Every PR practitioner should know that every campaign begins with research and ends with evaluation. No mater what model you use be it RACE, ROSIE, or RPIE you have to research your publics and then come up with an efficient way to evaluate them.
But how do you go about this? A great place to start is with formative and evaluative research. According to Professor LaRae Donnellan, formative is done before you start the communication process of your campaign. This can help you decide what kind of strategies and tactics that you would like to use. (PR Research Methods June 2010) During this process it is important that a practitioner comes up with a list of metrics for their campaign. A metric is a measurement; it is how you measure your objective.
Evaluative Research can be performed during or after your campaign. It is important to measure after you have completed your campaign however; I think that it is more important to do this while the campaign is going on. You can make adjustments to certain objectives if they are not getting the best results from your publics.
After you have performed these research methods you may want to use some of these measurable objectives to track your results:
- CPM ( cost per thousand impressions)
- Clip Counting
- ROI ( Return on Investment)
- Benchmarking
Another good tactic is to perform a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats. This exercise is beneficial to understanding all the aspects of the client. You start by making a list of all the strengths that your company/ client may have, such as:
- Location
- Price point
- Contacts
- Reputation
Listing these items will help you get a better understanding of what you may do better than your competitors.
Next, you should list the weaknesses of you client/company. Some examples of weaknesses are:
- Poor reputation
- Poor communication skills
- Poor availability
- Lack of resources
Next, you need to make a list of opportunities. Are known as the external factors affecting your client/ company, opportunities are things like:
- New Developments within your market
- Sponsorship
- The change in common trends with your public
The last step to the SWOT analysis is the threat step. Threats are potential opportunities according to Professor Donnellan. Competition is one of the main threats that a client/company may face.
While there are many other strategies a practitioner may use these are a few that can take your campaign further.
I’m a very observant person. I like to study people as they respond to certain situations to get a better understanding of them. After doing this for awhile I started to believe that I can predict actions based on personality and desires. And in most cases I can, however, this does not work for creating campaigns because of the number of people I am trying to reach. Forcing research into my life helped me to realize that while I may understand people, I still cannot judge their responses. The fact that public relations ties into physical science almost makes me wish I had paid a little more attention. Luckily, I am being thought the same applications of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs to the economic ROI of a product.
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