KPIs for Communications Professionals

When it comes to the function of communication, measuring success can be deemed very difficult and sometimes unmeasurable. Measuring perception is difficult and measuring awareness as first element of the funnel is just as hard.

Good news for you! It is not impossible at all. It’s actually very possible and very helpful. As the communications department often interacts intensively with the other departments it is important to show that your department matters to their success. Moreover, the communications function is a functions in the business that measures factors that can have incredible effects on revenue : Image & Reputation.

Especially in the current day and age, the public position of a business or organization within society is incredibly important. The aware customer/client/consumer will decide to not work with you or buy your product if you have a bad reputation, just as future employers will not apply if you have a bad employer brand. The way people speak about your organization is detrimental to success

So how do we measure the effectivity of communications?

Nowadays, the interaction between the communications professional and the marketing professional has increased. Communications comes up in every stage of the marketing funnel.

Let me give another quick but important sidenote:

The KPIs you choose to measure depend very closely on the objectives of your communications plan. It is also very dependent on the interaction of marketing and communications. Especially in B2B businesses and small businesses these two roles are often intertwined.

For this article I focus on three different levels of KPIs, which can be seen as an inverted pyramid (just like a funnel). From top to bottom, these KPIs are Visibility, Engagement and Conversion.

Visibility KPIs

Visibility KPIs measure the reach of your communications actions.
You can measure these internally through the owned media (find out more about owned media as 1 element of the media model in the article here.)

The KPIs you measure are dependent on the channels you own.

Social Media Visibility

Measure: The number of impressions/views, number of visits, numbers of followers.

Website Visibility

Measure: Number of unique visitors and the rate of these new visitors, Search impressions and click rates

Newsletter Visibility

Measure: Number of Subscribers, Rate of deliverability (quality measure)
How: Newsletter Analytics tools

Engagement KPIs

Engagement metrics measure the success and interest of your communication actions

Social Media Engagement

Measure: Total number of interactions (likes, comments, shares), new subscribers/followers based on posts, rate of clicks, engagement rate

Website Engagement

Measure: Bounce rate (how long people make it past the first page of your website), engagement rate (comments, shares, polls), number of pages visited per sessions, number of visitors per channel

Newsletter Engagement

Measure: Open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate (the less the better!)

Conversion KPIs

Conversion measures the effectiveness of the communications action based on its position in the firm. These conversions come close to marketing conversions. It is also very dependent on the interaction between communications, marketing, business development and sales and the goals of the organization

Measure: Number of messages received, rate of conversion of visitors into leads, number of subscribers to a newsletter or a webinar.

How to measure the KPIs

There are various tools available for measuring the KPIs mentioned above.

For measuring social media KPIs, use campaign and social media analytics tools. Either through the planning tools that you use or directly through the applications.

For website KPIs use Google tools like Analytics or Search Console or other analytics tools like Matomo, Mixpanel, SimilarWeb, SemRush.

The effectivity of your newsletters can be measured through the newsletter analytics tools. I would absolutely recommend choosing a newsletter provider with a strong analytics dashboard. Like this platform BeeHiiv for example! Big fan

But these don’t measure reputation and image?

True and good point. They are the starting point of the measurement. In terms of feasibility it is already a good start. Measuring reputation and brand image requires a bit more savyness. For example social listening. It is also very dependent on how much your business and communications function focusses on it. If you are working with a PR firm or if PR also falls within your scope of work, please do include the results of the PR actions in your evaluation. Especially the measurement of media mentions can be very helpful. The more PR you do, the more effect this will have on your website performance thanks to effective backlinking and the larger reach of your message

To dig deep into brand perception, which is often done in B2C companies, research needs to be done. Often this is done by research companies who can perform social listening experiments and panel interviews.

Did I miss KPIs that you use or is there another topic you would like to see in this newsletter? Please reply and let me know what you think!

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