Most government contracts for public education and outreach contain an important clause: you must provide analysis and reporting. It’s part of your contract… and a big one. No matter how creative your message, compelling your graphics or innovative your approach, you need to show Uncle Sam the numbers (or the state or local government). Whether you are promoting smarter energy consumption, encouraging flu vaccines or touting local tourism, here are the must-dos for government public education campaign analysis.
Not into reading? Check out my webinar on the “Five Must Dos to Take Action from Your Digital Data,” which contains many of these same tips in webinar format.
Must Do #1: Stop Trying to Track Everything
First thing is first. Get get over your data FOMO (aka. fear of missing out). Many contract administrators and/or marketing firms make the mistake of tracking everything when trying to measure outreach effectiveness of a government contract. But just because you have a lot of stats and a large Excel spreadsheet, does not mean that you have true analysis and understanding of what worked and what didn’t.
The following steps will help you get clear about what’s important to track. This will help you start recording data in a way that’s not overwhelming.
Must Do #2: Get Clear on the Goal of Your Campaign
Ask yourself, “What is the point of this campaign?” The end goal isn’t likely to be driving video views, Facebook clicks or blog pageviews. Those are simply techniques. The reason you got the contract in the first place is to help you accomplish the broader goal of changing behavior or promoting public awareness. Start with that big picture and work backwards. We live in a society that’s so excited by tracking for tracking’s sake (Fitbit, anyone?) it’s easy to start recording data and lose sight of the “why.”
Many non-profits have a giant spreadsheet. Every time staff send an email, post to social media or write a blog post, they record the key metrics in their enormous Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheet.