Measurement 2020 and Other Fantasies

At the 3^rd European Summit on Measurement held in Lisbon in June 2011, standardization, education, ROI and measurement ubiquity emerged as the key themes in response to a call to set the Measurement Agenda 2020.  Delegates to the conference voted on 12 priorities they thought were most important to focus on in the period leading up to 2020.  The top four vote-getters became the Measurement Agenda 2020:

1. How to measure the return on investment of public relations (89%)
2. Create and adopt global standards for social media measurement (83%)
3. Measurement of PR campaigns and programs needs to become an intrinsic part of the PR toolkit (73%)
4. Institute a client education program such that clients insist on measurement of outputs, outcomes and business results from PR programs (61%)

For a very nice overview of the Lisbon session and the Barcelona Principles that came before, read this post from Dr. David Rockland of Ketchum who chaired the Barcelona and Lisbon sessions.  David pretty much said it all on these sessions, so I’ll just add a couple of comments and share a few thoughts on what I believe the future of measurement 2020 could be.

The rallying cry coming out of Barcelona has been focused and loud – death to AVEs!  Will there be a similar thematic coming out of Lisbon and what might it be?  My money is on standardization, borne out of cross-industry cooperation.  As David points out in his post, and in the words of AMEC Chairman Mike Daniels, “The Summit identified some significant challenges for the PR profession to address by 2020.  However, what we also accomplished in Lisbon beyond setting the priorities was to harness the commitment and energy of the industry to agree what we need to do together.”  The current cooperation and collaboration between industry groups – AMEC, Institute for Public Relations, PRSA and the Council of PR Firms is unprecedented in my time in this industry and is focused on tangible outcomes.  Cross-organization committees are already at work developing standard metrics for social media measurement for example.  The spirit of cooperation is uplifting.  While the outward thematic appears to be standardization, cooperation is the enabling force.  

I was also struck by the symmetry of the call to end AVEs in Barcelona and the call to codify ways to measure ROI in Lisbon.  One follows the other.  In my opinion the primary reason AVEs exist is because PR practitioners feel pressure to prove the value of what they do, and quite often they are asked to describe the impact in financial terms.  AVEs are perceived as a path of least resistance way to express financial value.  Except, as we all know, AVEs don’t really have anything to do with the impact public relations creates.  They are a misguided proxy for financial value.  Hence the need for research-based methods to determine true return on investment.

All of the priorities coming out of Lisbon are excellent goals for the industry.  And like David Rockland, I believe they will be achieved, and be achieved before 2020.  Here are three other items on my wish list for Measurement 2020:

Word of Mouth/Word of Mouse Integration: For those of us focused in social media and other digital technologies, we can’t allow our digital lens to color what is fundamentally an analog world.  Research studies suggest the majority of word of mouth happens in real life.  From an influence perspective, I don’t think too many would argue that word of mouth from a trusted friend or family member is more powerful than word of mouse from someone you follow on Twitter.  Digital cross-platform research is difficult enough, but when one huge platform is ‘real life’, we have significant challenges in measurement.  WOMMA and others have made early attempts to define measurement approaches for offline WOM, but much work remains.  We need ways to assess its impact and then we need to think about ways to attribute value to that impact.  Mobile is a wild card here as it becomes the preferred platform for online activity.  The need to triangulate online, mobile and ‘real life’ measurement presents significant challenges today, and may still by 2020.

Cookie Wars: We all know the measurement versus privacy showdown is coming, right?  The first shots have already been fired.  The collection of source-level personal data, enabled by cookies, is crucial to measurement and insights but has the potential for misuse or unintended disclosure.  Some sophisticated consumers have had their fill of cookies.  Although the broader issue might be framed as social sharing versus privacy control, how it plays out will have a direct impact on digital analytics and measurement.

Integrated Measurement across the Paid Earned Shared Owned (PESO) Spectrum: Measurement has increasingly become integrated.  It began with integrated traditional (Earned) and social media (Shared) measurement and then progressed rapidly to Earned, Owned and Shared, which is where most integrated measurement programs are today.  Many leading-edge integrated programs today also include advertising or Paid media.  By 2020, integrated measurement across the PESO spectrum will most likely be the norm and not the exception.  A key enabling element here in my view is some base level of agreement on how each area should be measured and standard metrics for each.  It will take significant cooperation between industry groups, vendors, agencies and major customers/clients for cross-discipline standardization to move forward effectively.  We are at the beginning of this movement in 2011.  By 2020, it will be fascinating to look back and see how all this plays out.

When looking ahead to 2020, I am reminded of a measurement discussion pulled together by PRWeek a couple of years ago.  Many of the Measurati attended.  In response to a question of where measurement will be in five years, David Rockland replied (paraphrasing here), ‘Who knows?  Five years ago who would have guessed we would all be focused on how to measure social media?’  So, there is a certain fantasy element to discussing 2020 challenges in measurement.  What are your measurement fantasies?

How Much Does a House Cost?

I don’t come from the “there are no dumb questions” school.  For example, in an academic environment, I would define a ‘dumb question’ as one in which the answer should be easily known had the student read the assignment or attended the previous class.  There are a lot of dumb questions asked all the time and social media gets more than its share of these.  Many of them are specific to social media measurement/ROI.  For example:

• Which has higher ROI, Twitter or Facebook?
• What ROI should I expect from Twitter?
• How do I measure the ROI of social media?

The flip answer to all these questions is, it depends.  All results are contextual.  Results are also specific.  While industry averages may be interesting, averages mask any real meaning for an individual brand or company.  They result in ‘one size fits none’ thinking.  Let’s go back to our house analogy and bring this to life.  The cost of a house depends on several factors:

• Where is the house located?  You’ll need to know the city and the specific neighborhood.  You may also want to know which block the house is on within a given neighborhood.
• How large is the house in terms of square feet?
• How large is the lot?
• Is the house new or previously owned?
• In what condition is the house?
• What is the level of finish-out?  For example, granite versus tile countertops.  High-end appliances or mid-range?
• What are the desirable or unique features of the house?

In social media measurement we have our own list of questions to ask before attempting to answer generally stated questions about measurement and ROI:

• What brand/company are we speaking about?  The answers for a well-established cult brand will be very different from those of a less well-established brand.  Answers for eCommerce companies will vary from those of B2B companies.  Answers will also vary by industry segment.
• How long has the brand/company been participating in social networks?
• How much investment in social media marketing – time and money – has the brand/company made?  What has been the level of effort?
• What other communications channels (e.g. advertising, direct, search, public relations) are being utilized in parallel with social marketing?
• What is our point of view on the role of social media in the marketing mix?  For example, is the role of social media primarily to drive exposure to content or is the program or initiative designed to drive conversion events through social channels?
• What were/are the specific objectives of the program or initiative?

This last question is especially important because measurement is fundamentally about assessing performance against stated objectives.  When someone asks you how to measure something in social media your first response should always be this question – What were the specific objectives of the program or initiative?

The question of when to expect a return on social media efforts is also an interesting one.  Brands often expect an immediate ROI on social media efforts.  Social media marketing is a process not an event.  Too often people forget about the ‘I’ aspect of ROI – you usually have to make an investment in resources and time before you can drive a return.  It is wise to listen to social conversations before engaging, and build your presence and trust before trying to drive conversion events.  Listen and learn and then convert.  I would argue the majority of social media efforts today are likely in the investment phase and not the return phase.  It is somewhat unfair in these cases for the social media effort to be held to an ROI standard in the short-term.  Measuring impact rather than ROI is advised.  Perhaps we can add another question to our list of dumb social media ROI questions – ‘What ROI should we expect in the first year of our social media initiative?’

If you are one of the prescient humans who has a crystal ball that enables you to answer the ‘how much does a house cost’ question, I have another question for you, ‘how long is a string?’

You Coming to BlogWorld? Let’s Talk Social Media ROI.

I hope to see many of you at BlogWorld later this week.  It will be great to finally meet the many online friends I have who will be speaking or attending.  Please make a point to DM me (@Donbart) or email me (don.bartholomew@fleishman.com) if you have a few minutes to meet and talk at the show.

On Friday October 15, as part of the Social Media Business Summit, I will be on a panel speaking about social media ROI with David Alston of Radian6, Connie Bensen of Alterian and Ken Burbary of Ernst & Young.  Ken has the formidable task of being our moderator.  Here are the specifics:

Panel: Social Media & ROI

Date: Friday October 15

Time: 2:45 – 3:45

Room: Islander V3

If you cannot attend the show, you can follow along with the hashtag #BWE10.  There will probably be a few hundred folks live-tweeting the event, including me.

Safe travels.  -Don B

Social Media ROI Twitterchat

Yesterday I was the guest on Shonali Burke’s #measurepr twitterchat.  The subject was Social Media ROI.  The conversation was lively and engaging.  I found it exciting and stimulating, and appreciate Shonali letting me share with all of you.  Shonali did a great wrap-up of the session on her Waxing Unlyrical blog.  You can read it here. You can also download a transcript of the chat here:  #measurepr transcript 8.31

Shonali was kind enough to invite me back for another round.  So please join us for Social Media ROI Round II.  The date is September 14.  The time is 12:00 – 1:00PM (Eastern).  DM Shonali (@Shonali) or shoot her an email if you have a question you would like us to address.  You can sign-up for the chat here, or just join us on the 14th. using #measurepr.  Hope you can join us!  – @Donbart

The Difference Between Value and ROI

Social media and public relations programs create value and in some cases generate demonstrable ROI.  The two concepts are different in important ways.  They are related like the rectangle and the square.  Remember that silly distinction you learned in elementary school?  A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square.  ROI is a form of value, but not all value takes the form of ROI.

ROI is a financial metric – percentage of dollars returned for a given investment/cost.  The dollars may be revenue generated, dollars saved or spending avoided.  ROI is transactional.  ROI lives on the income statement in business terms.

Value is created when people become aware of us, engage with our content or brand ambassadors, are influenced by this engagement, and take some action like recommending to a friend or buying our product.  Value creation occurs over time, not at a point in time.  Value creation is process-oriented.  Value lives on the balance sheet.

From a sales process perspective, the ultimate value of a social media program may be in increasing the number of people who are likely to buy our products and services.  Other programs may be designed to improve or protect corporate reputation or to build and enhance brands.  Much of this value is said to be intangible.  It is goodwill that becomes tangible at the point in time a transaction occurs.   When buying decisions happen, your investments in marketing, brand and reputation work together.  They become tangible.  You can measure the ROI.

Many of the well-intentioned but misguided attempts to rename or reinvent what ROI means in social media – return on influence and return on engagement probably getting the most play – seem to be the result of an inability to distinguish value creation from ROI.  We know social networks have the ability to create value through customer engagement and community building.  However, ROI can only be measured by their ultimate impact on downstream metrics like sales, employee retention and customer loyalty/repeat purchase.

Your investments in social media or public relations remain an investment, creating additional value if done correctly, until which time they can be linked to a business outcome transaction that results in ROI.

Trying to get, keep or increase your budget for social tools, people and programs?   Estimate ROI where you can, but also try to articulate the value your programs will be creating, and how this value aligns with, and contributes toward achieving one or more desired business outcomes.  Propose metrics to track and assess progress in exposure, engagement and audience influence.  This is a better conversation to have than, “Let me tell you about Return on Influence…”

Make sense?

Five Things You Should Know About Social Media ROI

In a January post of 2009 social media predictions I wrote:

2009 will be the year when the pendulum swings from experimentation to accountability.  2009 will raise the bar on all of use to demonstrate how social media and PR programs are helping to drive desired business outcomes.

Are you are seeing the accountability bar being raised this year?  In my corner of the world, the volume of conversation about social media ROI is high and accelerating. Unfortunately much of the conversation has been misinformed and misguided.  It seems like every week brings another post attempting to reinvent the acronym or the meaning – ROI really means Return on Influence, or Return on Engagement is the new ROI, and on and on.  There is another group of online Zen Masters who would have you believe social media ROI is old school thinking and not in tune with social media Zeitgeist.   In that case, I’ll take’ Old School’ for $100, please.

Here are five things about social media ROI you should know:

1. Return on Investment is a financial metric.  It tells the percentage of financial return you generated for a given investment level.  The financial return is usually revenue, but may also be money you saved by making the investment or money you avoided spending in the future.   Notice the common thread here – its about money.
2. Attempts to reinvent the acronym are counterproductive.   Return on Influence/ Engagement/Whatever; do not ever get to the basic money question.  Most of these attempts share two characteristics – they are confusing ‘return’ with impact/results (read Olivier Blanchard’s The BrandBuilder Blog for more on Impact/Return confusion), and/or they are making an argument that social media ROI is largely intangible, represented by relationships, engagement and community.   What they are really saying, perhaps unintentionally, is ROI is often difficult to determine and I really don’t understand it.  In my opinion, attempts to reinvent or circumvent ROI discussion in social media actually hurt credibility with the people writing the checks.  They expect an apples-to-apples – money in and money out – discussion.
3. ROI in social media has a time dimension.  Value may be created in the short-term and longer-term.  Social media-specific promotions are an example of easily measured short-term ROI.  Longer-term value is much more difficult to quantify.  There are some similarities between social media and brand in this regard.  Success in each is a process and not an event.  You generally will have ongoing activities that sustain the brand/social media program and brand building events or campaigns that provide short-term spikes in awareness and engagement.  Contribution to organic search results is another example of longer-term value creation with branding and social media efforts.   Managing and measuring your social media effort properly requires thinking about the value you are creating in the short and longer-term.
4. Linkage and correlations are important.  In order to demonstrate ROI in social media it is necessary to link the results seen in social media with the relevant business processes they are addressing.  For example, in a B2B company, you might try to link social media efforts with the lead generation and closure process.  For a program aimed at employee engagement, you might link social media efforts to the employee recruitment and retention business process.  For an eCommerce company you might be able to directly link to the sales process through unique URLs or click-tracking technologies.  When attempting to show statistical relationships, correlations become important.  We might try to correlate social media brand engagement and audience influence with metrics like likelihood to recommend to a friend, likelihood to seriously consider the product or likelihood to purchase the product in the next X months.
5. All ROI studies are custom.  The simple fact is you cannot buy an off-the-shelf solution to calculate the ROI of your social media effort.  All ROI studies are custom.  This is primarily a reflection of the unique objectives each company may have for their social media efforts.  Objectives are specific and contextual, and your ROI measurement efforts will need to be as well.   Attempts to develop ROI Calculators where you simply plug in several numbers and hit a button to calculate your ROI are not worth the time it takes to plug in the data.  They are a one-size fits none approach to ROI.  (Read this brilliant and very humorous post by The Brand Builder where he methodically skewers a recent ROI calculator attempt).

We are in the very early stages in our ability to measure the ROI of social media.  Not enough cycles yet.  Case studies are limited but growing.  The need to demonstrate a financial return on social media investment, if not here already, will be here shortly.  We have a lot of work to do.  Let’s get started.

Measuring Influence in Social Media

Every week there are multiple articles and posts on measuring Influence in social media.  The vast majority of these focus on assessing who are the ‘Influencers’ – those analysts, pundits, micro-celebrities and visionaries whose words and actions influence others in their online communities.  Influencers are an important element of your audience targeting strategy.  (Here’s a great post from Todd DeFren on audiences and influencers).

Influencers are a potential social media strategy, but we should measure social media objectives to determine whether or not programs are working as planned.  For that we have to turn to the other type of online influence, audience influence.

With audience influence, we want to understand what influence, if any, our social media efforts have had on audience opinions, attitudes and behaviors.  Here’s a social media measurement model that shows where audience Influence fits with the other major measurement stages, Exposure, Engagement and Action.

• Exposure – to what degree have we created exposure to content and message?
• Engagement – who, how and where are people interacting/engaging with our content?
• Influence – the degree to which exposure and engagement have influenced perceptions and attitudes
• Action – as a result of the social media effort, what actions if any has the target taken?”

In the model, successful relationships with Influencers would be represented as an aspect of Engagement – i.e. Influencers have the ability to influence if and how consumers engage with brands.

To measure audience influence typically requires primary research to quantify attitudes and opinions and to assess the role, if any, social media efforts had in any attitudinal changes and subsequent behavior.  Once we understand how Exposure and Engagement are impacting Influence, and whether or not Influence is motivating Action, we are well on our way to the understanding and data necessary to demonstrate the true ROI generated by social media.

In summary, determining who has influence should be part of your audience targeting strategy, determining whether or not you are creating audience influence should be part of your measurement strategy.

See it a different way?

In Social Media, Are We Looking For ROI in All The Wrong Places?

One of the hotter topics in my corner of the Twitterverse is Return on Investment (ROI).  How do you calculate the ROI of social media?  What’s the ROI of Twitter?  The questions are many, the answers too few.  There have been several blog posts on the subject (here are just three examples – Tim Ferriss, Olivier Blanchard, Zygote ), and I plan to post an overview and synthesis of some of the better ones in the near future.   One important question seems to be missing from much of the conversation, to what degree should social media be considered a cost of doing business (from a corporate/organizational viewpoint) rather than a distinct activity that must/should be justified by hard ROI?

If your customers want the option of customer service via Twitter do you really have an option long-term?  If crises are often spawned in social media, how optional is listening/monitoring if you want to protect your brand?  Increasingly, the corporate world will realize the options are all with the consumers/customers and how, how often, what and why we communicate will largely be in response to this dynamic.  When voicemail came on the scene (patented in 1983), I’m sure the ROI pencils were sharpened and presentations made.  When was the last time someone was asked to justify the cost of voice messaging or 800 numbers or email?  They are all considered part of the cost of doing business today.  In a relatively short period of time I believe many applications of social media – CRM, crisis monitoring and listening to customers/competitors/industry voices and many others – will be considered necessary, baseline activities to doing business in the 21st. century.

The ability and need to demonstrate ROI in social media should be considered contextual and dependent on specific program/initiative objectives.  If the objective is ‘listening and learning’, what’s the ROI on insight?  However, in other cases, program objectives will be to drive a specific business outcome, and demonstrating ROI will be expected and required if budgets are to follow.  Dell offering product promotions on Twitter was closed-loop and easy to calculate ROI.  HyperLocal marketing by Kogi or your local pizza shop on Twitter is measureable in incremental sales.  You can calculate the ROI on a hotel or resort offering last-minute cut-rate weekends via FaceBook.

Knowing when social media should be considered part of the cost of doing business and making this case to your company or clients may just make the ROI imperative a little less urgent and more focused in the right areas.

Thanks for reading and please comment if you agree or see it differently!

Don B

@donbart

Social Media Haiku

A little silliness for a Thursday afternoon…compiled from my Twitter series.

Good Is Never Easy

Social Media
Is Not Easily Measured
But We Must All Try.

Engagement Not Eyeballs

Engagement Is Key
But How To Best Measure It?
Not By Counting Clips!

Trust Me, It Works

Social Media
ROI Not Understood
Just Trust It’s Working?