Communication plan: Measure the effect and strengthen the results
Measuring your communication objectives is an essential element of a successful communication plan. Measurement gives you the ability to show your team and management the (strong) impact your communication has. It is also highly motivating and insightful to measure your coverage and use the results to evaluate and (potentially) adjust your plan.
We have written a guide to help you measure and document the results of your PR and communication plan. A strategic setup of your media monitoring enables you to easily and continuously measure your objectives.
Four advice that will help you measure the effectiveness of your communication plan
1) You objectives should be measurable
Your communication plan needs to have clear objectives. These objectives make it easier for you to prioritise your efforts, develop your content, and evaluate the results of your communication plan. That is why it is important to have objectives that are truly measurable, and that you plan exactly how you are going to measure the results.
Example: You can start with defining how your media monitoring can support you in concretising your measurement. If your goal is to increase your company’s visibility in your primary target group, you can create a list of media that addresses your preferred target group. This media list can help you prioritise which media you have extra focus on creating relationships with and getting brand mentions in. This goal is easy to both track and measure with the help of your media monitoring.
2) Identify your baseline and set realistic goals
Before you start setting up measurable goals for your communication plan, it is a really good idea to understand what your company’s baseline is. How much coverage do you get in your key media? How much coverage do you get in your markets? How often do your spokespersons appear in the media? How much coverage do you get if compared to your biggest competitors?
When you know your baseline, it becomes easier to create realistic and achievable goals. You can find the answers to the questions above in the Hypefactors platform where you are able to dive into your coverage and find your baseline.
3) Set subgoals and evaluate on an ongoing basis
You do not have to wait until the end of the year or until the timeline for your communication plan ends before diving into the data to evaluate the results. On the contrary, we encourage you to continuously check in and assess how the results are developing. We encourage this because ongoing assessments can reveal which parts of your communication plan you need to pay extra attention to in order to achieve the expected results.
On busy days, it is easy to downgrade or completely dismiss measurement, especially if there has not been allocated time for it in advance. As such, it is important that you set subgoals and schedule status meetings in your calendar so you have time to evaluate how far you are with your goals. You can among other things use Measure in the Hypefactors platform in order to get a great understanding of your media coverage.
4) Be inspired by the data – track your specific objectives
Media Intelligence data makes many things possible when it comes to measuring communication results and finding exciting insights about your brand(s). That is why we have created a unique function in the platform which allows you to set measurable goals and track the results in real time.
You can find the custom measurement of KPIs in the Hypefactors platform under Measure and KPIs. Among other things, these functions make it possible for you to measure if you get the number of clippings that you want, or if you get the exposure you want in your key media outlets.
If you would like to explore how you can measure the results of your communication plan, our advisors would be happy to guide you on how to optimise your setup and your analysis. You can contact us here: info@hypefactors.com