Evaluating Communications
Three pieces of practical advice for evaluating communications work:
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Define success up front — and it has to include numbers.
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Put measurements in place, so you’re actually able to measure for it. (i.e., Determine how many people and who received the communication - at issue here is not just the number of people who receive a given communication, but whether or not they can make a difference in effecting the desired change. Were they the audience you were trying to reach, as laid out in your objectives? A stop-smoking ad campaign may reach a million people, but the only ones who matter are smokers and the people who influence them.)
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Look at it regularly. Some of your metrics are going to be off, for whatever reason — you picked the wrong channel to motivate people, the wrong message, the wrong messenger — and you’ll want to be able to make mid-course corrections
Takeaways are critical, bite-sized resources either excerpted from our guides or written by Candid Learning for Funders using the guide's research data or themes post-publication. Attribution is given if the takeaway is a quotation.
This takeaway was derived from Communicating For Impact.
