From Harvard Business Review famously declaring data scientist the “sexiest job of the 21st Century” to movies such as The Big Short and Moneyball that celebrate the virtues of using data to generate insights that others haven’t uncovered, the need to base big decisions on solid, real-world evidence rather than hunches and conjecture is well-recognized.
In the public relations industry, it’s no different. We leverage data to identify trending topics our clients should be discussing to yield media attention, the media outlets most often covering those topics and the individual journalists interested in them.
However, the public relations industry faces challenges in getting the most value out of our data, an issue that similarly affects companies across a wide range of fields. Essentially, most business leaders understand that they should infuse more data into their decision-making processes but lack a clear grasp of exactly how to do it, according to the results of a recent survey.
The survey found that two-thirds of business leaders say they use data every day, but 78% report challenges in using that data, while more than one-third of respondents say they aren’t using data at all to make decisions. Further, half of executives don’t highly rate their organization’s ability to deliver data that meets four essential criteria: timeliness, accessibility, completeness and accuracy. In summary, “Companies have more access to data than ever before, but there’s very little way to make sense of it,” the press release about the survey states.
In other words, there’s a big difference between data and intelligence. Data is simply “recorded truth” in the form of facts and numbers. Intelligence is information that guides better, more informed decision-making.
The business world is drowning in data, but there’s much less intelligence to go around. To drive toward data-driven decision-making, it’s first necessary to establish a data-driven culture.
Creating a Data-Driven Culture
Distributing colorful, pretty reports to executives does not make a company data-driven. Data is useless if decision-makers can’t process it with clarity and can’t extract any insights that they can act on. Actionable data is what makes the magic happen.
Data must be pushed through the analytics value chain, which we define as collection > analysis > decisions > action > impact. However, before data can become impactful to an organization, that organization must create a data-driven culture.
Why? Because culture can be “a compounding problem or a compounding solution,” according to the McKinsey report “Why Data Culture Matters.” For companies that are infused by a sense of excitement about data and analytics, it becomes a source of energy and momentum, pushing the organization forward, according to McKinsey.
Following are some steps my team and I put together for building a data-driven culture within your organization:
Create buy-in. It begins with buy-in at all levels of the organization. Everyone must commit to the data-driven decision-making mindset, especially leadership.
Start with the end in mind. What are your goals? Decide how to determine success, then figure out what metrics are needed to support the effort. Ensure that metrics deliver insights into how your campaign can be improved in future iterations.
Develop data literacy. All team members should develop a basic understanding of the types of data that can be tracked and how it can be leveraged.
Serve yourself. All team members need to have access to the data. Junior employees should follow and prioritize the same metrics as executives.
Ask questions. Encourage team members to be inquisitive. “Do you have the data to back that up?” is a question that no one should be afraid to ask, and all team members should be able to answer.
PR Metrics to Measure Success
Like other industries, public relations comes with its own unique types of metrics and ways to measure success. Here are some that we track on behalf of clients:
• Media outlets: Track the media outlets that mention your company, products or services.
• Audience: Track the audience size of each media outlet where you’re mentioned, including any print circulation and unique visitors per month (UVPM).
• Content analysis: Assess whether the media coverage is resulting in awareness of your thought leaders and/or company (more on this below).
• Website traffic: Measure the traffic your website receives before, during and after launching your campaign.
• Market surveys: Before starting your campaign, survey your market for brand awareness. Survey it again after the campaign.
• Downloads: Track who’s interested enough in your high-value owned content to provide their contact information in order to download it.
• Share of voice: Gauge how much of the media conversation you own compared with your competitors.
• Lead sourcing: Ask new customers how they heard about your company and its offerings.
• Social media mentions: Monitor the number of social media mentions for your brand to measure whether they increase after the campaign.
Above all, data must be easy to understand and actionable to deliver true value. Ultimately, creating a public relations strategy that successfully leverages data depends on first creating an organizational culture that values data, as well as the improved decision-making that it produces. Next, choose the metrics that best measure whatever success looks like, then test and iterate until you learn what works to drive those metrics. A new reality of better-informed, fact-based public relations decision-making will follow.
Source: forbes.com