SOS: why ‘sending out stuff’ hampers outcomes for PRs

Twenty years ago, when I began my public relations career, communication between organisations and their publics was usually one-way with success largely measured by reach - how many outlets covered a story, how many people did an article reach, how many attended an event.

Today things are very different… or are they? 

The modern communications practitioner has an unprecedented opportunity to be strategic. We can research our audiences and external landscapes in great depth, get instantaneous feedback on content to support continuous improvement and evaluate how our campaigns impact the bottom line of the organisations we support by using best-practice measurement frameworks and digital tools.

However, my observation is that relatively few PR practitioners are taking full advantage of these opportunities. Impressions is still the industry’s most popular metric and press coverage/backlinks are often celebrated as an end-goal rather than the beginning of a user journey towards priority audiences taking the actions that will drive organisational impact.

Not too long ago, I was asked by the CIPR to deliver a webinar on award-winning campaigns after my consultancy, Evergreen PR, won its 30th industry award in just three years of trading.

As part of this webinar, I conducted an analysis of the entries I’d studied in as a judge of various PR awards and found that even among nationally shortlisted PR campaigns, only 32 per cent achieved a tangible outcome and only 36 per cent had a clearly defined strategy, yet 96 per cent could articulate the tactics they implemented.

This makes sense. PR has long seen itself largely as a ‘top of the funnel’ contributor. “We will get your brand seen”, practitioners promise; “we will make you part of the conversation”, agencies insist; “it’s like free advertising”, some boast.

However, this just isn’t enough, especially in this current climate, when budgets are squeezed like never before and value creation is of the utmost importance.

Why invest in communications activity where the promise is only to get people talking, when you could instead invest in getting people to take action?

As the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) states, “Activity without meaningful outcomes is irrelevant”. 

PR practitioners who want their contribution to be recognised as ‘relevant’ need to do two things:

1. Design fully integrated outcomes-driving campaigns that achieve tangible business ROI.
    
2. Build evaluation frameworks that enable us to objectively assess how communications campaigns are impacting on business objectives, so that the value created can be clearly demonstrated and improvements can be made based on real insights.

This is a challenge I’ve been exploring for the last 18 months at Evergreen PR, leading me to develop a new framework (MERTO) for helping health organisations identify the ‘Most Effective Route to Outcomes’ by using prioritisation and behaviour science.

I believe that the key elements of MERTO can be used by anyone.

1. Start with the outcome

The priority when planning communications activity should be on truly understanding the target outcome. This often requires some interrogation, especially since PR practitioners are typically tasked with delivering a communications objective rather than the actual business goal.

The ‘5 Whys’ technique is a practical way to uncover the wider strategic intent around what the organisation wants to achieve and why it’s important, as well as how hard it will be to get there.

Getting access to this business-level information supports the setting of meaningful targets and ensures a laser focus on the things that really matter to the organisation. Without it, effective ideas can pass us by, or campaigns can be selected based only on what people think ‘will fly with the media’, rather than what will drive the organisation’s desired outcome.

2. Use behavioural science to understand how to activate your audience

For any outcome to be achieved, we need to drive specific audience groups to undertake specific actions. To do this, we need to understand people in their fullest sense, as human beings that exist within a wider context.

The first step to effective audience research is to identify who is directly involved in the behaviour that we want to drive (our targets) and who has influence over them (our enablers). Then we can use behaviour science frameworks such as COM-B to identify the optimum messages and activity to trigger motivation and desire, and to ensure capability to take the required action.

We recently helped the Royal College of GPs increase the number of practices getting Veteran Friendly-accredited by 645%. We did this by broadening our audience focus from solely GPs to the wider practice workforce, and by creating imagery, messages and content that activated motivational drivers. It also enhanced capability by providing helpful education and a clear user journey. The campaign was praised by the government and NHS England.

3. Prioritise at every step to maximise certainty and eliminate waste

How much of your time do you spend doing things you feel will truly have an impact on the goal you’re trying to reach? Probably not as much as you’d like.

The Pareto Principle states that 80 per cent of any outcome is generated by 20 per cent of the effort, so identifying the elements that will have the biggest impact on the end-goal can be transformative.

Yet with busy, tactically-focused remits, many practitioners can get so tied up with low impact work that they miss opportunities and ‘sliding doors moments’ that could potentially have had a transformative impact. AMEC calls this kind of non-strategic work ‘SOS’, which stands for just ‘Sending Out Stuff’.

In such a challenging period, PR practitioners can’t afford to get stuck in SOS-mode, creating low level content that delivers little tangible value. By understanding business objectives, and by using effective prioritising and behavioural science techniques to trigger audience action, we can increase both the impact our work delivers and our ability to demonstrate its value.

Leigh Greenwood is the founder and managing director of Evergreen PR, a specialist health communications consultancy that is focused on delivering business outcomes for health charities, health tech and med tech companies and NHS and private healthcare organisations.