, find out whether the site has reduced calls to your customer support center, increased requests for product or service information, facilitated online registration, etc.

Similarly, don't allow the shock and awe of a carpet-bombing attack of news releases to cloud your view of what's really important. Instead, find out what impact the news had on your target audience.

You can test the success of your communications in many ways: surveys, focus groups, interviews, town-hall meetings, suggestion programs, e-mail response forms, and more.

The key to success is to build research methodologies into your campaigns before you segment audiences, define messages or select communication channels. Once you know what you want to accomplish and how you'll define success, it will be a lot easier to defend your advertising, marketing or PR budget to the boss.

Rick Alcantara is founder and principal of Tara Communications LLC, a strategic public relations, marketing and Internet firm that helps organizations plan, implement and measure their communications. You can reach him at 856.740.0312.

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