How do you measure corporate communications?

Last week Hallvarssoon & Halvarsson hosted a round table meeting with web managers and communications managers of large European companies. One of the topics was ROI on online corporate communications – how to measure your investment and your success.

Is there a difference between measuring ‘traditional’ communications and online comms?

We all know that you can measure almost everything online. But the difficulty is to understand what is relevant to measure. Sometimes we tend to make things more complicated just because they are online. But in my opinion, it is just as difficult to measure success of corporate communications in general as it is to measure it online.

Communication strategy – on and offline – to be related to the business goals

I don’t believe that there is a standard set of KPIs or measurements that can be used for all companies. To measure your success you need to know what success is for you and your company. And as both your communication strategy and online communication strategy (do you have one?) should be based on your business strategy and your business goals, it should be related to this.

Four steps to be able to start measuring success

To identify what it is that your company should measure, you should start with these four steps:

1. Know what you want to achieve
2. Have a baseline – you need to know where you start
3. Measure the change – so that you know if you’re making progress
4. Set a value to your measurements

 Corporate communications is often about the corporate brand, perception and reputation. One tool to measure the perception online is the search engine results page (SERP) for chosen keywords that you want your company to be associated with. But again, the most important is to know what it is you want to achieve before you start measuring. After that you can compare that value with you investment.

Hopefully you can find some more inspiration of how to measure your success in the full presentation from the event:

Helena