Marketers; measuring your performance at work

As we continue ranting about budget issues in our campaigns, we are constantly being tasked with showing our worth. We all know that the world of PR and marketing keeps on changing every new day and some methods of establishing metrics have become extinct and the need to show accountability has never been greater! Which leads me to ask, how do we measure our work and show worth at the same time?
As we look to redefine our place in the marketing communications universe, here are a few suggestions on how we can truly measure our successes and show clients and our bosses that PR and marketing is a lot more than fluffy press releases and wasted hours on blogging.
1. Re-evaluate your purpose as a PR & marketing professional. 9.5 times out of 10, we are hired to help drive sales, awareness and brand equity of a client or company’s products and/or service offerings. However, as a profession, we often lose sight of the big picture. Constantly evaluate your strategies and tactics to determine if they are working to meet the larger goals of your client or company.
2. Find out what matters most to your client. The days of defining success by getting the most media hits are long gone. Organizations now want to work with someone who can help meet all of their marketing goals. Before you finalize your overall marketing strategy, find out what your clients expect from you and create a plan that reflects those goals and objectives. Most importantly, make sure you have a way of measuring against the goals you’ve been given.
3. Stop focusing on impressions and ad equivalency – An entire blog post could be written about this topic alone, but I’ll try to keep it short and simple. The practice of measuring impressions is archaic for one major reason, it is not accurate! Impressions are based on total circulation rates and don’t account for the small percentage of your target market that actually read or see your story. Ad equivalency rates are not much better due to their limitations.
4. Learn how to calculate ROI! No matter what PR or marketing position you may hold, you need to be familiar with determining ROI, in the traditional sense, for your client or company. The standard formula that I like to work with is net profit / total investment × 100 = return on investment percentage. Showing ROI is not the end-all, but will definitely come in handy the next time you need to put some hard numbers next to your strategies.
5. Develop a new and relevant model of measurement. A sound measurement strategy should always include an integrated approach using tactics that will track the behavior of your target markets from the beginning of the campaign to the end. I like to use the AIA approach, which is described below:
a. Awareness – some examples could include increased Search Engine ranking, increased visits to your website, positive comments on message boards, online reviews, the number of times your online article has been viewed, etc.
b. Interaction –Intended communicative interaction is highly recommended.
c. Action – As the saying goes “Show me the money!” Everything from increased sales to determining the number of people attending an event can be measured when it comes to reporting on just how many people took action.
The key to success with this is… always have a call to action and a good way to measure it.