The Future of PR and Communications is going to be much more metrics-driven: Susan from 10Fold Communications

Before starting her own company, 10Fold communications, Susan’s career interest had multiple pivots, starting with Clinical Psychology and making her way to, industrial psychology, HR, Marketing, and Industry Analysts to making her way into Public Relations. Data has played an important role in Susan’s life.

Check out her entire story:

Text Transcript(Auto Generated)

0:23I started life in actually psychology.

0:27I went through school very quickly in the midwest and I thought that I would go into psychology and as I got into psychology I realized quickly I didn’t want to be in clinical psychology.

0:39And so I pivoted to industrial organizational psychology and I found myself in HR and I looked like they actually it looked like the marketing group was having so much more fun.

0:52And so when they realized that I had done a lot of research they suggested that maybe I wanted to come over and work with the industry analysts.

1:00And so I began to so I had an invitation to come over and work in industry analysts and from there I took on more and more and more and I wound up working with the media from there and I just had just a wonderful time understanding first what the industry analysts were forecasting for the industry, what they were saying would happen from a trend perspective and then what how I could apply that with the media and how I could use those skills with media relations.

1:36And so data has really always been a part of my life from the get go.

1:40I was doing surveys and work with research where data is extremely important.

1:45So yeah so that’s where I started awesome.

Understanding data

1:56So data began you know early in my actual education when I was looking at stats and information when we were doing research I was voting S.

2:06P.

2:06S.

2:07S.

2:07So of course data has always been extremely important but it became you know it’s never lessened in importance for me.

2:16A lot of people don’t think about it in public relations.

2:19And I realized as I was building this agency so very few people thought much about the data and what it was saying but actually we don’t even quote a new business proposal or even think about a presentation without looking at the data and what the data says.

2:38So many clients care so deeply about share a voice and today there’s so many fields and disciplines such as social and digital where they can give people exact information about what data there is in their field and I think media relations has fallen way behind in thinking that this is just an art and that is just about relationships when there is so much data out there about what’s being written on what key words there are what topics are being picked up on.

3:12and people are choosing to ignore that which I think is terrible.

3:16and you can actually see the trends of where things are going, which publications are writing about what which reporters are writing about what and I think it’s really important to inform your clients in in terms of what they were wanting to talk about and what will and won’t work.

3:33And so we use data very much to our advantage when we’re working in not just new business, but as we’re working along the way, help our clients stay in a recent and relevant trends that they can continue to be in the limelight and get the awareness they need to build their business. 3.52

Solving challenges with data

4:06 data is really helpful in terms of helping us find for example, a green field of opportunity, it shows for example, oh nobody’s ever talked about this particular topic or this particular topic is very saturated.

4:22Oh wow.

4:23The data shows that all the coverage are all brief mentions.

4:27Nobody’s gotten any, you know, deep coverage in this area.

4:33Oh you know, nobody’s been, you know, so so we we quantify everything and then of course we use qualitative data as well.

4:42We’re looking for things like where are where is the business press writing or where are the feature articles or you know where how much sentiment analysis is there in terms of positive versus neutral versus negative.

4:59So we’re constantly applying data from a qualitative perspective as well as just pure numbers of things.

5:07So I can’t even separate my life from data at all since the get go from my very early education in college to now.

5:16I you know we’ve been a data driven firm.

5:19I know a lot of people say it but we literally have our differentiator is something called metrics matter and we’ve built an entire custom application around it and we’re moving our clients from end of month summaries that look like power points to a custom application.

5:36It doesn’t have to be end of month.

5:38They can choose the range, the date range they want and look at the data and what the data says in terms of their share of voice against their competitors at any time, any point in time. 5.52

My go-to metrics

5:56My favorite metrics are the metrics that my client wants to see because there are no two clients that are the same.

6:04in some cases they want to be in the Wall Street Journal or they want to be in business press and in some cases they want to be in very specific verticals that in which their new clients are, you know buying and my my job is not to judge their their value.

6:27My job is to help them achieve what they want.

6:30You know my I don’t judge them.

6:32They need what they need.

Fav tools for data insights

6:39We use tools of many different types and the key type of cool tool that I look for is something that has an A.

6:46P.

6:47I.

6:47That I can use for my custom application because I’m trying to build an app that is customizable to my client’s needs so that whatever they need they can see so they can pull the data that they need, the information that they need to satisfy their board.

7:05Their ceo so the most important type of tool is comprehensive.

7:12It’s searching all the sites, it’s looking for all the data.

7:16So I don’t have to look at and say oh they’re missing.

7:20You know these types of publications or extra Y or Z.

7:25That is frustrating to me.

7:28So I’m looking for tools that are comprehensive.

7:32We use one for digital and official, we use another for media we use obviously google, who doesn’t we use we use so many.

7:43We have four or five that we use and all of those get ported into our custom map.

The way forward

8:35 I think the future of Pr and communications is going to be much more metrics driven. 8.45

8:46I think more numbers driven when you look at S.

8:48C.

8:48O what are people trying to drive to, they’re trying to drive to a higher ranking.

8:53they’re all looking for their score.

8:55I think the same is true of, you know, emails, they’re looking for conversions and price per click.

9:01I think the same is true for, you know, email campaigns.

9:05They’re looking for conversions and price for clicks I think right now and for a very long time public relations has had a nice, and easy in some ways and that they’re looking for awareness and that’s such a nice little air quote.

9:20You know, they’re in some ways it’s not easy because it’s, they, you know, no one’s really defined it and sometimes that can be always the expectations from higher and higher.

9:30The Wall Street Journal CNBC Fox News.

9:33We don’t work that way.

9:34We ask for very specific metrics and we deliver those very specific metrics and we price to those very specific goals.

9:43I think a lot of agencies still work on a retainer and nothing is defined and the goals are very loosey goosey and someone is always disappointed.

9:54Either the agency is very disappointed because they don’t feel that they were paid for their efforts or the client is very disappointed because they don’t feel that they got the the results that they paid for.

10:06But in both scenarios, someone is very disappointed.

10:12Unlike when you walk into a grocery store and you pay whatever you pay for that prime rib or that lobster.

10:20You know you paid for it, you bought it.

10:22You obviously are happy with that price….fair trade 10. 28

My 2 cents

11:05You know, someone put into somebody else’s head that PR is unpredictable.

11:12But if that’s the case then so is sales and somehow they manage to predict sales well, you can’t say who’s gonna write or who’s gonna buy.

11:21There is a way called the sales funnel to predict what type of sales sales people will have.

11:29And that’s what we do.

11:30From a pR perspective, we’ve just begun to build quotas just the same way salespeople build quotas, so our people need to start thinking about that and building themselves quotas for their clients, or I think they’ll find themselves less and less employed by clients.