Measuring the Impact of Earned Online Media on Business Outcomes: A Methodological Approach

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Measuring the Impact of Earned Online Media on
Business Outcomes A Methodological Approach
Presentation to the IPR Measurement
Summit October, 2009
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Itinerary

• Brief overview of how web analytics work and how
  they can benefit PR professionals
• Practical steps for how communications teams can
  use out-of-the-box web analytics
• How more advanced statistics can be used to
  integrate web analytics and other forms of media
  measurement to help communications team target
  the correct online audiences and optimize
  messaging strategies
• Review a case study of how Context Analytics
  used web analytics to help a client optimize
  their online communications around an online
  financial services product
• Shortcoming of web analytics and emerging uses

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Standard Media Metrics
Sentiment
Outcomes Website traffic Demand
generation Revenue
Web Analytics
Share of voice/ Thought leadership
Volume or prominence
Message Penetration
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Media and Business Outcomes
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Web Analytics A Brief Primer
4. JavaScript code executed collects data and
sends to collection server (e.g., Google
Analytics, Omniture, etc.)
1. Visitor types URL into browser (or clicks on
link)
2. Request sent to website server
3. Server sends page with JavaScript code
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Web Analytics A Brief Primer
Direct Traffic
Search Results
Website
Email Campaigns
Landing Page
Sale
Earned Media
Landing Page
Download
Paid Search
Landing Page
Registration
Content Network Ads

• Number of Unique Visitors
• Avg. Time Per Visit
• Bounce Rate
• Number of Page Views
• Conversions

Social Media Advertisements
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Why Are Web Analytics So Important to PR?
Uses same metrics to measure earned and paid
media

• Use fact rather than intuition when addressing
  questions such as
• Is our corporate Twitter account driving traffic
  to the right web pages?
• Is Key Message A more effective at driving sales
  than Key Message B?
• Should we invest more resources in social or
  traditional media?
• What audiences should corporate communications be
  targeting?

Can help optimize overall communications strategy
by matching the right messages with the right
audiences
Sites that refer a lot of traffic
Effective messages
Demand generation and sales
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Why PR Is Not Using Web Analytics
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Integration Challenges
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Why PR Is Not Using Web Analytics
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Practical Steps For PR Professionals
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Using Web Analytics for PR
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Basic Analytics
What sites drove the most traffic and engagement?
Raw Earned Media Report From Web Analytics
Clean
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Basic Analytics
What types of sites drove the most traffic and
referrals?

• Traditional
• Blog
• Forum
• Video
• etc

Media Type
Raw Earned Media Report From Web Analytics
Categorize
Site Content/Vertical

• General News
• Lifestyle
• Gaming
• etc

Outreach
Sites with relationships/contact
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Basic Analytics
Just by spending a little time to
categorize/segment sites (hypothetical data)
Outreach
Site Content
Media Type
Conversion Rate for Ad Words
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Practical Tips for Basic Analytics
1. Web metrics depend on PR goals

• Generating Demand/Leads
• Unique Visitors
• Registrations
• Downloads
• Avg. Time on Site
• Goal Page Visits
• Top Exit Pages

• Sales
• Revenue
• Orders
• Conversion Rate

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Practical Tips for Basic Analytics
2. Take the time to download and clean the data
Results from search and email campaigns could
make earned media appear less effective
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Practical Tips for Basic Analytics
3. Look at both totals and averages Averages
reveal hidden gems (hypothetical data)
Total Sales
Average Sales
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Advanced Methods
What types of stories and posts drive action?
Assign different sites and stories attributes
that will later be ranked to better understand
whats most effective
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Where to Get Data About the Site
Knowing who is visiting your site and where they
are coming from
What sort of data is useful?
Where do you get it?
Site Category

• Human categorization
• Social media monitoring tool (Radian6, Techrigy,
  Buzzmetrics, etc.)
• Business intelligence tools

Site Content
Media Type

• Search engine/panel data (Google Ad Planner,
  Microsoft Adcenter, Quantcast, etc.)

Referring Site Demographics
Traffic At Referring Site

• Panel-based data (e.g., comScore, Compete, etc.)

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How to Measure Story/Post Content
These are the components of media coverage that
drive perceptions and action Similar to what is
usually found in traditional and social media
monitoring reports

• Sentiment
• Spokespeople/Quoteds
• Key Messages
• Competitor Mentions
• Industry Issues
• Story/Post size
• Brand Prominence
• Product Mentions

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Data Integration and Analysis
Audience Data
Site-Level Attributes Site type, site content,
audience, traffic, number of posts, etc.
Unpaid Referral Data From Web Analytics
Integrated Data
Integrated, Causal Model
Post-Level Attributes Sentiment, product
mentions, messages, story length, etc.
Online Media Content
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Ranking Attributes by Importance
Its like multivariate testing, only for earned
media instead of advertisements
Apply multiple regression, hierarchical linear
modeling, or any statistical analysis that can
provide an estimate of effect size
Audience/ Site Attributes
Web Analytics Metric
Regression
Content/ Message Attributes
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Ranking by Coverage Attributes by Importance

• Statistical Output Helps
• Understand what types of articles/posts are
  effective
• What messages are most effective?
• What types of media outlets are effective?
• Ultimately, helps to prioritize PR efforts

What Drives Sales?
What Drives Visitors?
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Tying It All Together
Creating a Causal Model Using Path Analysis or SEM
Sentiment
.
.48
Sales
Messages
.88
.25
Visitors
Referring Site Traffic
.74
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Playbook
Drives Visitors
Drives Engagement
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Playbook
Drives Visitors
Drives Engagement
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Final Thoughts
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Caveats
Practical Limitations
Technical Limitations

• Reliance on cookies
• Reliance on clickthroughs
• Mobile devices and javascript

• You cant directly track offline activity
• Messy Data
• Integration requires additional software or
  technical skill
• Time consuming manual analysis/Communications
  team bandwidth

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Future Directions
Click-throughs
View-throughs
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Future Directions
Integrating Advertising and Earned Media

• Are ads more effective when they appear alongside
  unpaid media?
• Is unpaid media more effective when paired with
  ads?

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Takeaway Messages

• Web analytics allow communications teams to use
  the same types of measurement as other forms of
  marketing
• Web analytics can show what sites and
  stories/posts are driving the most traffic and
  engagement on a corporate website out of the
  box
• When integrated with other types of media
  measurement, web analytics can help
  communications teams match the right types of
  messages with the right audiences to increase
  engagement and revenue - this allows
  communications teams to use sophisticated
  segmentation and targeting methods used in paid
  media marketing
• Web analytics are not perfect Imperfections with
  data collection, reliance on click-throughs, and
  difficulty integrating different data sources are
  barriers to widespread PR adoption of web
  analytics