You Sank My Battleship


You Sank My Battleship

How does the strategic communications professional measure the success of a campaign? One way to do that is to follow the money, right? If the campaign is a success the revenue should increase, the polls should move in your candidate’s favor, etcetera, etcetera…you should see evidence of the win. However, in some instances, before the needle is moved, there are intangible results that can be seen as progress; the click of a hyperlink embedded in a social media ad, a spike in views at a time directed by a campaign to potentially win a prize. These are examples of changed behaviors. They were not necessarily the desired end result but what they show is market engagement. Market engagement can lead to revenue. As a strategic communication professional, you can take this information and adjust your approach to maximize your reach and pinpoint your target audience. It’s like Battleship, you keep firing at different grid squares and eliminating what doesn’t work until you eventually find what does. The use of quantitative data helps to reduce the size of the field and makes it so you’re not firing blindly into the void. It’s an increasingly important proponent for successful public relations campaigns. The goal for any organization utilizing this data in order to better run their business is to hear those famous words ‘You sank my battleship’. This means that you’ve pinpointed your target audience and now have the information necessary to provide the service or product that they need and they are in the right place and time to receive that message.


Tools of the Trade

As the profession marches forward into the era of digitization, software has become an ever important tool of the trade. There are so many different analytical tools created to mine data for all different business fields. The benefit to strategic communicators is huge. Efficient advertising minimizes costs and drastically improves results. “When it comes to measuring the value of any PR campaign, guesswork and ambiguity are a thing of the past. 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”. (Black, 2018) Knowing that different business types track different data, Google Analytics allows a business to track what information is important to them. You can tailor your experience to focus which aspects of your site you want primarily focused on. It also analyzes what customers do and how they react to different elements of your site. Google Analytics is a very popular tool of the trade. According to the Google Analytics site, it better helps you, “Understand what works by measuring traffic sources, interactions with your content, and more. Create custom website goals that matter most to your business, such as signups or e-commerce purchases. See the impact of your digital marketing on your bottom line by measuring revenue, return on investment (ROI) and return on ad spend (ROAS)”. (Google Analytics) “Online listening tools, web traffic via Google Analytics, analytics from social media platforms, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) activities, and integration with sales teams and platforms” are some of the tools used to measure a public relations campaign’s effectiveness according to the Business 2 Community article ‘4 Ways to Measure the Impact of Your PR Campaign’ by Caroline Black. (Black, 2018)


Finding My Way

In December 2012, I was a brand new Army recruiter ready to take on the world and enlist America’s young men and women into the United States Army. I had a good attitude and no fear, a good combination for anyone in a position similar to sales, like Army recruiting. Social Media was a thing but it wasn’t fully embraced by the United States Army Recruiting Command Leadership just yet. What that meant was that the old methods of prospecting for lead generation were still going strong—telephones and face-to-face. I would make calls from lists provided from high schools and colleges at all hours of the work day in search of favorable results. I would also go out into the community and talk to everyone that I saw about the Army and the benefits of service. I would often return empty handed as was the case when I would make telephone calls. I could not win and I began to get frustrated and lose motivation. The problem was two-fold, first, I should have had better guidance from the veterans in the office. Second, I was shooting from the hip and just trying to luckily stumble onto a lead. There was no rhyme or reason to how or when I employed my prospecting efforts. What I didn’t know was that the system that we used for everything had built in analytical tracking software. This software broke down all of the metrics of my prospecting. It showed me the times of the day that my phone calls were the most likely to be answered and the results from all of my face-to-face prospecting as well. Once I began to use the software to help narrow my focus to the most effective times and places for prospecting, my numbers began to climb. I became more successful and my morale improved considerably. The analytics tracked by the system’s software helped me find my target market and advertise to that segment in the way that motivated them to make a favorable decision. Now social media is a prevalent force in recruiting and the same concept applies but to a higher degree. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram allow us to thoroughly track the analytics and follow the viewers of our business pages. We can monitor the actions that they take on our pages and find out what interests them and what they generally stay away from. It has become an indispensable tool for the recruiting profession. As technology gets better we will find more efficient ways to track habits and create algorithms to better spread our intended message.

 

References

Black, Caroline. (2018). 4 Ways to Measure the Impact of Your PR Campaign. Business 2 Community. https://www.business2community.com/public-relations/4-ways-to-measure-the-impact-of-your-pr-campaign-02089960

Google Analytics. (No Date). Google Analytics Solutions. https://analytics.withgoogle.com/  

 

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