Think outside the ROI Box
Return on Investment (ROI) can be a frustrating buzz term for some professionals; but it doesn’t need to be. Here are three key performance concepts to help turn ROI into a powerful business ally:
1) Financial Performance
Let’s face it; business and the world economy are built foremost on finances. Whichever way you slice or dice the economic pie, money will inevitably become a part of the equation. Try to link business initiatives (e.g. MarComm and PR) to showcase an increase in an organization’s:
- sales;
- share price and, therefore, capital value in public companies;
- membership in organizations; and
- sponsorship, funding or other similar financial criteria.
2) Community Performance
Establishing Goodwill and reputation within the community at large is an often overlooked but valuable ROI indicator. Organization members, clients, suppliers, employees, professional partnerships and shareholders each comprise a pool of qualified candidates capable of providing feedback about an organization’s goodwill. Testimonials and focus group feedback can provide important insight into the goodwill (or lack thereof) for an organization. These insights can be directly linked to outreach activities and reported back to senior management as a bottom-line reputation measurement. One might go even further and link an increase in positive goodwill with an increase in sales or overall organization productivity. Being able to qualitatively or quantitatively review an organization’s goodwill can contribute to powerful ROI business intelligence.
3) Outreach Performance
It is one thing to push information out into the community but the value lies in understanding the impact of outreach activities. Including media analysis with a public relations campaign provides measurable feedback about whether messages were interpreted and communicated by media professionals accurately and how many people the messages reached. Tradeshow participation can be tracked by the number of post- show e-mail inquiries, number of business cards left at the booth as well as sales and/or the number of new partnerships formed as a result. Employee surveys open the door to better understanding of how internal communication messages are received, understood and implemented. Armed with an impressive stack of outreach activities and a thorough understanding of their impact will surely impress top-level management.
Now, harness ROI as an ally…
ROI can become a very important tool to help increase one’s value as a professional and an organization. If objectives are clearly established for corporate initiatives, ROI is best described as the achievement of those objectives, whatever they be. ROI may be a percentage increase in awareness, an increased level of support, a decline in complaints or criticism, improved comments and recommendations by analysts, or a more motivated workforce. Creating an ROI link with an organization’s financial bottom line is an industry best practice; but, don’t dismiss the opportunity to think outside the box and share new ways of interpreting and isolating measures for initiative, departmental and overall business successes.
Karen Bennett is a Senior Consultant with Delta Media who is
a new and traditional media MarComm specialist.
Karen@deltamedia.ca
