tracking what matters: pr measurement for travel brands

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TRACKING WHAT MATTERS Best Practices for Evaluating and Reporting Media and Blog Coverage Oregon Governor’s Conference on Tourism April 16, 2013

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Linea: Good morning! I’m Linea Gagliano, Travel Oregon's Global Communications Manager, and I’m happy to see so many of you here today to talk about measuring PR results. While the public relations discipline is wide and deep - and includes social media and many other programs - this session specifically only addresses media and blog coverage. Today we’re going to challenge some assumptions, and introduce a new mindset and a new methodology for reporting media and blogger relations success. With us today are Vicky Hastings and Stacey Malstrom from Maxwell PR, Travel Oregon’s media and blogger relations agency. They’ll be leading this workshop.

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Vicky Hastings Stacey Malstrom @vickyhastings @smalstrom

#ORGC @maxwellpr

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We’ve been thinking about PR measurement for a long time and have some concrete recommendations to share with you, but we also know that each situation is unique. The way a destination measures results would be different from a business like a hotel, restaurant or tour operator, so you’ll have a chance to work in a measurement system that’s optimized for your situation.

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Why Do We Report?

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Everyone in this room may be reporting their media coverage a little differently, and that’s OK. What are you reporting? Ad equivalency values? Total circulation? Total impressions? Number of articles? Is anyone doing something different than that? Imagine yourself back at the office. You are about to report the results of your PR efforts…Who are you reporting to? (ex: Board of directors, manager, Travel Oregon) What do the people you report to want to know about PR results? Do they want to know if the PR effort is paying off? Of course! To us, “paying off” means meeting goals, driving visits or business, and hitting the “right” media.

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What Do They Want to See?

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We’ve talked about what they want know. What do they want to SEE? Do they want to know if you are doing better than last year? (Audience answers) What does “better” than last year mean? OK. So this is where we start to get into the mind shift. There’s no simple solution or magic number that you can report to really show the results of your PR efforts. If we want to learn from our past experience – what is working and what is not – we have to be willing to do a little analysis, both quantitative and qualitative.

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New Mindset

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The hardest part is getting away from the mindset that more is always better. Sometimes the people we report to want to see charts and graphs, like total circulation year over year, or number of stories, something quantitative. And that’s fine. But with the decline of print media readership and increase in online media, circulation becomes less important and, quite frankly, harder to measure because there aren't very good tools for that. And in terms of number of stories, maybe it’s OK to generate fewer stories if you’re focusing efforts on better stories. So this new mindset is weaving more QUALITATIVE evaluation into your reporting because pure numbers don’t tell the whole story. Qualitative analysis of media coverage includes asking questions like: Was the coverage good? Did the media and blog coverage help us meet our strategic goals? Also, in our case, we only evaluate stories that someone on the Travel PR team – meaning Travel Oregon people or the Maxwell folks – work on. That may be a good approach for you, too.

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Industry Standards • Goal setting and measurement are important • The effect on business results can and should be

measured where possible • Media measurement requires quantity and quality • Advertising equivalencies are not the value of public

relations

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The methodology we’ve adopted for Travel Oregon and other clients is based on the Institute for Public Relations Commission on Measurement and Evaluation. It also follows the Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles. Both clearly spell out that “measurement should not just be quantitative relying on volume or impressions. There should be some measure of quality included when analyzing each item.” The PR groups setting standards have struck down advertising equivalency as a way to measure PR results. Almost all advertising media buys are negotiated, with national rates, local rates, nonprofit rates, and discounts all different based on frequency. So using ad costs is not a fair comparison to evaluating a great story. Some clipping services and broadcast monitoring services use a multiplier to account for the increased credibility of a editorial compared to advertising, but the standards bodies have also rejected that notion. We don’t use it at Maxwell, either.

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New Methodology

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OK, so we’re talking about adding a layer of qualitative analysis to your reporting process. How are we doing that for Travel Oregon? What follows is an explanation of how we set more targeted PR objectives this year with quality of coverage in mind, and the point system that we created to answer the question: is this good coverage?

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Travel Oregon PR Objectives Project Annual Goal Results (Q1 - Q3) Feast FAMs • 7 media/blogger visits

• 7 resulting stories/posts scoring 7-10 points

• 8 media/blogger visits • 38 stories/posts • 94.7% scored 7-10 points

Niche • 5 research trips • 16 stories/briefs secured • Majority score 7-10 points

• 1 trip complete (3 planned) • 7 stories/briefs (4 planned) • 28.5% scored 7-10 points

Ongoing • 50-100 stories/briefs secured • Majority score 7-10 points

• 114 stories/briefs secured • 53.5% scored 7-10 points

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Feast FAMS Strategy: Leverage Feast Portland and secure media/blogger visits throughout the state Niche Strategy: Increase awareness of special interest travel opportunities in Oregon through niche blogs and media outlets Focus areas: Family, LGBT, cycling and winter recreation Ongoing 50-100 stories/briefs secured as a result of media e-newsletters, opportunistic pitching, industry relations, reactive media relations and press tours POINTS What are points? What does 7-10 mean? We set out to develop a point system that would help us evaluate if the coverage we’re working on is good coverage. And if it’s not, help us identify what we can change about our program to make sure that it is. Circulation Circ is declining -- shifting to online Value of The Oregonian vs. The New York Times in driving visits -- circ doesn’t always tell this story No good tool to find circ Still interesting to watch circ change over time -- use as a gauge / baseline

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Consumer Travel Coverage

Points 0 1 2 3 4

Story Type ------------ Mention Brief/Roundup Featured Roundup

Oregon Feature Story

Media Tier ------------ Tier 3 ------------ Tier 2 Tier 1

Visuals No Yes ------------ ------------ ------------

Contact Info No Yes ------------ ------------ ------------

TOTAL LOW = 2 ------------ ------------ ------------ HIGH = 10

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Now, this has an 6-page methodology document that goes along with it, but for sake of time and brain space today, we’re just going to walk through the basics of how we evaluate “consumer travel coverage” – that means articles in Sunset magazine and The Oregonian travel section, not a KGW story on how tourism affects the economy. What does this look like in a board report?

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Coverage Results To-Date

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There are a number of ways to represent this visually to convey success, but the point is to figure out what your story is. How many feature stories have you worked on this year? Is that important to you? What percentage of your results come from proactive vs. reactive media relations? Your destination is included in a lot of roundups but never with a photo. Do you need better photography? Does the majority of coverage you’ve worked on reflect your key messages? If you want to shift the focus of stories about your destination, are you making sure to tell writers about your new initiatives? The biggest takeaway that I hope you leave with today is that reporting can be more than just sharing a number each quarter. You can learn something valuable from it about how you approach media relations and set goals for next year. And it doesn’t have to be complicated or mean overhauling the way you work with media. Maybe it will give you more recognition for the things that you are already doing, but that aren’t reflected in your current metrics.

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A Tailored Approach

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In much of our work at Maxwell, we’ve found that the tailored approach generates the best media and blog results. That’s: Identifying a select number of writers from media outlets that would make the most difference in terms of driving business Researching what they’ve covered in the past and Reaching out to them with a specific story angle This means that we’re focused and targeted when setting goals for media relations. That feeds into our qualitative measures. And that’s what we’re recommending to you. Go ahead and continue measuring what you have in the past, but layer on at least one qualitative objective. Be thoughtful about that layered on element.

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Hopefully you saw that the homework for this session was to bring a story or two about your destination, hotel or attraction that you are proud of. Please get that out…and if you don’t have an example with you, think back to a media or blog story that was really a win for your organization. If you were giving that story a score from 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, what number would you give that piece of coverage – and why? Write down the score you would give it and the reasons you scored it that way. We’ll come back to it in a minute.

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Example Qualitative Objectives • Generate a story on ___________ in _____________ (topic) (media outlet)

• Convey _____________ in ________ of stories (message) (number)

• _______ of stories to score ________________ (percent) (target point range)

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Here are some examples of the type of qualitative goals we recommend you create, but it’s going to be different for each of you, depending on where your top target audience and where you see the greatest potential to attract business. Get a story on Eastern Oregon motorcycle travel in the Tri-City Herald or Idaho Statesman newspaper Generate a mention of our wine bar in Food & Wine magazine Get a story on our festival in The Oregonian Generate mentions of our new meeting and convention facilities in three stories

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Getting to What Matters • Key Message Penetration • Positioning/Placement/Prominence • Tone • Story Type • Shared/Sole Mention • Media Tier • Photos/Visuals • Website Link or Contact Info • Spokesperson Quoted • Quality of Comments

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When building a point system, there are number of important elements you can highlight in a story or media clip to show its value. But don’t make it too complicated.

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Your Qualitative Layer

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It’s OK to continue what you have been measuring, but we recommend you add a qualitative layer to that reporting. And now you have the chance to start designing it using the worksheet.

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Try Test Tweak

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Now that you’ve designed your score card, test it on the coverage you brought and see if it still seems to makes sense. Do you need to tweak it?

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Benefits • Provides a method for reporting

coverage that really matters o Focuses on what drives visits and

business

• Helps focus and prioritize media and blogger relations

• Prompts efforts, e.g., suggesting that a URL or contact information to be identified as a travel planning resource

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THANK YOU! Vicky Hastings Stacey Malstrom [email protected] [email protected] 503.231.3086