Measuring Success

Welcome back! Throughout this blog we have talked largely about strategic communications and leadership and how incorporating these two skills can help communication professionals become successful. In this week’s post, we will expand on that and I will help you try to measure your success. Like most things in life, using strategic communications within your organization must be assessed and measured for accountability and success. You would not want to continue a path if it were not conducive to your organization’s goals, would you? Below, we will talk about ways to measure success in communication campaigns to include body language, information overload, and analysis.

First, as Carol Kinsey Goman notes in her article, “effective leadership depends on the ability to inspire and positively impact people”.  Every great leader needs to understand that body language is another form of communication. It is a form of non-verbal communication and is just as important as verbal communication. Think about a professional you have dealings with. Have you ever noticed what is being said does not translate to what their body language says? Sending mixed signals is extremely confusing for audiences and unfortunately, it happens more frequently than it should. Goman suggests that while leaders are busy preparing for a presentation, they concentrate on delivering the information in a way that conveys credibility and confidence to their audience. However, she notes their non-verbal cues are being evaluated as well. Goman asks the question, “did you know that your use of personal space, physical gestures, posture, facial expressions, and eye contact can enhance, support, weaken, or even sabotage your impact as a leader?” As communication professionals, we can use this information to become more aware of what our non-verbal cues are saying about us and, what others are communicating in response. In fact, mastering our body language is a good way to measure our success. Confidence and trust are heavily influenced by our non-verbal cues. It is important for communication professionals to display confidence when working with new and existing clients. When we can build relationships with clients through establishing trust and confidence, we will have succeeded regardless of measured tangible results of the campaign.  

When discussing a marketing strategy, a plan is usually set in place with an established baseline of set objectives and goals. A marketing campaign is developed to increase product or brand awareness but how can we measure the impact of our strategy? Since we have entered the digital media age, there are numerous ways to measure communication metrics. Caroline Black suggests a few ways to measure the impact public relation campaign. They include online listening tools, web traffic via Google Analytics, analytics from social media platforms, and SEO activities.  Though in order to measure our efforts, we must first understand information overload and how to combat it so that our targeted audience is reached for maximized impact. Information overload is simply put the volume of information we are bombarded with during any given time. Have you heard the saying, “too much of a good thing, is bad for you”? Well this saying applies here. When we encounter information overload, we can become discouraged by the sheer volume of available information and that can cause adverse effects, especially on the targeted audience group we are trying to reach.  The main problem that occurs from information overload is that we cannot process the information as fast as it comes in which can leave us feeling overwhelmed and depleted.  With regards to information overload in the digital age, Oliver Lucas says “when you’re dealing with too much information, it impacts your abilities to make decisions and remain productive, but with a constant barrage of emails, communication, social media and more, it’s difficult to avoid”.  Information overload is something to keep in mind when developing your marketing strategy. If you are not careful in your planning, the constant bombardment of information can lead to lack of engagement and frustration from your audience. So, then the question becomes how do we combat information overload and remain successful throughout our marketing campaign? The answer is easy: keep your message simple and keep assessing your communication metrics.

Moreover, “the digital age has ushered in an era of new tools and technologies that facilitate the sharing of information and ideas and have the capability to track and report on useful data beyond circulation” notes Black.  Integration of these new tools is vital for delivering relevant content to an organization’s targeted audience.  Relevant information is key in order to get through the volume of information being pushed to consumers. One way to measure the impact of your marketing campaign is by using online listening software to monitor conversations online. These programs allow organizations to track their efforts to see what is working and what efforts need to be reevaluated to further align with campaign objectives. Monitoring web traffic might be arguably the “most important way to measure overall ROI from campaign efforts”, suggests Black.  By using a program like Google Analytics, communication professionals can track how many people have visited their client’s website, compare the numbers to the baseline, and show clients tangible results. More, Google Analytics offers another metric to track in the form of referral traffic. According to Ms. Black, “referrals are key to revealing the success of PR coverage, especially if there are links back to the client’s website contained in the article, because it will show exactly how many people are being driven back to the clients site from the article”. Further, using pre-existing analytics within the various social media platforms is another way for communication professionals to measure successful impact of the marketing campaign.  Measuring tangible metrics such as shares, reach, likes, and link clicks demonstrates actionable objectives and instills confidence with clients.  Data gained from these metrics also helps to assess current campaign efforts. Though, if results are not consistent with the goals of the marketing campaign, efforts can be made to realign objectives to better reach their audience group. Lastly, another way to measure communication metrics is through search engine optimization (SEO), specifically link building. This process builds credibility and greatly improves your searchable ranking. More, including relevant content included in the trackable links helps measure where the content is being shared. An example of link tracking is hashtags. Using relevant hashtags among content is a great way to see who is viewing and where your information is being shared.

To conclude, measuring a marketing campaign’s impact and success can be difficult, especially if the objective is to increase brand reputation. However, by mastering your body language communication professionals can win over clients and begin forming working relationships built on trust. More, by utilizing measuring metrics, we can demonstrate the impacts of campaign efforts and ultimately the value of our work.  There is no denying that the strategic communications world is ever evolving. As communication professionals, we must find creative new ways to navigate through information overload, while keeping in mind the long term goals of any campaign: building brand equity and market leadership.

Thanks for reading! Be on the lookout for my conclusion post regarding the future of this blog and the way ahead for strategic communication professionals.  Please feel free to share my blog through engagement on your own social media platform. As always, you can find my blog by clicking on the link below or by copying and paste the URL in your address bar: communicate2lead.blogspot.com

"The art of communication is the language of leadership" - James Humes