Like any other service industry the public affairs space covers the gamut from appalling to amazing. We of course want to be amazing – every day.
But how can a potential customer judge? After all, if you’re in the Government affairs or PR spaces you’re most likely a good communicator. So how does a CEO or a Chancellor or other leader determine if it’s smoke and mirrors or the real deal?
The track record is a great guide but it’s of course looking backwards not forward. I wanted to create something different for the Capstone Construct. Something forward-looking. Something that differentiated us from our competition and was significantly valuable to both our clients and ourselves.
With that in mind, it’s my pleasure to introduce Guideposts to the world of public affairs. Through Goaling and Essence Inventory, our clients and our team will collectively determine what needs to happen and when. We will identify markers that help us both determine if we are on the right path or we are veering off and need a course correction. I envision both qualitative and quantitative aspects within the guideposts. They may be as clean and simple as: how many stories or meetings did we get this month? Or as complex as: what was the click-through rate of a targeted demographic within a 6 day time frame that led to a desired outcome? And what were the measurement tools?
Some work takes longer, like government contracting. With others, more immediate results are apparent, i.e. setting up a series of social media accounts and quantitatively driving up volume.
Regardless, having agreed upon guideposts tells us both our clients and us if we’ve done what we collectively agreed to or not, let alone differentiates us from the competition. More importantly, it helps both our partner-clients and us stay on track.
For more background on Capstone’s CEO, John C. Rogers, click here for his bio at Capstone or here for his Wikipedia entry.
Connect with him on LinkedIn or follow John on Twitter.
