Angela Sinickas's top tips for communications measurement
We were lucky to have Angela Sinickas, visiting from the United States, deliver a (sold out!) workshop to IABC Wellington members on communications measurement in May 2018. A pioneer in the field of organisational communication measurement, Angela has been measuring the effectiveness of comms since 1981. Her work has been cited in Harvard Business Review. She is the president of Sinickas Communications, Inc., an international communication consultancy helping corporations achieve business results through targeted diagnostics and practical solutions. Recent clients include adidas (germany), Barclays (UK), Cisco, ING Bank, Internal Revenue Service, Novartis (Switzerland), Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), Verizon, World Bank and more.
Communications is critical to organisations. How would you recommend we, as comms professionals, can best measure that effectiveness?
We have to make sure our communications are connected to an organisation’s goals, then we have to make sure to what extent the channels we’re using are actually contributing to those bottom line results.
These days, organisations want a direct correlation between the money spent on comms and the benefits. How can we best calculate the return on investment?
For ROI to show that you’ve either made more money or saved money, we need to connect our communications to behaviours. Only behaviours have a bottom line impact - not greater understanding or awareness. We have to make sure it’s a specific project that is guaranteed to be focused on a certain kind of behaviour. You then have to be able to isolate how much impact our communication had on that result. Usually, other parts of the organisation are also working towards that result. There are three ways you can do that:
What are some common mistakes you see communications professionals making?
The biggest one is waiting too long. We often think it’s time to measure something once we’ve completed what looks like a successful project and we want some numbers, but it’s hard if you don’t have a baseline from before of what you’ve actually changed or improved through your communications.
If I want to set more measurable comms objectives, where should I start?
You need to start with the organisational goals, then determine what types of messages will help achieve those goals, which channels would be best for those goals and those particular messages. We need to figure out how we would measure them, because once you know which technique you’re going to use for measurement then it’s easy to set a target. If you don’t know how you’ll measure it, you don’t know what numbers to start using.
If I want to improve how I measure my work, what’s one thing I can start doing today?
I’ll recommend two things! Firstly, do some more research before developing a plan. Talk to stakeholders because often they’re not starting at the same place we think they are. Secondly, once you’ve developed the materials, take a little bit of extra time to pre-test them because often what we’ve intended the message to be doesn’t come through that way to different groups of people. By pre-testing, we can make sure what we launch actually works the way we intended it to, and we don’t have to do work after the fact to re-clariify what we meant to say.
Communications is critical to organisations. How would you recommend we, as comms professionals, can best measure that effectiveness?
We have to make sure our communications are connected to an organisation’s goals, then we have to make sure to what extent the channels we’re using are actually contributing to those bottom line results.
These days, organisations want a direct correlation between the money spent on comms and the benefits. How can we best calculate the return on investment?
For ROI to show that you’ve either made more money or saved money, we need to connect our communications to behaviours. Only behaviours have a bottom line impact - not greater understanding or awareness. We have to make sure it’s a specific project that is guaranteed to be focused on a certain kind of behaviour. You then have to be able to isolate how much impact our communication had on that result. Usually, other parts of the organisation are also working towards that result. There are three ways you can do that:
- The pilot control group approach: isolate only the communication in some places;
- Timing: track what’s happening with the behaviours, then on the dates you’re doing different communications look for an improvement;
- A survey question: ask your audience to what extent they changed their behaviour because of these specific communications.
What are some common mistakes you see communications professionals making?
The biggest one is waiting too long. We often think it’s time to measure something once we’ve completed what looks like a successful project and we want some numbers, but it’s hard if you don’t have a baseline from before of what you’ve actually changed or improved through your communications.
If I want to set more measurable comms objectives, where should I start?
You need to start with the organisational goals, then determine what types of messages will help achieve those goals, which channels would be best for those goals and those particular messages. We need to figure out how we would measure them, because once you know which technique you’re going to use for measurement then it’s easy to set a target. If you don’t know how you’ll measure it, you don’t know what numbers to start using.
If I want to improve how I measure my work, what’s one thing I can start doing today?
I’ll recommend two things! Firstly, do some more research before developing a plan. Talk to stakeholders because often they’re not starting at the same place we think they are. Secondly, once you’ve developed the materials, take a little bit of extra time to pre-test them because often what we’ve intended the message to be doesn’t come through that way to different groups of people. By pre-testing, we can make sure what we launch actually works the way we intended it to, and we don’t have to do work after the fact to re-clariify what we meant to say.