How AMEC’s ‘maturity mapper’ will transform the PR industry

AMEC’s Measurement Maturity Mapper will help communicators uncover the vital insights they need to build more effective PR campaigns, its creators said in this week’s webinar which is available to view below.

Having unveiled the tool at the 2018 AMEC summit in Barcelona, Cision’s Paul Hender, FleishmanHillard Fishburn’s Ben Levine and Survey Solutions’ Colin Wheeler outlined why they believe it will soon transform the industry.

Using examples from their initial pilot study, the trio revealed how it aims to drive innovation and deeper integration between marketing and PR.

“How do you know if your programme is good or bad? Are you tracking your progress against goals effectively?” asks Wheeler. “That’s where the measurement maturity mapper comes in.

“It’s a combination of a benchmarking tool and, most importantly, a tool which gives you the opportunity to identify the things you can do next.”

Plotting the path to perfect PR measurement

Hender said the team’s pilot study showed that the industry has made great progress in recent years, but it’s still some way off the ultimate goal of full measurement integration across PESO.

The team wanted to create an online tool that shows companies how they compare to others in their sector and the industry at large. What’s more, they wanted it to provide communicators with guidance on how best to improve their PR measurement practices.

“The vast majority of people are regularly evaluating their activity and 69% are measuring quality as well as quantity,” Hender said. “Meanwhile, just 19% contribute PR data to market mix analysis in order to understand the contribution of different marketing channels.”

“This data suggests that while progress has been made, there’s still more to do,” he continued. “A significant proportion of respondents say that comms evaluation is not as robust as other parts of the organisation.”

“We all know that measurement can be very simple and just basic counting,” Wheeler added. “There’s limited opportunity if all you’re doing is counting to actually have any influence on your campaign activity moving forward, because it doesn’t really give you any insight.

“If you develop your reporting to make it more sophisticated and give you more direction, you can build more effective campaigns – and you can also build campaigns that have more of an impact at the organisational level.”

A powerful tool to enhance your PR evaluation

One of the key themes at this year’s AMEC summit has been driving cultural change within organisations to use PR and comms data to demonstrate the discipline’s business impact and inform organisational decisions.

As such, the measurement mapper is also intended to provide case studies and recommendations about how to drive management changes – both downwards and upwards within an organisation. Levene believes the tool will be valuable for in-house communicators and agencies alike.

“The first way the mapper can be used within an agency context is as a conversation starter,” he said. “With existing clients, it’s an opportunity to re-engage with them.”

He added: “The tool sets benchmarks. It allows you to get a sense of where you as an organisation sit. And nothing motivates individuals like a league table, so to speak.”

Going forward, the team will now refine the measurement mapper survey, continue analysing the data, build the interactive tool and develop supporting case studies to accompany the resource.

The finished Measurement Maturity Mapper is set to launch on the AMEC website during its annual ‘measurement month’ in November.

Listen to the whole webinar below: