6 questions you should ask when measuring earned media

When measuring a media strategy, start with the “who.”

As marketers begin to understand why it’s necessary to move away from outdated measurement systems when it comes to earned media, it’s important to develop a robust forward-looking strategy.

First, who should be involved?

Before answering any other questions, consider building a team that will measure the results of your earned media efforts. This might include staff from both marketing and PR functions, as well as executives or any other shareholders who need to be apprised of results.

Some team members might be more involved in the day-to-day campaigns, while others, especially executive managers, can just check-in quarterly. However, no matter how involved the individuals on your team need to be, start out collaborating as a whole.

You might be surprised by the variety of the answers.

Here are six questions to guide your team as you begin drafting a measurement strategy:

1. What is your brand interested in learning about?

Before you can decide what metric to analyze, and how to measure its scope, you need to identify the important benchmarks your brand wants to evaluate, such as how you stack up against the competition, the effect a recent crisis has had on the brand, or how your messages are performing with your demographic.

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Identifying important topics being discussed in your industry, as well as who influences those discussions, can also play into developing your strategy. Determine what you are trying to change with your campaign, and then work backwards to identify the metrics that reveal that change.

Insider Tip: During initial brainstorming, you may come up with a long list of what matters. While all these points are valid, narrow your list to a few top measurement points to home in on the analytics you will value the most.

2. What channels should you monitor?

If you are using different channels for your various marketing campaigns, it’s important to include each one as part of your overall analysis. Everything from content marketing to social media, not to mention traditional PR like print, television or radio mentions must be part of the equation.

Insider Tip: Realize that the sources you need to monitor may change, depending on the campaign and its goals. Reassess what sources you monitor for every new campaign.

3. Where is your geographic focus—and are there blind spots?

If your company is global, you need to pay attention to media mentions in other countries, and in other languages. This will require access to translators so that you can understand what’s being said about your brand in all parts of the world.

Insider Tip: Even if your primary focus is on the U.S., realize that online media bleeds across borders. Don’t limit your assessment just to the U.S., but also include other English-speaking countries to start.

4. How will your team interact with the rest of the company?

Some marketing departments are completely cut off from the rest of the company, which can make measuring earned media and sharing results difficult if other departments are involved. Still other organizations divide the marketing tasks among various employees, but they work together for the integrated benefit of all and share in disseminating analytics and data.

Consider who beyond your team or department will need access to the measurement results. You may need to include executive leadership in the process, who will want to know that their investment in earned media is paying off.

This step can be crucial for an effective measurement campaign, since understanding what each group of stakeholders needs may affect the metrics you choose or the personnel on your team.

Insider Tip: Identify one representative from each department who has a vested interest in the earned media analytics, then schedule regular meetings to keep them informed.

5. How often do you need to report—and to whom?

Whether you need to report daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly, establishing a calendar for when you’ll need to generate data can help you stay on top of it.

Who you report to will also guide your earned media measurement strategy. If you are the only one who needs the analytics, you can create an informal report or simply log into your analytics dashboard when you want an update.

On the other hand, if your CMO or other executives want access to the information, you may need to create a more formal presentation.

Insider Tip: Use your calendar to plan ahead, especially if you need to present results in a formal meeting. If you need assistance from other team members, be sure to assign tasks far in advance of that meeting.

6. What key performance indicators (KPIs) matter most?

While your reporting may have any number of KPIs, some will matter more to your brand than others. For example, by identifying that ad value or website metrics are the indicators of your campaign’s success, you can then determine what a significant achievement might be for each indicator. These benchmarks will provide a big picture snapshot for the overall effectiveness of your campaigns.

Insider Tip: Your KPIs may change, based on the campaign, so be flexible in updating the KPIs you focus on.

It may take some time to evaluate all the data, but devoting adequate time to do so will pay off by presenting you with the best metrics to assess your earned media campaigns.

Keep in mind that your earned media measurement strategy may change with each campaign if it uses different sources or tactics, so be flexible with how you measure. Keep results from one campaign so you can measure the next campaign’s results against it.

Over time, track campaign results as a whole so you can see overall trends and make bigger picture PR strategy shifts to improve results and align them with company goals.

Don’t fall back on how you used to measure PR. It simply doesn’t work as effectively as an updated, customized earned media measurement strategy designed specifically with your company’s objectives in mind.

Susan Guillory is the president of Egg Marketing & Communications. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing. A version of this article originally ran on the Cision blog.

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