• What's your problem? - Before you develop a marketing communications program, carefully analyze what your problem is. Are you doing great but no one knows it? Then you've got a communications problem, and you can solve your problem with measurable results using marketing communications methods. Are you having trouble delivering product because you can't get parts? Not a communications problem and no amount of advertising or PR will convince your customers not to buy elsewhere. You can, however, soften the problem's fallout by using communications methods. Be realistic. Don't expect your communications program to accomplish impossible tasks.
  
  
• Don't send an ad to do a salesperson's job - How many times have we heard "Sales are falling. Let's do an ad." It's true that marketing communications can stimulate interest that leads to sales. In fact, direct mail and Web site development can actually produce sales if your company is set up to follow through. But sales are generated by a total process. If you're not getting your share of sales, the entire process needs to be examined, not just your marketing communications. Control your expectations.
  
  
• Objectives determine results - Unless you know where you're going, you'll never know when you get there. Taking into account that certain objectives aren't reasonable for marketing communications, you must, when you craft your marcomm program or project, determine exactly what you want to accomplish. You say you want to "increase awareness?" Fine. What is your level of awareness now? How much do you want to increase it? By when? If you can't answer these questions and can't easily find a way to answer them, you may not have a realistic objective. But, read on ...
  
  
• Only you (your company or client) can determine what a reasonable measurement criterion is - Because most of us aren't experts on measuring results, we assume that only formal market research can give us appropriate criteria for gauging changes in action or attitude. But it's not so. We use different, less statistical evaluations every day. We develop an ad and the company's biggest customer comments favorably - we call it a success. A new brochure is praised by the sales force as an effective tool and everyone's happy. A direct mail piece can be traced to a major sale. It's a hit no matter how big or small a response it got. The CEO gets a call from an analyst who has ignored the company before. The PR program is praised. The secret of such measurement criteria is not to ignore them, but to legitimize them. Using the example above, "increasing awareness," it's possible we could use formal research and do a preliminary telephone survey of 1500 customers and prospects to determine awareness and attitude and then follow up nine months later with another survey to the same universe to determine changes. But time or money may be short. In such case, we might do a survey of our own sales force regarding their impression of prospect awareness and then resurvey their impressions later. Is this authoritative? No. But if we decide to trust it, we can select this method as our measurement criterion. The key is to decide in advance that these results will be accepted by all parties involved.
• Develop a New Measurement Attitude - Because of the diverse and sometimes intangible nature of communications, it's appropriate to recognize six levels of measurability:
  
  
  1. Specific measurement - This is what we often think of as measurement. Counting. What percentage of increase? How many? How much?
     
     
  2. Semispecific measurement - Not numerically quantifiable, but a determination of change made by experts. Focus group evaluations, for example, aren't statistically significant, but for certain kinds of measurement and in the hands of knowledgeable evaluators, they can be very informative. Other semispecific measurements might be the increase in sales of a product which has been promoted using communications tactics. Communications didn't do the whole job, but if the product was a particular success, we can decide in advance that we will accept that as a successful measurement. Likewise, we can accept the reaction to a speech by the audience, the changes seen in government legislation reflecting the influence of public relations, etc.
     
     
  3. Acceptance on judgment - This is measurement we do all the time but often don't acknowledge as valid. The management of the company or client determines that a communications project or program has been worthwhile perhaps due to its benefit to the community, a boost in employee morale or a "gut feeling" that customers liked the effort.
     
     
  4. Recognizing the value of input - Management realizes that the communications program has contributed important information or insight to the company. This often includes positioning, themes and messaging.
     
     
  5. Prevention - Sometimes the communications efforts keep something from happening. Would it ever have happened without the efforts? No one can know for sure but the prevention is an objective in itself.
     
     
  6. Guidance - The best communications efforts are often almost unnoticeable but keep things moving on the right track. The company's management may not be able to say exactly what's being gained but they have a strong sense that without the efforts they'd have a lot to lose.

Now, isn't that refreshing?

• Sometimes you just need to count - All this said, there are times when you need to formally and statistically measure the attitudes and response of your audience. You'll usually recognize these times because you'll feel like your hands are tied without a certain piece of data. For example, your company is basing its whole new product rollout on a certain assumption, but you feel very insecure about the truth of that assumption. There's no way around it but to go test the assumption. Turn to a good agency or research firm and get it done. U.S. research may be more cost-effective than you think. International is costlier.
  
  
• Buy in is the key - Results aren't numbers on paper. I've seen huge surveys done only to have the company scoff at the results as inaccurate or insignificant. The reason is simple. They didn't decide what they wanted to know or what they wanted to achieve. Conversely, I've seen companies spend tens of thousands on projects that were completely unmeasured, but they were happy because the project suited them and they didn't expect any other results. The bottom line is that measuring results requires agreement from all significant parties in advance as to how it will be done and what will constitute success. With that done, a lot more companies will be happy with their communications results.