Blog

Simple measurement of telecom PR success

18.10.2011 - Martin Smith

We have been working in telecom PR and mobile PR for years, long enough to appreciate that it is typically only the very largest companies that have budgets for media measurement.  Although media monitoring services usually have some form of analytics, it is unlikely that the information is sufficiently customized to your company’s situation to be inherently useful.

If there is no budget assigned to media measurement (because more than likely there is very little understanding or sympathy at the top that it’s a real thing you have to spend time and money on), it doesn’t stop executives wanting to understand the impact of their PR spend.  As the massive impact that PR can have is usually undervalued at tech companies, frankly, it is in the best interests of every internal PR and marketing practitioner to provide solid data to keep their executive team happy and their jobs and budgets secure.

So here is how it can be done with just a humble Excel spreadsheet, 30 minutes of your life each month and zero external costs.

The theory

In PR, it can be quite difficult to get to the reality of how successful media relations has been.  Too often, PR activity is judged upon less-than-scientific means, like the gut-feel of senior execs, what a salesperson said to a VP and whether the CEO reckons that there is a  constant stream of articles about a competitor that they think has a worse product.

It is certainly true that a PR campaign should not be judged in isolation. To create a bubble around your PR efforts, discounting the noise created by your competitors does not make sense in any competitive market.  If you are receiving one good article in a month, while your rivals receive ten good articles, then it is hard to argue that you are doing well.

So, in summary, it is important to benchmark your company’s profile in the media versus your competitors.  For competitive measurement, the share of voice is the most basic and meaningful statistic to showcase your media relations success.  It shows how often people are likely to read about you versus your competitors.  However, most companies are not interested in “people”.  What they are interested in are their target audience.  So, assuming you are marketing to service providers, you are interested in the service provider share of voice.  Here’s how to do it in a very simple, low-fi way.

The preparation

First of all, decide on the target audience and geography that you are tracking.  Assuming it is the service provider community in North America, for example, work out the service provider reach of the top publications.

Taking Light Reading with its 300,000 unique visitors to its website each month, its 22% service provider readership and its 59% North American readership, you have a simple calculation to reach Light Reading’s NA monthly service provider reach of 38,940 (300,000 x 0.22 x 0.59).

Do that for each of the top publications.  Note that collecting the raw data can be very time-consuming as not everyone has a media pack and not everyone even puts that information out in the media pack.  If you want a shortcut, email me and if I like you, I can provide that information to you directly

Lay that information out in a spreadsheet with the first column with the top eight or so publications with the greatest service provider reach.  I say eight because in every region, below that point, the reach gets pretty thin.

In your next column, put in the service provider reach of each publication.  In the subsequent columns put in your company name and your competitors’ names.

Then create a formula at the bottom of each company’s column to show the number of opportunities that a service provider had the opportunity to read about you (the service provider opportunities-to-see), like this:

=SUM((C2*B2)+(C3*B3)+(C4*B4)+(C5*B5)+(C6*B6)+(C7*B7)+(C8*B8)+(C9*B9))

So your effort should look something like this:

The grunt work

Then start searching for how many genuine, editorial write-ups you and your competitor received in a given month.  I think it would be cheating, not to mention a little dangerous to include non-editorial press release pick-ups.  It is one of the ways you could paint a target on your back, should an exec want to look at the data behind the numbers.

I estimate that it takes around 30 minutes to compile the number of articles for you and four competitors for a single region.  Add another 30 minutes for each additional region you are tracking.  For future reference it is probably smart to copy and paste links to all articles at the bottom of the sheet.

The presentation

This is where you see the fruits of your labor.  When you have the raw data, you can create a number of very solid, meaningful representations of your PR efforts.  Such as:

 

 

 

Share of voice per region is extremely compelling.  Five regions alongside each other (North America, Europe, MEA, APAC & CALA) looks impressive and will have taken just 2.5 hours to organize.

 

 

 

 

Taking the information in a slightly different way, you can simply add the number of articles generated by each company in each region and aggregate them to show this information.

 

 

I am distrustful of any “black box” algorithm when it comes to measurement of success or influence in marketing. I think I share this trait with the majority of mobile and telecom vendor execs who will be quick to dismiss something that does not explain their working-out.

That is why something as straightforward as “the number of times service provider employees had the chance to read about [your company]” is inherently meaningful.  And for 30 minutes work per month (plus set-up time) it has to be worth a shot.

One final thing I will note is that this is just the start of the journey, a place to get on the ladder.  Beyond this comes measurement of the financial impact, putting PR & marketing it in its truest light – an investment in future revenue.

Categories: Media Relations, Mobile PR, Telecom PR, Telecoms PR