Whenever I get asked what I do for a living, my response always depends on who is asking. To those outside of the marketing profession, it’s “I’m in marketing.” To those who are, it’s “I’m not a marketer.” My practice has always centered around communication, what numbers-obsessed marketers would call the softer side of marketing. And therein lies the problem with dealing in letters rather than numbers – the lack of measurability.

The business value of a marketer vs communicator

Where a marketer would evaluate the success of their campaign with a defined framework of metrics and benchmarks based more on assumption than hard logic, a communicator usually comes up empty when asked about their success. The marketing function, a core part of any business, has had to create its evaluation structure as an organizational necessity to prove its apparent usefulness within the larger enterprise. For a while, the public relations profession also came up with some kind of system, determining value through column-inches, circulation, and tone of voice. All this fell apart, of course, with the advent of digital publishing. When there could be an unlimited number of pages on a news website, you are no longer competing for limited space. Putting a numerical value to communication results went out the door for some practices, while the opposite happened for digital marketing.

How does a successful communication campaign, one that builds brand awareness and equity, reveal itself in the company’s books? When positive brand sentiment among the target audience does not translate into revenue, how does that affect how the communication function is valued within the business?

What we have in front of us is this problem of proof. This becomes increasingly important as the art of communication continues to get devalued within the workplace. I have lived through a number of reorganization efforts and those who cannot adequately prove their value in the language that the business speaks – numbers – often get cut. It is not so much an issue of not having any value at all, but a precise method of determining it. Perhaps it is a problem of expecting something beyond what this specific practice is intended to do. Or maybe it is the challenge of delineating communication within marketing, and marketing within communication. Is one side of the business taking credit for the achievement of another?

What is an accurate methodology for communication effectiveness?

Is there even a possibility of arriving at an accurate methodology for measuring communication effectiveness and a way to present its contribution to an organization’s overall objectives? How does a successful communication campaign, one that builds brand awareness and equity, reveal itself in the company’s books? When positive brand sentiment among the target audience does not translate into revenue, how does that affect how the communication function is valued within the business? Additionally, if the need for such expertise in a business setting is on some type of curve, wherein only  companies in a certain range of size or nature need it, how do we define that curve?

In public relations, Kim (2001) made an attempt to measure the economic value of the practice, contrasting the expense versus its overall effect on the company’s bottom line as a result of a two-step approach: improving reputation through increased public relations spending and banking on said reputation to increase profits. The study was able to prove this with statistical significance. However, public relations is a very small, and very outward aspect of overall corporate communication. The larger piece that contains public relations takes many forms and handles information in many ways and directions. Publishing content on the company’s own website, such as customer stories and blogs while targeting a variety of audience profiles, from customers to investors to regulators, is not part of the public relations domain. 

Zertfass and Viertmann (2017) theorized a communication value circle that identified the value-creation opportunities that such a function opens, but most concepts outlined in the framework are intangible and therefore incompatible with the common tongue in the business world. It is therefore no help in arriving at a commensurable value that can be understood by all stakeholders in the organization. This is where the difficulty is and further theorizing is needed.

References

Kim, Y. (2001). Measuring the economic value of public relations. Journal of public relations research, 13(1), 3-26.

Zerfass, A., & Viertmann, C. (2017). Creating business value through corporate communication: A theory-based framework and its practical application. Journal of Communication Management, 21(1), 68-81.