The Seven Critical Steps
At The Heart Of
Any Measurement Project
Don't sweat the details
until the big picture is in focus.

by Katie Delahaye Paine

Editor's note: If you are new to measurement, you've come to the right place. After reading this article and its companion on the 10 Questions, head over to measuresofsuccess.com for all the research references and resources you can shake a spreadsheet at. And if you are not a measurement newbie, well, you better read these articles anyway, 'cause the whole idea of measurement is that there is something important out there that you don't know. Yet.

It's way too easy to lose control of your measurement project by concentrating on the details of questions, answers, charts, graphs and action items. So don't sweat the details until the big picture is in focus. Follow the Seven W's below to design your project to be a logical and rational process of identifying the problem and your goals, gathering your information, and making decisions. And -- don't forget --before you get started, be sure you have answered the Ten Vital Questions.

1. Who are your audiences?
This is a question that may be pretty obvious in some companies, but it never hurts to get it in writing. The important thing to do is to define the audience as specifically as you can. Your audience is not anyone with a pulse. Chances are you are trying to reach or influence a specific demographic or psychographic profile.

2. What issues are important to them?
Once you've defined the profile, you can now go about determining what issues matter most to your audiences. What inspires them, what scares them, what they are most passionate about?

3. What are they seeing now?
In order to understand their belief systems and their understanding of your brand positioning, you need to ascertain what they've been reading and hearing about you and your competition. This requires a thorough competitive media audit. That means you need to analyze all the various messages and images that are bombarding your customers. What are they reading about you in newspapers and trade rags, what are they hearing about you on television, what's the buzz about you in discussion groups, what ads are they seeing, what's the competition doing in their community? What events are the competition sponsoring?

4. Where do they go for information?
You also will need to prioritize the various opportunities available to you. In order to do this you will need to understand how your audience makes decisions. Where do they go for information, who and what influences their decisions? If you are targeting a local community, it could be business or political leaders, teachers, or civic associations. If you are targeting Chief Information Officers, it might be an influential on-line publication, Web site or trade magazine.

5. What do they think about you now?
Current opinion provides the benchmark that tells you what opinions you need to change in order to influence your audience. It is far easier to sell to people if they already know who you are and what you stand for. And the fastest way for a sponsorship program to fail is to sponsor something that is in conflict with existing perceptions of your company or brand.

6. What do you want them to do/think?
The answer to this question should relate directly back to the corporate marketing objective.

7. What do you need to do about it?
This is the point at which you sit down with all of your data in front of you and make decisions based on the strengths and weaknesses of your competition and your positioning vis a vis that competition.

New! A State-of-the Art
PR Dashboard for $50 a Month
You know you need to measure your results, but chances are there’s never been enough money in your budget for evaluation. Until now.
KDPaine & Partners’ new Do-It-Yourself Dashboard system combines a Web-based application with professional consulting to enable PR professionals to customize their own PR dashboards. Look here for more information.

1. You’ll learn how to use hard numbers to prove the results of your PR efforts.

2. You’ll learn which are the right vendors for your measurement projects.

3. You’ll learn how to design your program right from the start to be easily measureable.

Click here to
subscribe now!
(It’s 100%
money-back guaranteed!)

51 Durham Point Road, Durham, NH 03824
603-868-1550 fax: 603-868-3346 www.measuresofsuccess.com