The Internet is Just a Fad

What's the ROI on that?

I don't know, you tell me!  Notice I didn't say "depends" - 'cause that just get people sideways.

Whether you're pitching social media, paid media, search, website, whatever, some smart ass in the room raises their hand slowly and diligently to say,  "What's the ROI on that?"  As David Meerman Scott at WebInkNow.com pointed out, "what's the ROI of you putting on your pants today?"  

It's necessary to do business these days with your pants on (for most of us).  But, in addition to having pants on, it's also necessary that your company be getting really good on and at the web - marketing, communication, advertising, collaborating, partnering, experimenting, testing, ACTING!  Stop the foolishness!

Hey, what's the ROI of that press release you just put out, hell, what's the ROI of your whole corporate communications department?  

Corporate reputation?  

What's the ruler you're measuring all that corporate rep with? And where can you trade that currency?How many $$$ or silly Nielsen points does that equal?  

What is the ROI on the stadium sponsorship of the little league park?  Part awareness, part CSR, part corporate reputation, etc.  How does that equity get spread across the enterprise?

What's the ROI of that $40MM ad campaign you're running during American Idol and college basketball? Did you see a sales lift the next day, the next week?  And how will those results influence your next mass media dump?

The Alice in Wonderland alternate belief reality that traditional marketing organizations hold on to today is comical.  So you perk up in the presentation or discussion and ask me about ROI?   

ROI or "value" is a custom conversation and equation for every organization.  If you don't have an enterprise model (based in dynamic research tools and real outcomes) for the value of various marketing activities, then why are you asking an outside agent or agency to tell you what it should be?Or to justify the ROI of the widget, wikipedia service and twitter management they are pitching?

So what about measuring?  "Hey Matt, can you send me a few slides on our measurement POV?"  

Well, what are we measuring?  Social media?  In order to do that, we've got to come to some common terms first.  Sales, customer satisfaction scores, leads, intent, awareness, favorability, visit frequency/latency, traffic - mix all in equal parts and that is a big math cocktail.  And don't say frickin' engagement - because, by my count there is nothing that links engagement to any business outcomes. 

Here's the bottom line.  A well-functioning online footprint (including a website, social media, advertising, blog relations, etc.) is the single most important sales, marketing, advertising, public facing appearance of every single company.  Disagree?  The "e" part of any sales, marketing, corp comm, customer experience team is tiny if at all.  Before you start the reorganization read this from Smashing Magazine - 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites

You want to get to some ROI, or justification for spending allocation?  How do you factor in the opportunity cost for not doing so?  Give it a shot.  Take down your site, search and anything else you're doing online and see what that nets you.  Every demographic in this country spends more time online than almost any other media.  You are questioning how hard you go online?  You're kidding, right?  You need to go as hard as you can like your job depends on it.  Because frankly it does.

My take is there are levels of participation that lead to a culture of measurement and being able to identify and isolate the contributing factors of ROI:

1) track and record everything you do and pay attention to the mind numbing amount of data - if you can't or don't want to deal with it, find a person or firm that does 

2) compare a few of the important numbers above to come up with some ratios and quotients evaluated over time - if you've got a building full of quants in your organization, then this could be a big spreadsheet; if you don't hire someone.

3) make a no-bull guess at the value of these things in relation to each other - and map how they connect.  Yes, that means that marketing, brand, IT, operations, communications all need to have a common understanding of this in order to land anywhere near a ROI.

Sounds dumb and simple, right.  Problem is, it's a lot of work and nobody really owns it today in any organization.

BTW, here's Gary's take on it.

Innocense Lost

We've all had a moment (or series of them) where we realized that there were soft magic hammers and pulleys operating behind the scenes to gently influence and persuade us.  For me, it started when I was around 12 or 13 and came from a relative one or two times removed that was a musician by trade, but part anthropologist and philosopher who was just trying his crap theories on anyone who would listen.  Mixed in all of the bull, were some nuggets that cracked some of the straight-line doctrine I'd gotten to that point.

Later on, I took some subversive classes early in college that exposed me to the dark secrets of news media and advertising.  Subliminal messaging, linguistic control, etc.  All is not what it seems.  Anyway, I swung by Fred Wilson's blog A VC early today and saw his post titled Truth.  It's a great read!

In it, Fred counters the argument that we need journalism to surface the truth.  A concept that has long been gone in the this country.  Media is crumbling because they still think their brand of news matters.  It doesn't.  Fred argues that there is no absolute truth; only mine and yours cobbled together from our own individual perspectives and experiences.  He goes on to extol the virtues of social media as a more efficient mechanism to surface ideas, concepts and perspectives to consider so we have a wider view.  I personally think there will be societal consequences for our virtual lives, but that's for another post.  

This coincides with the newspapers whining for a bailout on the premise that they are the last bastion of protection against institutional control; they've been wielding mass institutional information control for decades, so funny to use that argument.  Let's be honest, recent events indicate a considerable bias in the mainstream media as all were nobly pulling for and complicit in our President to be elected.  I don't blindly fall on either side's rhetoric, so it isn't hard to see; I don't like Aikman calling Cowboys games either.

I won't make any media friends here, but journalistic integrity is long gone and the idea of absolute truth wasn't even hanging in the balance as traditional journalism and mass media teeter on extinction.

If You've Never Met or Heard Renny Gleason

Renny Gleeson at iMedia

Banners - Do They Work?

What a dumb question?  

There's a bunch of chatter lately about the effectiveness of banners and other online display units. 

This isn't even coming from traditional media folk because their budgets are getting pruned mind you.  It's coming from online advertising people.  More accurately, those that are heralding "social media" as the new new new media, but advertising, marketing and new media people at heart.

See the reason traditional media had a long life is because the advertisers and publishers were complicit in propping up the general principles of effectiveness and the scale in which they were measured. Now, we've got online media people asking if online media is effective?  What?  Of course it is effective!!!  More effective than the $MMM idiots are still pumping into TV with $0 return other than statistically pencil whipped GRP and Av Cume values.  Jesus, that's stupid!

Most of the chatter is coming from folk who I suspect have never run or seen the data from a significant banner campaign.  Run one with even cursory tracking and analytics and you can find a mountain of insights.  Obviously click-based conversions is the unrealistic grail you'll see, but if you set a cookie window, you'll see all of the view-based actions as well.  You'll know the optimal exposure frequency level.  You'll see the search patterns, branded and unbranded.  You'll see format and message trends.  You'll see geographic detail.  And you'll probably find out that who you were targeting aren't the same demo that are interested in your stuff and coming to your site.  Among 90 other things.

It pains me to read this stuff and see big brands still spending 98% of their budget on TV, magazines, athletes image rights, leather bound media kits and racing sponsorships.  And worst of all, somehow justifying the effectiveness of that spend.