"World's Best Cup of Coffee"

Can we all agree right now that there is something special about Christmas? I will admit my favorite holiday is Halloween, and I would leave the pumpkin decor out all year if I thought it would help maintain a pleasant 65 degrees outside. However, there is just something about this time of year that helps you slow down, reflect on life. The promise of a new year is around the corner, and I know it is a time to help me focus on what I have accomplished over the past 11 months and discern areas to improve for the next year. 

Yet, how does one measure success or progress for that matter? 

Since we are on the subject of Christmas, one of my favorite movies is Elf. If you are not familiar with the movie, Buddy is a human who finds himself raised by Papa Elf at the North Pole. After several attempts to fit in as a normal elf, Buddy realizes that something is just not quite right with him compared to all the other elves. Papa Elf finally sits Buddy down and explains that when Buddy was a baby, he ended up in Santa’s bag and that his biological dad lives in New York City. 

Determined to find his dad, Buddy passes through the seven levels of the candy cane forest, through the sea of swirly-twirly gumdrops, and finally through the Lincoln Tunnel. Arriving in New York City, Buddy passes by a coffee shop touting possessing the “World’s Best Cup of Coffee.” Buddy, in his innocence, walks in and loudly congratulates the coffee shop on their success. 

“We have the best ___________ (fill in the blank).” That is a common phrase many companies use to promote their products. Let us go back to my question above. How does one measure success? A company can slap a statement on a label and utilize it to sell a product, but without the proper metrics to back up the claim, it is merely an opinion. 

In my very first post, I showed a Market Penetration Map provided to my organization from an external marketing company. It shows areas where we have more brand awareness than others. The graphic is an excellent benchmark for future campaign endeavors because it gives us a guide on where we need to focus more of our attention. It also will be great to see year-over-year changes as we make adjustments to our marketing plans and work towards what I referred to as “Painting the Map Orange.” 

December is when we are gearing up for 2020 by working on organizational and departmental goals and analyzing 2019 successes. Now, I can admit that is where every year, I strive to be better at tracking our efforts. There are some months where I drop the ball severely and forget to grab different metrics from digital campaigns or Facebook. Thankfully, most digital platforms maintain analytics that can be pulled for specific timeframes. It never fails, though, that leadership will ask for some measurement that I did not track as well, and usually, they will ask shortly before they need it. 

Leaders want measurements because they want proof of value. 

You cannot tout having the “World’s Best of Cup of Coffee” without the metrics to back it up. Tangible measurements are often easy to track with some consistent effort and help provide a great overview of how successful your strategic communication tactics over a given timeframe worked out.

Hootsuite outlines four areas to focus on when capturing metrics.

• Awareness: Highlights your current and potential audience.
• Engagement: Identifies how your audience interacts with your content.
• Conversion: Shows compelling your content is at converting and retaining leads.
• Consumer: Demonstrates the perception clients hold about your brand. 

Most people measure straightforward metrics such as post likes, shares, mentions, and followers. By applying a little more analytics behind this data, you can discern how well your communication efforts are paying off. 

Buddy’s goal for heading to New York was to locate his biological father, Walter. To Buddy’s heartbreak, Walter was on Santa’s *gasp* naughty list. A few minutes into meeting Walter, you understand why. Walter Hobbs is a hardworking executive for a Publishing Company, who perhaps has forgotten or maybe never known the joy of Christmas. One of the first scenes shows Walter refusing to reprint a child’s book with missing pages due to the printing expenses. 

This is a great example of an individual who has lost sight of a company’s goals for the sake of the bottom line. We discussed how tangibles (quantitative measurements) are easier to track. However, let’s take a second to focus on the more obscure, but arguably more valuable, intangibles (qualitative measurements) a company can track.  

Communication campaigns are often complex and can not be measured by data alone. Ragan suggests that there are many other factors to consider when looking at the ROI of your PR efforts. The article points out several areas to track measurements but focuses heavily on the importance of outcomes, both mid and long-term. It is essential to consider behavioral changes and conversion rates of leads. Your ad might be attracting link clicks, but are people sealing the deal and purchasing your product? 

My organization works with corporate partners that often distribute their news releases through newswires. These releases often lead to months where our organization has a drastic increase in media hits because of the influx of additional hits. Each month I prepare a report that shows our communications outreach, and those are the months that my report looks like we knocked it out of the park. However, our organization is receiving hits from all across the U.S., and even Germany and South Korea. While to a leader/client whose primary concern is only numbers, the metrics from these hits might appear high. However, I know our goal is to secure more media coverage in our local area due to fundraising constraints. I understand that these hits represent metrics that do not ultimately satisfy our goal.

Tangibles are useful at showing if a campaign is producing the number of impressions or returns you expect for your dollar, allowing you to adjust your approach as you go. However, data collecting that only focuses on straight metrics misses a more valuable mark. The best way to show success is to evaluate your efforts against your benchmark—goals. Are your efforts making an impact on the progress you said you would achieve in your goals? 

Goals provide your communication efforts with a baseline. One of our goals that gets recycled year after year in our organizational and departmental goals is: 

Continue to expand brand awareness and fundraising activities to ensure a continued transition to our new name, Feeding the Gulf Coast, and ensure strong community engagement to support facility expansions and utilization, core operations, and special programs as well as identify new grant and fundraising opportunities. Work to increase market penetration across our service area.

While this is a worthy goal, it is a bit vague. To help build out this goal into a better baseline for next year’s comparison, I need to think SMARTer. 

S.M.A.R.T. goals are:

• Specific: What do you want to accomplish? 
• Measurable: What can you measure to show progress?
• Achievable: Do you have the tools to make this goal happen? 
• Relevant: Will this goal aid larger organizational goals?
• Time-bound: When should this be accomplished? 

Let’s apply this principle to my vague 2020 goal:

• Specific: What do you want to accomplish?  More individuals to know who we are and to partner with us. 
• Measurable: What can you measure to show progress? More local impressions through social media, earned media, and paid advertising that is demonstrated by more acquired new donors, new community partners, and volunteers. 
• Achievable: Do you have the tools to make this goal happen?  With leadership support, yes.
• Relevant: Will this goal aid larger organizational goals? Yes, the fourth pillar of our 2022 Strategic Plan is engagement.
• Time-bound: When should this be accomplished?  2020

By applying these five principles to my goal, I now can discern what metrics will help show if my communication strategies are effective. 

SMART Goal: Because our organization depends on the financial and physical support from community partners to accomplish our mission, throughout 2020, we will increase financial support through donations by 15% and community support by increasing community partners and volunteers by 10%. We will utilize strategic communication tactics to raise brand awareness by sharing meaningful content that grows engagement measurements by 5%, and expand our social media outlet audience by 10% across Facebook and Instagram and 5% across Twitter and Linkedin.

While I doubt the world will ever agree on who sells the best cup of coffee, I know that any organization can apply both tangible and intangible metrics to show the success of a campaign by comparing progress with well-formed SMART goals or even SMARTER goals (add evaluation and re-do to your list). 

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” -Lewis Carroll