Posts Tagged ‘marketing accountability’

My Interview on Blog Talk Radio About Social Media ROI

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July 23rd, 2009

jacob-pic

(pic taken of me in China with…a blue thing)

I had the pleasure of being the guest of Ty Downing and Tim Moore on Blog Talk Radio to discuss social media ROI. We only had around 15-20 mins so there was definitely stuff left out. I wish I had more talk to talk about ROI and marketing accountability, but alas; next time.  We did get a chance to talk about some key ROI issues though, specifically:

  • One of the biggest problems with ROI is that organizations don’t have the tools and metrics in place to measure/track ROI or impact.  There is no foundation.
  • The currency in ROI keeps shifting.  Think of high school Algebra, what you do to one side of the equation you must do to the right, if the left side of the equation is a dollar amount, then guess what the right side of the equation needs to be.
  • In general, expectations in the social media space are not managed properly.  Social media takes time, a lot of time.  You can’t spend 30 mins a day on social media and expect to see dramatic results.  Social media is also not free, sure you don’t have to pay for some of the actual tools you use, but that’s just one aspect of social media; not to mention the time you need to put in.

We also talked about a few other key issues but I’ll let you listen to the interview and hear them for yourself, I had a great time.  Thanks Tim!

Just click play below and enjoy!

TAGS: blog talk radio social media roi, jacob morgan interview, marketing accountability

Marketing Accountability: Are You Trying to Measure Abstract Objectives?

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July 8th, 2009

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Yesterday I wrote a post for marketing profs entitled, “Forget Social Media ROI, What About Marketing Accountability?”  If you haven’t read it yet please do, here’s a brief snippet:

“There has been a lot of much needed discussion around social media ROI but I think this is just a small topic in the overall world of marketing accountability. Here are a few things for you to consider…

  • A study by the CMO council found that LESS than 20% of top technology marketers surveyed had developed “meaningful, comprehensive measures and metrics for their marketing organizations.”
  • 68% of marketers were unable to determine the ROI of their initiatives (according to the last major survey).”

I wanted to expand on my post a little bit and talk about the importance of creating objectives that you can tie metrics too.  It’s easy to sit down with a marketing team and come up with a whole list of objectives but you have to be able to come up with metrics that you are going to use to measure your success for those objectives, if you don’t have metrics then how are you going to measure success?  I think one of the problems with marketing today is that there are a lot of abstract objectives floating around that we don’t know how to measure.  We’re all guilty of using them (include yours truly).  Here examples of abstract objectives vs clearly defined objectives.

Abstract:

  • We want to be the authority in X

Clearly defined:

  • We want to increase the number of online conversations about our brand by 25%

Abstract:

  • We want to improve our customer service

Clearly defined:

  • We want to improve brand sentiment and customer satisfaction by 15%

Abstract:

  • We want to increase revenue

Clearly defined

  • We want to decrease the customer purchase cycle by 10%, increase the average transaction amount by 12%, and increase the amount of new customers by 15%

Do you see the difference between the objectives listed above?  Essentially the abstract and clearly defined metrics are talking about the same thing but one is measurable and the other is not.  Keep in mind that in order for you to measure these objectives your client or company has to have some sort of existing data to begin with.  If you’re working with someone that doesn’t know what the customer satisfaction rate is or what the customer purchase cycle is, then how on earth are you going to increase it?

Make sense?  What are your thoughts on this?

TAGS: abstract objectives, marketing accountability, marketing objectives, social media objectives, social media roi, social media ROI and marketing accountability