Norton Juster’s great fantasy book The Phanton Tolbooth imagines the warring factions of Dictionopolis and Digitopolis. One obsessed with words the other with numbers. He could have been describing the divide between PR and Marketing folk.

As I started in market research and marketing before moving into corporate PR it fascinates me why so many great PR people go pale when numbers get mentioned.

I’ll never forget the PR officer who after telling me he couldn’t do statistics went down the bookies and placed a complex accumulating bet on the outcome of a number of football matches. When I asked how much he could win he could do all the probability calculations which were far harder than analysing the survey data we’d discussed earlier.

Here are three good reasons why today’s PR professional needs to face up to the fear of figures

Evidence

When we design campaigns we need to make sure our work is evidence based. What are the demographics of the target audience? What percentage of our target audience use which channels? What figures on customer behaviour do we have? What data highlights the need for action? What is the trend? What correlation is there between demographics and behaviour?

Much of this information we may hold internally within our organisations such as census data, survey data and customer transaction patterns. More data may be held by others which is where big data and open data come in. Some data we may need to collect.

But how can we as storytellers understand and visualise the data to identify the issues and to help our audiences understand? Great infographics, graphs and mapping can help.

The master of this is Ben Page, Chief Executive of IPSOS MORI @benatipsosmori who can bring to life reams of statistics and tell a compelling narrative. If you’ve never seen Ben speak just look him up on Youtube to get an idea of his style.

Evaluation

We need to be able to measure what we do and understand what the figures mean. I often wonder whether the industry clung on to AVE’s for so long after they were discredited just because most PR people could produce them.

Similarly people now quote simple data such as clicks, likes, shares and reach rather than assessing the impact of the work online.

Even if you dodge the issue by paying other agencies to do your monitoring and evaluation you need to know what to measure, what questions to ask and what to make of the results.

The Barcelona Principles identify the approach PR professionals should be taking and the CIPR have a great toolkit for members.

Finance

Any PR professional planning on a career has to accept there comes a time when you need to be able to as the Americans say “do the math”.

How do you manage a service if you struggle to understand a budget spreadsheet? How can you demonstrate Return on Investment (ROI) to a client? How much will that pay per click campaign cost? How do you show the payback period for a major investment in advertising? How do you manage your accounts when you run your own business?

All questions you will be asked and need to answer.

So if you are frightened of figures these are the things you need to do:

Cultivate friendships: Finance and data people love being asked to help. They can show their virtuosity and they enjoy seeing what others do with the information they provide. Seek out these people in your organisation or online. Ask questions. Get people to explain terms and how they work things out.

Here are a few online people worth following on Twitter @benatipsosmori @bobbyIpsosmori @yougov and YouGov’s Anthony Wells’ blog http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/ is a good introduction to polling and statistics.

Face the fear:If maths terrified you at school then it’s time to face the fear.

Try an evening class to remind you of the basics or some online exercises. The BBC have some great resources http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/subjects/maths.shtml

Alternatively it may be a course in book-keeping or an introduction to statistics. Or try the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM)  Business Maths for Marketeers http://www.cim.co.uk/Training/CourseDetails.aspx?course=1153

Think about how you learn most easily, choose a method you enjoy and fits in with your lifestyle.

Take exercise: When we do anything a lot we get better at it. Running gets easier if you do it regularly. Working with figures improves with practice. Start with simple fun stuff like Soduku and quizzes then try reading reports and others analysis of them.

This Ofcom report on media consumption trends is full of really useful information http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/media-literacy/adults-2014/2014_Adults_report.pdf and here is Dan Slee’s blog analysis http://danslee.wordpress.com/tag/ofcom/

Being equally at home with figures and words doesn’t come easily for everyone but the rewards are worth it.