Writing Truly Measurable Objectives

by Vicky Elpers

Objectives are extremely important to the PR campaign because the success of the campaign will be determined by whether or not you have achieved your objectives. Obviously, your desired outcome would be to solve whatever problem you have defined. You should use the RAISE method to plan strategy (see archived article "The Method to the Madness") and clearly determine your problem (see archived article "What’s Your Problem?") regarding a specific target audience. Ask yourself, "WHO will this campaign affect?" That group or several groups would be the target audience you need to reach.

For example, your organisation may have donated a substantial amount of money to a local group or cause hosting an upcoming function. Your banners will be visible and you want a good turnout so people will SEE the company logo and know that you have made a significant contribution to the community. One of your objectives would be "to publicize the special event" (community picnic, scholarship award ceremony, Christmas fundraiser for families-in-need, whatever that special event might be). However, in the evaluation stages of the campaign, that particular objective would be difficult to "measure". So while "to publicize the special event" is an objective… it is NOT a "measurable objective". And the success of your campaign is measured according to how well you achieved your objectives. You can easily turn this objective into a measurable objective by being specific.

"To publicize the XYZ special event…HOW? And WHEN?" So be specific, "through local radio stations during the two-week period leading up to the event." You may decide to be even more specific – making it even more measurable, such as "by running two radio ads per day on local radio stations during the two weeks prior to the special event."

Target Audience

It’s obvious that you would be running these ads in order to stimulate attendance by the target audience (in this case, your local community). Therefore, this would be another objective of your campaign. Perhaps this is an annual event and typically, 3,000 people attend. This year your objective is to increase attendance. Simply be specific: "to increase attendance of the XYZ special event by 30% over last year." In the end, this objective can be ‘measured’ simply by taking a total of attendance. If at least 3,900 people attended your special event – you achieved your objective. You write this objective and your organisation will expect you to achieve, perhaps exceed, your objective. So remember that you are in full control of the overall success of your campaign when writing the objectives -- and don’t be brave enough to write "to increase attendance of the XYZ special event by 100% over last year," as it is highly unlikely you will actually wind up with 30,000 people in attendance.

That example was external (outside the company), but campaigns exist internally as well. What if your company of 800 employees has noticed an increase in the number of sick days used by employees, linked the sick-day use to smoking issues and decided to implement non-smoking policies? Out of fairness to your employees you need to offer them choices as well as help to overcome the habit. You will also have to do it in a way that doesn’t make tempers soar and valuable employees find jobs with your competitor. This would result in a massive internal campaign, but for the sake of this article we will focus on only two objectives. Rather than stating "to reduce the number of employees who smoke," attach a specific number to that objective. The second objective would be "to reduce the number of employee sick days taken annually from 12 to eight." And of course, you would need to think strategically in order to determine ways to encourage attendance so as to reduce those sick days -- such as allowing employees to accrue the sick time and use it in other ways. But the point of this article is to focus on making your objectives as measurable as possible so that when the campaign ends you can evaluate the success of it. Proving to your CEO in dollars exactly how successful your campaign has been will be easier to do if you’ve planned your objectives in a measurable way. If your campaign is successful, you can show -- in dollars -- the cost of sick days to the company, and this will show your CEO how much money the PR department has ‘saved’ the company over the year.

Objectives

Another important point to consider is to avoid linking two objectives together, such as "to reduce the number of employees who smoke by 30% in order to reduce the number of sick days per year from 12 to eight." That objective is actually two objectives in one. This creates confusion in the end and makes it harder to evaluate the success of your campaign. What if in the end you only reduced the number of employees who smoke by 25% -- at a major cost to the company for various ‘stop-smoking classes’ offered in-house -- but you hit the target for the reduction in the number of sick days? You cannot honestly say that you achieved that particular objective because you are still over by 5%. So keep each objective separate, simple and specific.

Basically, objectives normally begin with the preposition "To" and are followed by an action verb such as achieve, improve, reduce, increase, provide, then state in measurable form the desired outcome – exactly WHAT you expect to achieve by this campaign and HOW you will do it.

Remember, writing a vague objective not only sells yourself short because people do not understand exactly what you did within a campaign – but it shortchanges you in the evaluation stage when you need to prove your success and convert this success into a dollar amount whenever possible. Think specifically; you are the one writing the objectives and the one doing all the work in each campaign. Define what you will do specifically so that it can be measured specifically, and keep each objective separate to avoid confusion during the evaluation process.

Interested in reading more about writing measurable objectives and Public Relations strategy in general?

Using Research in Public Relations: Applications to Program Management, by Broom & Dozier, Prentice-Hall, 1990

Public Relations Campaign Strategies: Planning for Implementation, by Robert Kendall, Harper Collins, 1996

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©1999 Vicky Elpers