2010 - the future is measurable

I have been thinking about the key areas that the industry needs to focus on this year. One of the recurring themes is ROI / measurement and relationship management.

I am working on a potential project that is focused on the Press Cuttings part of the PR category. For me it is that the stakeholders should not be relying on this service as the key measure of the sole indicator of the success or otherwise of their investment in PR. It is essential that measurable public relations objectives are set. This will tell them where they are starting from and where the PR programme is heading.

At a basic level they need to look at six steps to set up these objectives up:
o Define the objectives
o Determine the criteria
o Select a benchmark (what does success look like ? to the stakeholders and procurement)
o Select a measurement tool
o Compare results with objectives
o Modify campaign

The other part of measurement is the 'it is good to talk'. It is important that all key supplier relationships are audited. At one of my companies, we invested in a third party relationship audit company to provide a 360 degree audit of us (you can also do it yourself as well) and then our three top agencies - Media, Advertising and Brand. The cost was then split 4 ways as it was important that everyone had an equal say in the process. The feedback and the agreed action planning worked really well. The 2 suppliers I would recommend in this area are Aprais and Relationship Audits and Management.

A lot of the time the results of the audit can then feed into a Bonus or Payment By Results structure. I know that some companies in the Telco and FMCG sectors are rolling these programs out globally to all their key agency relationships. Be interesting to see the data in a few years time of 'investment in the process' versus ' benefits gained in the long term'.