Many of them do give useful information, but it is only ever partial.
I am certainly one who loudly advocates the extensive use of data to measure and improve the productivity of marketing investments.
Opt in rates
Sales Conversion rates
Earnings per click
Cost per click,
On, and on, and on.
Being an old fart means I like simple stuff, and the simple measure of the effectiveness of your marketing dollar is the return on investment. ROI. The actions taken as a result of the investment divided by the cost to inspire and motivate that action.
Always has been the best measure, always will be!
Until the digital stuff took over, the best you could do was take an educated guess, informed by some research and experience.
Now you can usually get a pretty good read on ROI if you think hard about it.
How much did we spend divided by how much we got back.
There are really only three complications, beyond the technical ones involving statistics, and the lies that they can tell. Also, unfortunately, many marketers are lousy at statistics and mathematics, which is often a challenge to credibility.
First. Over what time frame do you do the measurement? For example, the lifetime value of a customer means you need a framework to make the calculation. This involves a lot of data as well as assumptions, and an intimate knowledge of customer behaviour over an extended period. This is very hard to get right, so most just use averages, which are almost always misleading. If my right foot is in a fire, and my left in a bucket of ice water, on average, my feet are at a comfortable temperature. Nonsense.
Second. Attribution. Which part of the investment led to the transaction? Was it the digital marketing activity, or the manner in which the receptionist took the phone call, or a thousand other sometimes tiny things that contribute to the transaction evolving. This challenge is not exclusive to digital marketing, it is to all marketing activity. However, the specific and very misleading claim made by most digital urgers, that you can measure the effectiveness of an investment in digital because you can measure movement through the ‘sales funnel’ is simply ignoring the reality of attribution. The claims made by the urgers of digital that they can reliably deliver attribution sufficient to make micro adjustments to the allocation of resources in an ever evolving competitive context is rubbish. You can get closer than a ‘best guess,’ but not with anything resembling statistical reliability.
Third. There are still things that we simply cannot measure. Most of us would agree that being a good parent is a great investment in the success of our kids, but how do you calculate an ROI on parenthood? Similarly, the impact of being part of an enterprise culture that encourages and values diversity of opinion, enables all stakeholders to have a genuine voice, and creates alignment of objectives, is hard to measure.
None of the above should restrain you from making the effort, and continuously improving the methodology as you learn more about your customers, and their behaviour, but it is a warning to those who just believe the nonsense peddled by digital urgers with a dog in the fight for your money.
Header cartoon credit: Tom Fishburne at www.marketoonist.com
