As an essential first step, the Dashboard can tell you how many articles have been generated over a period of time, in which media channels, and over what geography. This allows clients to know how much exposure they are getting, in which publications and where. This is valuable in itself.
However – we will always supplement these metrics with more specialist metrics, more customised to a client’s agreed marketing strategy, and so fundamentally more relevant for your own business development goals.
This second layer of the dashboard combines both automated data and human intelligence – judging how each individual article supports your goals. Leveraging our experience in the investment management and property sectors, we consider a range of different factors to assess who an article has reached, how well it reflects key messages, the sentiment towards a business, to name but a few. This particular measure of ‘coverage type’ is especially important in understanding media coverage quality and discerning between “noise” and what is tangibly adding to long-term business growth.
The most important thing about any kind of data or report though is the key conclusions and recommended action. This is the difference between ‘measurement’ alone and true insight.
As we discuss the findings and long-term trends from the Dashboard with clients, JPES teams have already noticed the time savings and strategic focus provided – as these insights quickly reveal both the challenges and successes we face together. In short, we are able to spend more time advising clients on the best course of future action, more time understanding their perspectives, and then more time putting the next steps into action.
We are already working on further improvements and new metrics to add, but as we do so, we will never lose sight of how important it is to explain, discuss and then recommend. One of my particular joys of working at JPES is the shared excitement for the new insights we are developing for clients. To ‘think big’ is how we work as a team – which means using evidence to look more strategically at a problem, but also to see things from other perspectives, especially those of our clients.