Perfecting the Measurement Program

In Katie Paine's Measure What Matters, she discusses the seven steps to take to perfect the measurement program. Measurement can be scary to some companies because it is consuming in money and time, and some companies just don't know how to do it. Here's seven steps to make that process a little easier:

Step 1: Define your goals and objectives. A company must have a desired outcome, with a deadline, budget and target audience. Having these goals and objectives in sales, message or position, or public safety or education should be related back to strategic corporate goals. Once you figure out what you actually want to measure, it makes the process much easier!

Step 2: Define your environment, your audiences, and your role in influencing them. After examining each audience, you can determine how a good relationship will benefit the organization and how a bad relationship will threaten it. Defining these three things will reinforce your goals and objectives.

Step 3: Define your investment. Finding how much you have to invest in measurement, with cost and staff, will help define your program. Knowing what the opportunity cost is and how effective your measurement is will help you allocate resources to the best places.

Step 4: Determine your benchmarks. Measurement is comparative. It's important to determine benchmarks and compare your company to a few close competitors, as well as comparing it to itself with past performance.

Step 5: Define your key performance indicators. Each objective may need a different way to be measured. It's important to know if you want to measure visibility or awareness.

Step 6: Select the right measurement tool and vendors and collect data. Data can be measured through content analysis, primary research or web analytics. Finding the right tool is important to collect the right data.

Step 7: Turn data into action. Measurement is a continuous process and should help you improve as you go. Setting up a reporting schedule will help you constantly track what you are doing.