The Importance Of Research

The importance of research;

Until recently my placement organisation Netball WA had been essentially flying from the seat of their pants in terms of communications strategy. While what they describes as a “going with the gut” feeling has evidentially not had any serious ramifications on their business success, it’s an approach they finally reconsidered. As far as I can gather from chatter with my supervisor (Netball WA’s Communications Manager) and those who work under him, the communications team was a one or two man show up until 2015. With the addition of four extra staff members, a ‘Communications Team’ appeared, complete with a Media Relations Officer, Social Media and Marketing Officer, Graphic Designer/Photographer and Events Manager/Membership Coordinator.

Under the Events Manager/Membership Coordinator I completed one of my first major projects at my internship, while that was a week or two ago, I was recently reminded of the importance of the work I was doing whilst in a Public Relations Planning and Evaluation seminar earlier this week. The seminar, entitled ‘making a case for communication’, explored the ways that research and evaluation in PR can help to justify the existence of communications teams in businesses and organisations.

Clearly, a core part of the business at Netball WA is to ensure the WA netball team (West Coast Fever) have well-engaged and happy members. The work that I was doing, while rather laborious, was to analyse membership feedback data from the recently finished 2016 season, compile trends and finally recommend some changes to the way the memberships were handled based on the feedback data. This kind of research is an example of the data and analysis that can contribute to ensuring that West Coast Fever members are well engaged and happy with their membership experiences. Not only does this kind of communication and research help to achieve this business objective, it allows a concrete connection to be made between the quality of this communication and the rate of member retention and registration. This kind of data gathering and analysis is not only a great example of a feedback channel in operation (part of the 2-way symmetric model of communication in action), but also a fine example of a way that professional communications justifies itself and it’s place in a business or organisation.

While back in first year, research may have seemed like an inconvenient prequel to an exciting PR plan, looking back through my third-year goggles I can definitely see that not only is research a fundamental foundation to the formation of clear communications goals and objectives, but it is essential also as an ongoing review and monitoring activity. Without this continuous reflection upon our PR efforts and their results, the efforts themselves are nullified in the way that we have no record of their effectiveness, and their results are practically invisible to CEO’s and organisational boards.

Research is an not only an essential starting point, but it comes into play at both the mid, end and review points of any PR activity in the forms of all kinds of feedback lines as well as the day-to-day monitoring conducted by PR practitioners.

This has finally solidified for me having seen the kind of tasks performed daily by the Netball WA Communications Team, without research no plan or proposal can be justified.