The Influence of the CFO

The CFO role has been categorised by Accenture into three core areas of influence:

Economic guardians, focused on predictive insights in a volatile world
Architects of business value, driving strategic change across the enterprise
Catalysts of digital strategy, creating insights for realising value

At the CEO’s right hand, the challenge of ensuring responsible budgeting and meaningful reporting across all areas of business operations falls to the CFO. One area which is always contentious is the marketing budget, particularly that portion allocated to PR.

Digitisation has in many ways simplified the task of analysing marketing spend to create insights into performance and ROI. In turn, this drives business results by allowing spend to be focused on activities which increase customer engagement and retention, contribute to sales and protect long-term value.

For PR, however, effectiveness and payback are often harder to ascertain. Thanks to outdated metrics based on volume of coverage, opportunities to see (OTS) and other equally meaningless and inflated numbers, the results of PR spend remain opaque. For large organisations, this can mean that decisions about a significant budget are arbitrary, based on wrong information that offers no insight into the impact of PR on customer behaviour and business outcomes.

Metricomm data is different. Based on robust statistical analysis, it allows CFOs to change the way PR effectiveness is evaluated and relate spend to business value:

Learn more about the relationship between media coverage, purchase consideration and revenue
Compare the effectiveness of a range of campaigns
Compare the outcomes of PR spend to those from advertising and other elements of the marketing mix
See the financial ROI of campaigns over time
Request comparisons with outcomes of competitor activity

For an example of how Metricomm insights could help your organisation enhance the accountability and measurability of PR in the new financial year, email hello@metricomm.com