Measure it, then make it better.
TORN from the comments on “Key lessons from the Inbound Marketing Summit”:
“If we can measure it, we are responsible for making it better.”
That’s from my friend John Johansen, citing the IMS presentation given by Mike Moran of Converseon. It offers a nice counterpoint to the blunt assessment of Stephanie A. Lloyd in her comment on “Social media and the acid-bath of ROI”:
“Trying to measure ROI of social media is stupid. It’s like measuring the ROI of sending emails or talking on the phone.”
Where do you come down on this issue?
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3 Comments so far
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I have grown to believe that we need to change the context
Difficult to generate ROI? yes – I think so
But how about earning value from?
Think more in line with Marketing – brand building and awareness. You need to work incrementally building those – and generating value from each piece.
Can we state that if we do ‘x’ 5 researchers will connect and solve our next big problem for an ROI of ‘Y’ ? – I don’t think so.
Can we set up the envoronment & work at encouraging that interaction? Yes
Love that quote.
Love the passionately divergent opinions on this one. I think a lot depends on the interpretation of a deceptively simple question.
Stephanie’s target is right on target – for social media as an infrastructure element. It does have a lot in common with having telephones deployed throughout the office. We manage costs and performance for infrastructure but we don’t demand that they show ROI. We measure things like uptime or MOS, jitter and latency (in a VoIP installation) to ensure that we’re meeting the infrastructure goal of supporting the business.
If I’m setting up telephones in a call center, though, you bet I’m going to measure ROI. I’ll track metrics like average call time, hold time, dropped calls, close rate, average order size, etc. In that very common business scenario, yes, you do measure ROI on telephones.
So instead of asking “do we measure ROI on social media” as though it were a moral or philosophical question, ask: “What are we trying to achieve here? How do we manage to make sure we achieve that? And what is the appropriate type of measurement?”