Using Google Analytics to track PR outreach & outcomes

In my previous blog post I referred to an experiment I was running with Google Analytics for a guest blog post I was writing. This has just been published and many thanks to Stephen Waddington for using the article. It can be found here under the title 'How-to use Google Analytics to track public relations outcomes'. 

Thank you for viewing the article and very much hope you found it interesting. Please don't hesitate to offer a comment, particularly if I get things wrong!  It would also be great if you wanted to subscribe to future blog updates.

Does Google Analytics offer PR a way of connecting their efforts with organisational outcomes?

- Put simply, yes(ish). 

Though it comes with lots of caveats, this is a possible way of tracking cross social media impact. Google Analytics (GA), as has been said before, is not easy. The interface is often confusing, often inconsistent and often failing the 'so what?' test.

But if your goal is for people to do certain things on your site, it might just prove to be the assist that puts the ball in the back of the net - not that I do football analogies.

Before I go any further I have a quick rant about GA. 

I do a lot of competitor comparison/analysis of media coverage. I hoped GA could help me with this, but it can't. While Google Search is the master at finding influential news topics and comment, GA does not integrate search results, unless (..and how great this would be) you can correct me.

Back on-topic; and the starting point is nowhere near Google Analytics. You need to think about what success might look like. Think carefully about the goals to achieve. If you run an e-commerce site and have a new product, its likely it involve sales. If you are B2B you might want sign up on your site, white paper downloads or contact forms. 

To appreciate the many processes involved, and you are a newbie to GA you would be best reviewing these tutorials: 

Firstly there is a series on GA Fundamentals. Then, if you run e-commerce (a shopping cart, but not etsy!) on your site you will need to enable that element and also review these additional tutorials.

I know this all seem ponderous, but there are concepts, terminology and bolt-on you need to know about if you are going to manage this this well. I promise you, if you really want to find the answers, this will not be a waste of your time.

However this is a gist of what's involved. Get a Google Analytics account or update an existing account (it changed quite a lot about 2 years ago, latest version known as 'Universal Analytics'). Prepare a list of your target social media networks. What you will probably want to know is which of these networks gets the most sales or conversions. 

Once you have prepared your post or tweet for sending out, you will want to add a link to the best landing page on your site. This is the magic bit...GA can add a bit of extra code to track lots of extra things to work out what works best.     

So you need to add a bit to your inbound link address and that's done in GA by using the Link Builder (put Link Builder into the Analytics Help bar). You will need to add 3 pieces of information, the Source or referrer, the Medium (banner, email, etc), and Campaign name. If that's not enough to isolate which of your efforts it is there are 2 other optional field you can use.

The link builder will create a unique link which you can then use as your link for that network and campaign, etc. Once installed the code will start returning activites to your GA account telling you things like what network and promotion was most successful in getting people to your site, making conversions and hitting your preset goals. It will also give you other useful information like what was the bounce rate (only visited 1 page), what type of device and browser was used. 

It will also tell you about what people do once on your site, like where did they go, for how long and if they were new or returning visitors. If its an e-commerce site, as long as you have enabled the right GA settings you can also see how people progress through the buying process and if there is an aspect making buyers drop out, or loop-back in the process. 

When you connect the initial tagging process with the other trackable things like product groups and categories, it is easy to image how easy it is to link the initial outreach with an end result.

This outcome connection is something PR has been striving to achieve. 

GA as a tool, has the feeling of being an instrument for the use of advertisers. It will quite easily integrate Adwords data, letting advertisers see how well different ads work. 

The worry I have is that too many PR's are discounting it for this very reason. Any sensible organisation will be using GA, or the even more confusing Abobe analytics package. 

PR's should fight to get and keep their GA logins; and study very carefully what they can do with it, as it has many PR applications. If I might be so bold, I might suggest it is one of the few ways you might genuinely connect PR input with organisational outcome.   

I hope you found this of interest and if you have a view please post a comment. It would also be great if you wanted to subscribe to future blog updates.     

  

PR vs Marketing - Let Battle Commence

I bumped into a tweet last week which mentioned the difference (or lack of) between PR and marketing. If you study the books and consult with the relevant trade bodies you will be very clear on the differences. But what of reality in this fast changing media environment?

Marketing is about selling stuff (er...simplified) encompassing sales and associated activities. PR on the other hand is more about communication with not only customer, but influencer and other stakeholders . It's about engaging with and convincing those various publics.

My angle on this is measurement. As the media environment has moved online so the arguments become louder over what are the best metrics. There now appears to be a lot more ways to show change. We used to talk about media output as the measure of PR success. Now we are told real insight comes from understanding outcomes. One of the outcomes which is most often touted is impact on sales. This is where I think the problems arise. Where marketing and PR are increasingly stepping on each others toes.

Both disciplines are starting to use very similar metrics. Sure, the online environment rather points you towards using a fairly prescriptive selection however PR is just a little bit more than just sales.

Measuring the decline in sports sponsorship

Yesterday afternoon the Aviva yacht sailed past the office here on the South Coast of England and while I don’t necessarily want to give extra publicity to one of my clients rivals it did get me thinking about RBS's recent announcement on its sponsorship deals. This Wednesday’s RBS said it plans to drastically cut back its sports sponsorship commitments, something which won't be good for the sports and is bound to have negative implications for the UK's PR industry.

Sports sponsorship is an invaluable supplement to many sports peoples existence and with the clock counting down to London 2012 Olympics it looks likely that last Summer’s medal haul will not be easily re-enacted. With the current economic contraction playing out there is little public appetite to make up for RBS (and others?) scaling back of support.

Obviously I am not commenting on Aviva’s sponsorship commitments – I am not aware of any changes with them, but I do feel there is an issue surrounding the measuring of success for sponsorship. A crucial element of any sponsorship campaign is measuring the media generated, with a view to generating some form of ROI.

While media output is not directly linked to attitudinal outcomes (or buyer behaviour) it is a powerful proxy - but just how powerful?. My concern is that, as companies revise sponsorship budgets, so they will dispense with output measures. We can argue over how accurate the link is between output and outcomes and undoubtedly this is one of the most controversial aspects of PR measurement.

From my work as one of the awards judges for the CIPR over the last couple of years I have been struck by how ingrained opinions are on media outputs and crucially the percieved closeness of its connection to outcomes. Campaign results are often outlined as a series of media hits with little attempt to address consumer out-take, let alone outcome.

Online however is mixing it all up and conventional off-line metrics don't transfer well online. I am bound to say that this does not mean it can't be done but the dynamic of the medium is necessitating a more dynamic solution.

Advocacy and organisational outcomes

Since meeting up on the 4 June at the latest gathering of Measurement Camp I have been pondering any connection between the concept of communication outcomes and advocacy. Are they the same, just viewed different ways?

Let me try to explain myself. The objective of successful communications is something to do with message conveyance and more importantly its correct understanding leading changes in behaviour (outcomes). The quality of this change in behaviour could be measured in the number and intensity of your advocates.

The notion of advocates and their importance is supported by the research of Fred Reichheld from Bain and Co. espoused in his book The Ultimate Question. The book ponders that organisations need to be aware of the answer to one crucial question: How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?

Another slant on the 'Outs'

At the latest meeting of Measurement Camp Jason Ryan (I think) from ICrossing mentioned a model of consumer behaviour which I feel is somehow connected with the Outputs, Outtakes and Outcomes model initially proposed by Walter Lindenmann back in 1990's. It seems to take a consumers perspective and uses the terms Awareness, Actions and Advocacy. I can see a strong link between media output and awareness and the idea of actions seems to correlate with user outtakes. Outcomes is always an intriguing area and, as I have discussed before, closely connected with the concept of advocacy.

My feeling is that outcomes can be divided into active and inactive outcomes, which could be supported by this this diagram from Ruby Quince of Bite Communications following-up on our break-out groups submission at the meeting. There is quite a lot of detail here and in effect it considers that initially an organisations needs to initiate a lot of social media interactions to generate participation, but as this increases the organisation can decrease its involvement as it gets nearer to the real brand advocates who demand higher levels of paticipation. Brad Little from Nielsen Buzzmetrics made the point that it becomes more difficult to accurately measure as you move from left to right on the diagram.

I hope this seems logical and I welcome any thoughts.