Taking Root

Communicating the College- and Career-Ready Agenda

Measuring a Communications Strategy’s Success

As your college- and career-ready campaign progresses, you will want to
measure exposure, awareness and understanding of your messages among
your target audiences. You will want to know how deeply your reform
agenda is penetrating and what kind of traction it is getting.

As with communications activities, the measurements you choose can range

from no- to high-cost. No matter your budget, you should take the time at
the beginning of your campaign to establish effectiveness trackers so that
you can measure the strengths and weaknesses of your campaign. Particu-
larly effective is an ongoing, replicable way to capture important trends.

The measurements you develop and the data you collect can help you ad-
just your plan to devote more time and resources to the activities that are
having the greatest impact on your targets. They can also help justify the
activities you have already done and the activities you want to do moving
forward. Keeping track of your effectiveness can also provide a basis for
your budget decisions and allow you to adjust your budget based on data,
not just a feeling or a hunch. Solid measurements also can help you in ef-
forts to fundraise.

Tactics for measuring success include:

• Manual earned media tracker: Regular media and impression moni-

toring can help you determine penetration and traction of your mes-
sages. This is as simple as keeping a record of the earned media you
receive, determining the circulation of those publications and then cal-
culating an impression number.

It is common knowledge in the PR world that impressions for print pub

lications are calculated by multiplying the circulation of a newspaper
by 2.5 (that is, 2.5 people read each publication on average) and 3.5
for periodicals (that is, 3.5 people on average read a periodical).

If a publication has a Web site, you then add the amount of Web
impressions – which can typically be found in the “Advertising” section
on the publication’s Web site – to your print impression number.

1775 Eye Street NW, Suite 410 • Washington, DC 20006 • P 202.419.1540 • www.achieve.org 1
 While this formula may sound a little complicated, it is an important
calculation because it will give you an idea for how large of an audience
your messages are reaching and how expansive your reach can be.

• Professional earned media tracking system: Several companies,

including BurrellsLuce, Meltwater and Nielsen, offer services to track
earned media coverage and report on it, including programs that gauge
the subjective reaction to your messages.

• Strategic effectiveness debriefs: At key stages of the project,

you can conduct strategic debriefs with your team members and key
stakeholders to make sure the college and career-ready campaign is
moving in the right direction.

• Web presence and campaign effectiveness tracker: If your campaign

has a Web site, monitor its usage and any other online presence you
might have (data from sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc.)
to look for trends and traction. Additional Internet traffic, such as the
open-rates and click-thrus from emails sent to stakeholders and external
audiences should also be monitored. These services are low- or no-cost
and require only some periodic staff time to cover.

• Survey of intended audience(s): Sometimes the easiest way to get

feedback on your efforts is to ask for it. You can add a real-time survey
on your Web site about your efforts: what messages work and don’t
work, how people feel about college and career readiness, whether
recent high school grads felt prepared, what they would have done dif-
ferently, etc. You can also do targeted polling to determine what impact
your agenda has had to date through email or more official channels, or
reach out to a number of high schools to evaluate whether any of your
messages or campaigns have penetrated at the local level.

• Internal communications: No matter what measurements you use, be

sure to communicate what you find with your supporters, including your
internal team. Sharing the measurements you are collecting demon-
strates to your team and supporters that their investment in your college
and career-ready reform agenda is paying dividends.

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Copyright © September 2009 Achieve, Inc.