91仓库

Public outreach is routinely considered to be an optional undertaking as opposed to a critical element of a program. But cutting public outreach from your program can be one of the costliest decisions you make. In fact, reaching out to your stakeholders can鈥攁nd should鈥攂e saving you money.

Samantha Villegas

In the last issue of 91仓库 (January 2014), I shared how public outreach is more science than art鈥攁nd successful outreach programs are steeped in research, with measureable outcomes. In this article, I will explore the costs associated with public outreach, noting that some of the greatest costs arise when you don鈥檛 do it well, or don鈥檛 do it at all.

When budgets are tight, oftentimes the first area of a program to be cut is the public outreach portion. This is because public outreach (or stakeholder communications) is routinely considered to be an optional undertaking鈥攁 鈥渘ice to have鈥� as opposed to a critical element of a program. But cutting public outreach from your program, or even cutting it short, can be one of the costliest decisions you make鈥攆ar costlier than actually conducting the outreach. In fact, reaching out to your stakeholders can鈥攁nd should鈥攂e saving you money. Let me explain why and how.

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Why Reach Out?
In order to understand its value, it鈥檚 first necessary to understand why we conduct outreach. Last month I defined public outreach to be more than the notion of sending out messages to simply 鈥渃heck a box.鈥� I described the process of engagement鈥攖wo-way communications between an organization and the people on whom its success depends. I explained that outreach is a complex process that develops a true understanding of your project among key stakeholders, and a true understanding on your part, of your key stakeholders鈥� knowledge, attitudes and behaviors, through meaningful dialogue that includes equal parts talking and listening on both sides. That鈥檚 what outreach is, but let鈥檚 now discuss why we do it. Outreach is not done to tell your story. It鈥檚 done to ensure programmatic success. That鈥檚 the why.

Many organizations get this wrong. They conduct outreach to tell their story, to explain (hopefully convincingly) what they are doing and why they are doing it to impacted audiences. Whether it鈥檚 a large infrastructure project, a new billing system or even a new product, many organizations see the role of outreach (or public or external affairs, or whatever you want to call it) as a self-serving pursuit. They assume their audience just needs to know what they are doing, so they often plan a strategy that ranges from the austere to the elaborate depending upon budget, to merely tell their stakeholders what they are doing and hope they come along. This 鈥渢ell it and sell it鈥� approach doesn鈥檛 just miss the boat, it portends to send the boat on an expensive course of destruction, disabling it from ever reaching its intended destination.

Whatever it is you are trying to do, your success depends on the audiences who are impacted by

it鈥攖hese are the very people who likely must pay for the project and/or may need to adopt a behavior that鈥檚 new or different in order for your project to be a success. So your success depends on them not just knowing about your program, but understanding the need and agreeing, to some extent, with the solution. Raising awareness of the issue so they know about it is really only step one. If you stop there, you expose yourself to many costly risks down the line.

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What鈥檚 at Stake?

You may be thinking鈥攊f budgets are tight, and I have enough funds to perhaps create a brochure, update a Web site and maybe even place a few ads in the local paper to let stakeholders know what鈥檚 going on, what鈥檚 the harm? Isn鈥檛 some form of outreach good? Yes, some outreach is better than none. But if you aren鈥檛 adequately prepared, and it鈥檚 not well-informed or well-planned outreach, even a small misstep can get you into hot water and/or become costly, quickly. The two things you stand to lose or damage are your reputation and your money.

Here are the top 10 ways your project can fail, and cost you dearly, either due to a lack of preparation and proper outreach or due to no outreach at all:

1. Your stakeholders disagree in principle with what you are doing.
2. Your stakeholders believe that their concerns have not been heard.
3. Your stakeholders believe that what you plan to do will cause them undue harm or burden.
4. You have failed to understand or consider your stakeholders鈥� capability to comply with your project.
5. In communicating about your project, you have chosen words and phrasing that very few people understand.
6. In communicating about your project, you have chosen words and phrasing that people think means one thing, but you meant something else.
7. In communicating about your project, your words and/or phrasing are offensive to some stakeholders.
8. You have not considered the unintended consequences of your project.
9. Your project actually isn鈥檛 the best solution to the problem.
10. In communicating about your project, you have chosen avenues of communication that do not reach your stakeholders.

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Money 91仓库d

In the case of numbers 5, 6, 7 and 10, you are simply wasting money. For example, many organizations believe paid (or even unpaid, public service) advertising is the best way to reach stakeholders because advertising is something they feel familiar with and it seems 鈥渆asy enough鈥� to do, and it promises to reach virtually everyone. But advertising well is a lot more complicated than it seems, and of the ways to raise awareness and engage an audience, it鈥檚 probably the most expensive. If you choose to advertise, without really knowing who will see your ad, how many will see it, whether anyone will act on your ad, or whether you will ever know, then you are throwing your precious dollars away. In the Washington, DC radio advertising market for example, most, if not all the radio stations broadcast to three states: DC, Maryland and Virginia. Hundreds of municipalities, towns and counties are within listening range of their broadcasts. If a county solid waste division in, say, Maryland, places advertising on the radio to encourage their residents to recycle more, their ad will also be heard by people in other counties in Maryland, as well as in counties 30 to 40 miles away in Virginia and in the District of Columbia. While they only need about 200,000 people in their county to hear the message, they are paying for 2 million people to hear it and they probably paid $50,000 to $100,000 or more for this opportunity, depending on how long it stays on the air and how often it plays. The worst part about it is, they have no way of knowing whether or what percentage of their 200,000 residents actually did hear it and what they did with the information. It鈥檚 money wasted, plain and simple. By contrast, they could have spent $2,000 or even just $200 on Facebook advertising and reached only residents of their county, guaranteed, through Facebook鈥檚 ability to target ads to geographic locations set up in user鈥檚 profiles.

Failures 5, 6, and 7, which are failures of messaging, are also completely avoidable but often experienced. We become so comfortable and familiar with the words we use every day in our jobs, we forget that 鈥渟ustainability鈥� or 鈥渁lternative energy鈥� or 鈥渟ingle stream鈥� are not terms everyone recognizes. Or perhaps they think they鈥檙e something you didn鈥檛 intend. When you use shop talk in messaging that you haven鈥檛 tested using a focus group or other good research method to determine how it鈥檚 received, your brochure or Web site text could be going right by unnoticed either because your audiences didn鈥檛 know what you meant, or think they knew but didn鈥檛 care because you didn鈥檛 put in terms relevant to them. So the money you spent to create the collateral material and circulate it was wasted.

That鈥檚 why doing the outreach right鈥攗sing research to understand where and how to reach your stakeholders (and with what messaging that has meaning, context and relevance), as discussed in last month鈥檚 issue, is so critical, and really does save you money.

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Reputational Damage

Looking at the rest of the list, far more is at stake. If your outreach merely consisted of a 鈥渢ell it and sell it鈥� approach鈥攚here you create some brochures or post some information to your Web site or conduct some advertising, hoping everyone will just get on board, without the very critical first step of research to understand your stakeholders鈥� awareness levels, attitudes and behaviors, then your financial risks go beyond just wasting your money with the ineffective messaging or ineffective channels. Failures 1 to 4, 8, and 9 will cost you more time and resources to 鈥渕ake it right鈥� and in the most extreme examples, litigation may be involved. While the financial loss or waste associated with these consequences can be large, it pales in comparison to the reputational hit you may take as a result which can take years to rebuild鈥攐n top of鈥攖he additional investment you鈥檒l need to help repair the brand.

Take, for example, the small but very vocal minority group that believed a waste-to-energy project would endanger their health by polluting the air, water and local farms with particulate matter and noxious trace elements. You weren鈥檛 listening to them, or you didn鈥檛 engage them in your research or development phase, so there was no opportunity for either side to receive new information that challenged their convictions. So, as the opponents dug in, they were able to delay the project (costly), convince regulators to require more study (costlier) or in a worse case, sue to pull the plug on the project altogether (catastrophic). All the while, you appeared to be callous, to lack compassion and to be indifferent to public concern, when ironically, all you thought you were doing was building something that was in their best interest. Your lack of engagement may have generated or fueled a latent feeling of distrust. Taking the time to hear and respond to concerns is a small investment for a large payback. While it may result in project compromise, it may also be the difference in whether your project actually reaches fruition.

Commit to the Costs

Conducting thoughtful, smart outreach is not cheap. Nationwide, the average investment in outreach typically runs $1 to $3 per household, depending upon whether this is a new or ongoing project and the resources available. So for a community of 100,000 homes, a good outreach budget would be $300,000 per year. Or, another way to plan your budget is to consider spending one percent of the total project value on outreach, so a $100 million project would have an outreach budget of about $1 million. So commit to the outreach鈥攁nd the costs associated with it. You鈥檒l find the investment much cheaper than the consequences you may face if you don鈥檛.

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Samantha Villegas is an accredited public relations professional with more than 20 years of experience assisting corporations, nonprofits and government agencies achieve positive social behavioral changes in the areas of water, energy, recycling, immigration and health. As Vice President at GBB (Fairfax, VA), Samantha leads the public outreach and engagement programs for clients, and oversees the firm鈥檚 own marketing efforts. Samantha is recognized as a Metro-Washington, D.C. regional leader in public relations. She has led and chaired various regional government committees of the Northern Virginia Regional Commission and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments in the formation and implementation of education and outreach campaigns and served as the 2013 president of the National Capital Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. Samantha can be reached at (800) 573-5801 or via e-mail at [email protected].