Getting an A in Measurement

My past few blogs I have talked about concepts such as marketing, trust, engagement, etc. All these concepts are measurement tools for organizations to track their progress and excel in the market. There are five steps to make sure an organization is succeeding in measuring what matters and summarizes the best ways to about measurement.

Step one is to identify and prioritize an audience. It’s important to understand the characteristics of various audiences involved. Different demographics have different needs, wants, expectations and desires. An organization must first decide who their audience is and how to listen and talk to them as well as manage their relationship with them. Once an audience is selected, it’s important to understand the relationship an organization is trying to build and agree with leadership teams to get them to prioritize communications with the audience.

Step two is to define objectives and get everyone on the same page. It’s important for an organization to decide on different metrics to understand what they are trying to measure. An organization should also look through their list of benefits good relationships bring and try to make objectives out of those. When thinking about metrics, it’s important to remember that audiences do not only want to hear an organization’s messages. An organization needs to consider what audiences are seeing on media, what they’re exposed to online, what they’re hearing, what they’re taking away, etc.

Step three is establishing a benchmark. This step is self-explanatory and means that goals and objectives need to be made and strived for. Three benchmarks are ideal, anything more than five becomes unwieldy.

Step four is to pick a measurement tool and collect data. Depending on what an organization is measuring, they may need to analyze media coverage, survey an audience, or both. Organizations should measure what media is saying and social media in an academic environment. It is also important to measure what people think to understand how and audience feels about their relationship with an organization. Measuring behavior is the last aspect of step four and is a good way to judge a relationship between an audience and organization.

Last, but not least is step five, which is to analyze data, glean insight, makes changes and measure again. It’s important to gather data and look at trends overtime to best understand what changes should be made or what is working and shouldn’t be changed. When data comes in, organizations must learn from mistakes, make changes and then see results from those changes. It’s important to make sure data is available when needed and is fresh.