Marketing Tactegy

Collecting Data: a Challenging, but Necessary Hurdle.

Before, we talked about why ROMI is so important and that it is very possible to calculate, but then why is it so difficult do implement?  What have been some of your company’s biggest hurdles when trying to get ROMI culture embedded in your organization?

Let’s face it.  Data is always a huge challenge. Getting good, solid data on consumer off-take is difficult. Or if the data is only available on a quarterly or annual basis (sales volume or value) how can you determine a reasonable proxy for success that can be measured more frequently. Collecting the right data and keeping it up to date may be a hurdle when it comes to incorporating a ROMI culture within your company, but it is certainly worth the effort. Developing a good proxy for success is often the answer.

Check out 5 steps to improving your marketing effectiveness at [5-Steps]. And be sure to listen in on our webinar series and start formulating your marketing effectiveness strategy.  Come to our workshops and build the strategy and be ready for the question.  Better yet, sign up for the workshop at the early bird rate and get an ROI from just signing up. [Marketing-Calculator]

 

Can You Measure Marketing Effectiveness?

As a marker, it’s intimidating when your CEO asks you “Every other department can measure their effectiveness, what can we do to measure the marketing department’s effectiveness?” What would your response be?

Option A: marketing effectiveness can’t be measured

Option B: marketing effectiveness can be measured, but our department isn’t sure how, or

Option C: marketing effectiveness can be measured & our department is ready to put an infrastructure in place to do it.

If you picked option C, you’re in great company! Measuring marketing effectiveness is possible, and may not be as scary and impossible as you think. It will not only help you understand how to spend your marketing budget more wisely, but it will also help you better understand your customers and how to best reach them. Knowing how to calculate your ROMI can increase your revenue by 5% to 10% more, without having to increase your marketing budget.

Check out my 5 steps to improving your marketing effectiveness at 5-Steps. And be sure to listen in on our webinar series and start formulating your marketing effectiveness strategy. Come to our workshops and build the strategy and be ready for the question. Better yet, sign up for the workshop at the early bird rate and get an ROI from just signing up. Marketing-Calculator

ROI of Social Media: Can’t live with it, can’t live without it – part 4

In my last three posts on the ‘ROI of Social Media:  Can’t live with it.  Can’t live without it’, I spoke about why many marketers try to hold social media to a higher standard of measurement when traditional media isn’t even measured, about the need to measure across the entire marketing mix in order to properly measure the impact of social media and in the previous post about Last Touch Attribution versus measuring the indirect effects of social media.  I hope you found them interesting.  With this post, I conclude with the entrepreneurial phase of social media and how that will quickly move past the early adopters.  I will also finally answer the teaser question of how I can claim the ability to be able to measure the effectiveness and ROI of all marketing activities.  I hope you find the answer useful as you work to implement and improve the ROI of all your marketing – both traditional and social – in your organization.

 

For more information on all these topics, please check out our book at http://www.ROIofSocialMedia.com, or follow the topic on twitter at #ROISM.

 

1)    The entrepreneurial phase of social media - Social media is in the entrepreneurial phase.  Social media entrepreneurs need to run social media marketing in order to test and try new things.  This is a very different mindset than what would be found with traditional media.  Certainly, traditional media specialists are also entrepreneurs, but in a different way.  They can’t afford failure.  Can you imagine the impact on a career with the failure of a multi-million dollar TV campaign?

2)     

Social media entrepreneurs must try things and be allowed to fail.  No one wants a failure, but social media marketers must put themselves into a position to be able to quickly learn from what didn’t work and turn that insight into what could work and then try again.  What’s required for this type of entrepreneurialism to work is a culture of measurement and of course ROI.  With the right metrics in place, the good and the bad can be quickly detected.  The good can be accelerated. The bad can be mitigated.

 

The point:  Don’t be afraid of failure.  Put the right metrics in place to be able to learn quickly.  Put the right people in place who are willing to test the envelope.

 

So let me answer the question from my first post.  ‘How can I make a statement that I can measure everything?’  It’s actually quite simple.  I didn’t mention what the cost would be.  Measurement and ROI in marketing isn’t about being able to measure something or not.  It’s about doing it at reasonable cost.  It’s about measuring the right things in order to make significantly better decisions for the future.

 

If you want to learn more or need help with marketing ROI – traditional or social, give us a call.  We’re just around the corner on a social site near you.

 

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, come join us at MeasureUp The conference on the art and science of integrating traditional and social media marketing ((Use this link for 25% off!  http://www.iirusa.com/measureup/welcome-page.xml?registration=SPKRM2308GP).). I hope you found them* interesting.  Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

 

ROI of Social Media: Can’t live with it, can’t live without it – part 3

In the last two blog posts on ‘ROI of Social Media:  Can’t live with it.  Can’t live without it’, I spoke about why many marketers try to hold social media to a higher standard of measurement when traditional media isn’t even measured and in the previous post about the need to measure across the entire marketing mix in order to properly measure the impact of social media.

 

For more information on all these topics, please check out our book at http://www.ROIofSocialMedia.com, or follow the topic on twitter at #ROISM.

 

1)    Last Touch Attribution verses indirect.  Many times, I’m asked how does social media marketing work if there aren’t any click-throughs?  There are no conversions that can be directly attributed back to social marketing activities.  Firstly, many marketers need to realize that we are trying to measure the impact of our marketing activities, not the noise of all social media.  Our marketing drives incremental social media consumption, conversation and invitation (that is, inviting others to participate in the brand).  So we first want to attribute these results to our marketing activities, both social and traditional.  Second we want to determine how this incremental consumption, conversation and invitation leads to incremental revenue (and then, of course, profit.).

 

Next we’re interested in determining not only how this marketing effort drives direct response in terms of clicks and conversion, but also how it drives the brand (awareness, consideration, purchase intent, and brand imagery) in order to fully attribute all the direct and indirect effects to their proper drivers.

 

Once we have this in place. We can now start to really see how social media marketing drives value for the brand.

 

Lastly, we need to realize that marketing isn’t the only function for social media.  Social media also supports the operations of the company and in so doing, can reduce costs (e.g., call deflection, time to resolution, improved hiring), increase service levels and impact the long-term value of the brand.  This clearly applies to companies that have a direct support relationship with their customers.  It also applies to FMCG, but to a much lesser extent.  Even FMCG has service issues once in a while.

 

The Point:  ROMI for social media is not only about click-throughs and conversion.  It must also consider the long-term brand effects.  Click-thru and conversion are only partial metrics.  They’ll do if that’s all you’ve got, but smart marketers work to measure more - a lot more. Social media provides not just a marketing value, but also an operational value.  To truly determine its full worth, we need to measure both.

 

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, come join us at MeasureUp, the conference on the art & science of integrating traditional & social media marketing ((Use this link for 25% off!  http://www.iirusa.com/measureup/welcome-page.xml?registration=SPKRM2308GP).).  Otherwise, stay tuned for my next and final blog post.  I hope you’ll find it interesting.  Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

 

ROI of Social Media: Can’t live with it, can’t live without it – Part 2

In my last blog post on ‘ROI of Social Media – can’t live with it, can’t live without it’ I spoke about how many marketers hold social media to higher ROI standard.  If you’re not measuring traditional media, why do we need to measure the ROI of social media before we’ll invest in it?

In this post I’ll talk about the fact that in order to measure the incremental impact of social media we need to measure across the entire marketing mix.  (If you would like more information on all these topics, please check out our book at http://www.ROIofSocialMedia.com, or follow the topic on twitter at #ROISM.)

1)    Measuring across the marketing media mix - As you probably noticed from my first post I speak about ‘marketing ROI’ when the article claims to be about social media ROI.

As a marketing measurement expert (and I think I can call myself that, even though I am always learning new tricks), I have been measuring the effectiveness of social media right from the start.  We have measured a number of social media activities around the globe going back a number of years and all of them have been exceptionally strong - much stronger than traditional media activities.

When embarking on marketing measurement and now social media marketing measurement, we have to go back to basics.  We can’t measure the effect of social media as a stand-alone media (of course, unless this is the only thing you and your competitors are using.)  Social media has a unique impact on consumer behavior but we need to realize that it also affects the impact of traditional media and traditional media impacts the effect of social media. 

In order to ‘get it right’ we need to have a measurement framework that is specific to social media, but also takes into account the entire marketing environment.  We need to look across all 4 Ps (Product, price, place and promotion).  To this end, my coauthors and I developed the Media Engagement Framework (page 84 in the book, which can be found at http://www.ROIofSocialMedia.com – a blatant plug).  It looks at how to gather the right information and data to properly measure the impact of all the actors in social media.  It talks about individuals, that may or may not become consumers, but nevertheless engage with your brand, influencers and how we would like to work towards winning and improving their endorsement of our brands, and of course consumers, that we want to move down the purchase funnel from brand awareness, to purchase, loyalty and advocacy.  If we follow this measurement framework, we can now be assured that we are measuring the right things so we can use those measurements to make better strategic and tactical marketing decisions in the future.

The Point:  Social media must be measured and it must be measured in context of all marketing activities and we must measure the right things in order to make better strategic and tactical marketing decisions.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, come join us at MeasureUp The conference on the art and science of integrating traditional and social media marketing (http://www.IIRUSA.com/MeasureUp).  Otherwise, stay tuned for my next two blog posts.  I hope you’ll find them interesting.  Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Author’s Bio:  Over the last 20 years Guy R. Powell, based in Atlanta and Singapore has been helping thousands of marketers across the globe prove and improve their marketing performance through training, analytics and organizational transformation.  His experience cuts across just about every industry, every media channel – including social - and every region – from Asia to North America.  You can reach him on Linked in or at http://www.ROIofSocialMedia.com.  His other books include Marketing Calculator:  Measuring and managing your return on marketing investment (http://www.Marketing-Calculator.com) and Return on Marketing Investment:  Demand more from your sales and marketing investments. (http://www.ReturnonMarketingInvestment.net)

 

ROI of Social Media: Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

After the recent launch of our book ROI of Social Media, (http://www.ROIofSocialMedia.com or follow us on Twitter at #ROISM), my coauthors and I have been speaking around the world to a number of different audiences.  As marketing ROI experts, we often get the statement, “I can’t measure the ROI of this or that and now we want to measure social media!  Impossible!”

I respond with a simple statement.  “I can measure the ROI on everything - Every marketing activity that’s undertaken can be measured.  I can measure both the short and the long term and it’s effect on revenue, profit, brand and share!”  Most of the time I get a quizzical look.  “How can he do that?”  Read on for the answer.

As we talk about measuring the success of social media we need to first understand a number of concepts.  In this series I will talk about four of them. 

Today I’ll be talking about why we hold social media to a higher measurement standard than traditional media.  Then in three subsequent blog posts I’ll talk about measuring across the entire media mix, direct (or Last Touch Attribution) versus indirect attribution when measuring the effects of social and traditional media and lastly, the entrepreneurial phase of social media.

1. Holding social media to a higher standard - Many people that aren’t able to measure the ROI on social media also aren’t measuring the ROI on their other media.  If they’re not measuring ROMI (the Return on Marketing Investment), why are they holding social media to that standard?  Are they even measuring any element of their marketing mix?  My answer to these marketers and companies is to first start measuring something.  Whether it’s traditional or social it doesn’t really matter.  Just start measuring.  Get and work towards a culture of measurement and ROI and put it firmly into the heart of the entire marketing team.

I was just speaking with a friend of mine, the VP of Marketing for one of my largest accounts and she recalled her walk to implementing marketing ROI into their culture.  She came to one of my first ever marketing ROI workshops about 6 years ago and decided to take one of my admonitions to heart.  “If you aren’t measuring anything today, start measuring now.  In 12 months, you’ll have data and you’ll be able to start making significantly better decisions than you’re making now”.  She started doing that and now her company has one of the best-run marketing departments in their industry and is in the process of transferring that same measurement infrastructure to a recent acquisition.

The Point:  Measure.  Start now.  Measure the right things.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, come join us at MeasureUp The conference on the art and science of integrating traditional and social media marketing (http://www.IIRUSA.com/MeasureUp).  Otherwise, stay tuned for my next three blog posts.  I hope you’ll find them interesting.  Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Author’s Bio:  Over the last 20 years Guy R. Powell, based in Atlanta and Singapore has been helping thousands of marketers across the globe prove and improve their marketing performance through training, analytics and organizational transformation.  His experience cuts across just about every industry, every media channel – including social - and every region – from Asia to North America.  You can reach him on Linked in or at http://www.ROIofSocialMedia.com.  His other books include Marketing Calculator:  Measuring and managing your return on marketing investment (http://www.Marketing-Calculator.com) and Return on Marketing Investment:  Demand more from your sales and marketing investments. (http://www.ReturnonMarketingInvestment.net)

 

Tags: #ROISM, Marketing, Media, ROI, ROMI, Social, Strategy, Analytics

 

Revenue Performance Management - a new term in the Marketing ROI space

I was asked a few weeks ago to think about the term revenue performance management and determine whether it’s different from other terms in the marketing ROI space.  Initially I was thinking that it was more about revenue management, which uses CRM, loyalty and other tools to optimize utilization of a fixed capacity offering.  Typically used in hotels, cruise lines and airlines.  There are only so many seats or beds and developing demand once the utilization has reached 100% is wasted marketing.  It comes at the topic of marketing ROI and effectiveness from a different angle, because of the hard capacity limitation.  It’s not like you could build additional capacity very quickly and may not want to build incremental capacity very quickly to respond to the incremental marketing developed demand.

With revenue performance management it is a new twist on the term marketing ROI.  Marketing ROI has been defined many ways, but we see it as the end-to-end ROI developed in terms of short and long term profit due to an incremental level of marketing.  There are many other uses and definitions, mostly about what gets included and other details that may be limited by the available data sets.  In any case, an ROI performance based approach can help at the overall level and at each of the phases of marketing (see below).  A good definition that I’ve seen has three bullets to it (thanks to Lauren Carlson, Software Advice):

• Revenue Performance Management adds more sophisticated functionality in the area of analytics and data integration.
• This enhancement provides a more holistic view of the revenue cycle from the earliest stages of marketing through sales execution.
• Because of this, companies can see what's working and what isn't, making it possible for marketing and sales teams to optimize their efforts in order to achieve the highest return.

What I like about the term is the sales orientation and focus on revenue.  It will be interesting to see how it progresses in the future.

I was just at the Technology Driven Market Research conference in Chicago and looking forward to the MeasureUp Conference in Boston, June 6, 7 and 8 (www.iirusa.com/measureup - hope you can make it!) and P&G was presenting their view of the phases of the ‘moments of truth’.  Here they are:

• Phase 0 is the initial marketing touch. 
• Phase 1 is the actual choice point at the shelf in the store
• Phase 2 is the post sale product/service experience.

If we’re looking at a complete marketing ROI approach it is these three phases that would need to be included in a holistic approach to marketing ROI.  You could potentially even add a phase 3, which is the social media advocacy phase.  That is, what is the value of marketing in terms of getting consumers (and maybe non-consumers) to advocate about your brand?

With this in mind marketing ROI and ROMI need to make sure they cover from phase 0 to at least phase 2 if not phase 3.  Revenue performance management on the other hand is great to use when talking specifically about direct sales and revenue conversations relating to marketing effectiveness.

Let me know what you think.  I would love to hear.  

Don't forget to check out our new book  ROI of Social Media.

 

 

Social Media Marketing and ROI Tenets

We came up with 4 social media tenets. I'd love to get your feedback:

1) Social media is the new primary component of corporate communications with all stakeholders and is an equal with traditional, PR and other media channels. It is one of many media channels that needs to be fully integrated into the media mix

2) Social media has two key components outbound marketing messaging and inbound customer service engagement.

3) Engagement must take place with the right individual in the company at the right time in order to provide its full benefit.

4) Social media is made up of many individual channels that must be treated as an integrated, bidirectional communications channel.

Guy

http://www.ROIofSocialMedia.com

http://www.Marketing-Calculator.com

SoCon 2011 is in the planning stages and it looks like it will be a great event. I have the honor of speaking and will be presenting some of the topics of our upcoming book ROI of Social Media. I hope you will be able to join me there, Atlanta, February 4 -5, 2011. Please visit http://www.socon11.com for more information.

The University of California, Irvine is conducting an interesting survey on Marketing ROI. I hope you will be able to participate. Here are the details:

With increasing pressure on marketers to demonstrate financial accountability for their marketing actions and to increasingly rely on metrics in their decision process the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine, in conjunction with Marketing ROI and Effectiveness Group would like to cordially request you to take advantage of a unique opportunity to explore What Drives Managerial Use of Marketing vs. Financial Metrics and Does it Impact Performance.

This cutting-edge study will be of significant value to the research community, policymakers, and the industry alike as it is the first such study to investigate:

1) The actual managerial employment of marketing and financial metrics (i.e., which metrics are used most often and associated with highest performance for each marketing activity) for an assortment of marketing activities like PR / Sponsorships, Traditional and Internet Advertising, Social Media, New Product Development, etc.

2) What drives managerial use of marketing and financial metrics (i.e., how do different firm, industry, managerial, and country characteristics impact managerial marketing and financial metric use)

3) Whether managerial utilization of marketing and financial metrics impacts specific marketing activity performance

For your participation in the 10-15 minute survey listed below*, the Paul Merage School of Business will provide you various benchmarks comparing your use of metrics to others in the study as well as the paper analyzing the drivers of metric use and the relationship between metrics and marketing activity performance. Reports will be delivered by early January 2011. All individual responses will be treated confidentially and be aggregated to preserve anonymity.

To participate in the survey and receive the final report, please click on or copy and paste the URL below into your internet browser*:

http://merage.uci.edu/go/MetricUse

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact Ofer Mintz at omintz@uci.edu.

For a sample of the benchmark report, please click on or copy and paste the URL below into your internet browser*: https://webfiles.uci.edu/omintz/Benchmark%20Report%20Template.pdf?uniq=xnhh5n

Thank you for your assistance,