What is impact and how do you measure it?

Impact, in its essence, is the tangible, real-world change that occurs as a result of our efforts. It's the shift in public opinion that leads to policy change, the lifestyle adjustments that improve community health, or the surge of support that turns a fledgling movement into a force for good. Unlike engagement metrics, which measure interactions with digital content, impact measures the actual difference you’re making in people's lives and in society at large.

This distinction is crucial. While high engagement numbers might look impressive in reports, they don't necessarily translate to meaningful change. A user might spend hours browsing your site without internalising your message or changing their behaviour. Impact goes beyond these surface-level interactions. It is the deeper, often slower-to-manifest changes that truly matter.

Measuring impact is inherently more challenging than tracking engagement. Impact often unfolds slowly, and it’s far less tangible and predictable.

This complexity is why many organisations default to engagement metrics as a proxy for impact. But while engagement can be a stepping stone to impact, it's not the same thing. Recognising this difference is the first step toward meaningful impact measurement.

So, how can we measure something as nuanced and long-term as impact?

The first thing to note is that impact does not always lend itself to measurement and how you approach this question will be highly specific to the type of impact you’re trying to measure. ‘Metrification’ – the process by which everything is reduced to quantifiable numbers for the sake of measurement, can be harmful.

Rory Sutherland has an excellent talk explaining how boiling everything down to data can mislead organisations and create blind spots that cause poor decision-making.

But although impact is hard to measure, you must still attempt to understand the impact your digital presence is making. Otherwise, you’ll have no way to assess if your hard work is proving to be effective.

There are several techniques you can use to assess the impact you’re having and these don’t have to mean boiling everything down to potentially misleading statistics.

1. Surveys: Well-designed surveys can capture changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours over time. Don’t rely exclusively on metrics you can capture passively, like page views, but use tools to question your users and hear if your content leads them to make real-world changes.
2. Behavioural Indicators: Look for measurable actions that indicate real-world impact. This could include donations made, volunteers recruited, policies changed, or any other concrete actions aligned with your organisation's goals.
3. Qualitative Data: In-depth interviews or focus groups can provide rich insights into how your efforts are affecting individuals and communities. These stories and experiences, while not easily quantifiable, often hold the key to understanding the extent of your impact.
4. Changes to baselines: Before launching any initiative, establish clear baselines. This allows you to measure change over time and attribute that change to your efforts more accurately. For example, you could use a polling company to assess the level of public awareness of a particular issue before and after a major campaign.

We recommend using a blend of both qualitative and quantitative techniques so as to avoid the blind spots that can come from an overreliance on purely numeric indicators.

While it's crucial to distinguish between engagement and impact, engagement does often lead to impact in some form. Effective digital strategies use engagement as a stepping stone to impact.

You should use engagement data to refine your messaging, identifying which themes and approaches resonate most strongly with your audience. We recommend setting up deep engagement metrics by combining several measures to get a more nuanced understanding of how content is performing. These metrics will let you make better-informed decisions about which content is effective, by stripping out misleading noise that otherwise might cause you to focus on low-performing content.

You can also design more interactive digital experiences that don't just invite passive consumption, but actively encourage real-world actions.

Inviting feedback, linking to pages that include measurable calls to action (such as donations), or sending surveys to ask if users have changed their behaviour might allow you to understand the impact content is having beyond simply engaging users.

Our work with the Eden Project provides a great example of linking engaging content to real-world outcomes. The Eden Project is a major visitor attraction with a mission to demonstrate and inspire positive action for the planet. We worked with the Eden Project team to make their website more effective at generating positive environmental changes among visitors. To do this, we created a pledge page where users are invited to sign pledges saying they’ll partake in various environmental behaviours.

This pledge format makes users consider their real-world behaviour, and allows for the capture of the user's name and email address. This makes it possible to follow up with them in future to ascertain if they’ve kept their pledge.

By showing how many other people have also signed that individual pledge, we’re able to make the user feel as though they are not on their own, and that although they are just one person, their pledge is part of making a big collective impact.

The ultimate goal of all purpose-driven organisations is to create real-world change. While engagement metrics provide valuable insights into our digital performance, they should be seen as a means to an end, not the end itself.

By focusing on measuring impact – the tangible changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours that result from our efforts – you can ensure that your digital strategies are serving your organisation's mission. It may be more challenging than simply tracking page views or likes, but the insights gained are infinitely more valuable.

Measuring impact is not just about securing or justifying funding (though it can help with both), it's about staying true to your purpose, understanding your effectiveness, and continually improving your strategies to make the greatest possible difference. In a world where digital metrics are abundant but real-world changes are rare, the ability to measure and demonstrate impact is more important than ever.

This post is the first in a series of posts investigating the topic of impact, which will look at how purpose-driven organisations can use their digital presence to demonstrate the impact they make, so stay tuned for more!