Measurement of social media and advertising
Everyone's all tingly about social media. Seems like everyone is a social media expert. Every brand needs to be on social networks, a presence on YouTube and Facebook and their own Twitter channel.
Measurement of these channels is still in it's infancy. It's very difficult to prove, in most cases, that these investments have a positive ROI. There are some great examples of where it has worked but I'd suggest these are few and far between. Don't mis-understand me, I think proving ROI, true quantitative ROI on most advertising, is extremely difficult to prove. It doesn't mean it's not having an impact, it's just hard to quantify it. We can know it' having a positive impact by the number of friends, followers, page views, interactions etc. but we don't know what impact it's really having on the bottom line sales.
Ironically this is no different than advertising has been from the very beginning. Anyone who can tell you they can quantitatively measure the impact of a television or print advertising isn't telling you the whole truth. Sure, they can tell you it's having an impact through complicated equations that no one really understands. Truth is, there's no way to tie it back.
On-line media can be measured in many more ways that offline media. Engagement rates, interaction rates, page views, click-throughs, all these things have fueled the growth of on-line marketing over the last ten years. At the risk of biting the hand that feeds me however, they aren't able to truly isolate a decision.
Our decisions are influenced by so many factors that it's nearly impossible to understand which factor has the impact to make us choose one direction or another. As a discipline, marketing attempts to control chaos. Other business disciplines like accounting and operations are able to control or even understand inputs and therefore predict outcomes. Marketing is mostly about the customer who isn't controlled but influenced. Marketing, as a professor once told me, is the discipline most focused on increasing revenue rather than controlling costs. Only so much can be done to control costs. Revenue increases are about potential and possibilities and the life blood of any business.
- Paul Herring
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