Marketing has moved significantly into the digital domain, online. It appears to make sense, as it appears ‘SMART’ (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time driven).
The engineers and accountants amongst us warm to this sort of seemingly measurable expenditure, they can look at a dashboard of quantitative outcomes, and feel good that they are not wasting money.
However, a closer look might give them pause.
Specific.
Yes, you can have a specific, focused activity that either happened, or did not, and people can be held accountable for them.
Measurable.
Yes, you can measure an activity done on line, so long as you are prepared to discount the bots and fakery hiding in the digital supply chain. The ad did appear, we got X 000 likes, Y 00 email addresses when they downloaded the clickbait, and sales reps are now chasing them as qualified leads. Hopefully a few of them actually are, but we may never really know.
Achievable.
Yes, the goal of getting likes and qualified leads has been achieved
Accountable.
Again, you know the intern in the marketing department was accountable for ensuring that there were X entries in the twitter feed, Y postings on Facebook and Instagram, and that the agency supplied a white paper a week as clickbait.
Timely.
Again, yes, the boss wanted this all done by the end of the month, as it was, Hooray!!
Problem with all of this is that we are measuring the wrong things. They are all about activity, nothing about outcomes. When we understand and can quantify the cause and effect links between activity and outcomes, a really tough problem, SMART goals may become useful.
‘Digital marketing’ has replaced using ‘digital’ as a tool of marketing. Those amongst us who do not understand the wide impact of ‘marketing’ have got it all the wrong way around. They have been seduced by the new shiny thing that appears to be useful, and sometimes it is, but not often as a standalone strategy, it is by its nature a short term tactic only.
