Feedback is essential for any communication campaign, whether it is aimed at raising awareness, changing behavior, or influencing decision-makers. But how can you collect and analyze feedback that is relevant, reliable, and actionable? Here are some of the most effective ways to gather feedback on your communication campaigns.
Before you launch your communication campaign, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. Your goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Your indicators should be aligned with your goals and reflect the outcomes and impacts of your communication activities. For example, if your goal is to increase the number of people who sign up for your newsletter, your indicator could be the conversion rate of your landing page.
Depending on your goals and indicators, you can use different methods to gather feedback on your communication campaigns. Surveys, interviews, focus groups, and analytics are some of the most common methods. Surveys can provide quantitative and qualitative data from a large or representative sample to measure awareness, satisfaction, or behavior change. Interviews are useful for gaining in-depth insights from a small or selected group of your target audience about motivations, challenges, or experiences. Focus groups enable a moderated discussion among a group of your target audience to explore attitudes, beliefs, or values. Lastly, analytics track and measure the performance and impact of your online communication channels and platforms with metrics like reach, engagement, clicks, conversions, or bounce rate.
Communication campaigns are done to inform, persuade, or motivate behavior change in a specific or well-defined audience. It depends on your medium of communication but nowadays, the most effective ways to gather feedback include surveys, interviews or focus group discussions, social listening on sites like Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter) or internal social media platform (i.e. Yammer or Talkspirit), website analytics, online customer feedback form or survey. It is important to choose the right method for your specific purpose, your target audience, and your budget. When you are able to collect accurate customer feedback and know how to act on this feedback, it is easier to boost customer satisfaction and retention.
If internal feedback is needed, than aligning on and identifying key stakeholders early on is key. It's difficult to incorporate multiple perspectives, when there isn't a clear path forward. When a desired outcome is communicated to internal stakeholders, collaboration becomes easy due to the clearly defined roles. Also, RACI Matrix for the win. When external feedback is needed, identify your goal and determine which avenue makes the most sense. The key with any type of group is to provide clear direction and set up the conversation with a clear outcome to best obtain actionable feedback.
Once you have chosen your feedback methods, it is essential to collect and analyze feedback in an organized and ethical manner. You should plan ahead and decide when, how, and from whom you will collect feedback, as well as how you will store and protect the data. Additionally, it is important to obtain consent from participants and inform them about the purpose, scope, and confidentiality of the feedback process. You should also design your feedback tools and instruments carefully, ensuring that they are clear, concise, relevant, and unbiased. Moreover, you should test and pilot them before using them and make any necessary adjustments or refinements. Furthermore, it is necessary to analyze the feedback data rigorously with appropriate methods and tools. You should look for trends, patterns, gaps, and outliers, and interpret them in relation to your goals and indicators. Additionally, it is important to triangulate and validate data from different sources and methods to avoid jumping to conclusions or generalizations. Lastly, you should report your feedback findings clearly using visual aids like charts, graphs or infographics. It is essential to highlight the key findings, insights, and recommendations while linking them to your communication objectives and outcomes. You should also acknowledge the limitations and challenges of your feedback process while suggesting ways to overcome them.
The final and most important step is to use feedback to improve your communication campaigns. You should communicate your feedback findings and recommendations to stakeholders, including your team, clients, partners, or funders. Additionally, you should thank your target audience for their participation and show them how their feedback has influenced your communication campaign. Implement your feedback recommendations and actions, and monitor and evaluate their effects. Document and share your feedback lessons and best practices, and incorporate them into future communication campaigns. It's also important to seek feedback continuously and iteratively, as well as from external sources like experts, peers, or competitors. By using these effective ways to gather feedback on your communication campaigns, you can enhance your strategic communication skills and achieve your communication goals.
Common mistake on gathering feedback on communication campaigns? Relying solely on numbers and insights versus the authentic feed back that consumers give us via reviews. Data is of high importance but what truly gives us insight into understanding how effective our campaigns and brand message are is by asking them for video reviews in exchange for loyalty programs, discounts or brand ambassador roles. Best way to get in front of the consumers? By utilizing influencer marketing campaigns. By the end of 2023, influencer marketing is set to hit $21.1 billion, up 29% from the prior year's $16.4 billion. Businesses are making $5.2 ROI for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. The type of campaigns we utilize will determine our ROI.