January 8th, 2010

Shooting Ourselves in the “Engagment” Face

It all started Thursday morning when I saw this tweet. Describing himself as “In the zone”, the author proceeds to spend three minutes railing against the concept of ROI in web based marketing, claiming that ROI is the tool of the fearful and that key to effective marketing is…something else. This type of proud and boastful ignorance is so common in marketing, it’s almost not worth even responding to, but for some reason, Meerman really got under my skin.

This line of “logic” typically centers around two basic concepts:
1) You can’t measure the ROI of T.V. or Billboards, or any number of other marketing efforts, so why are we worried about it for the web?
2) ROI is outmoded, and what we should be looking at is some “brand new” RO_ fill in the blank. The current favorite is something called “Return on Engagement”. Ugh.

Now, this topic is a big part of why I helped found Fight, so maybe I’m a little more sensitive than others, but this is something that has affected every agency I’ve worked for, and every agency every one of my friends has worked for. My feeling is that as long as we, as an industry, wave our hands at this, we’re just going to keep fighting the battles with our clients that we always have. Until we embrace our role, and benefit, to the business of our clients, we’ll always be the ones with the shrinking budgets, forced to justify everything we do in some sort of aesthetic argument with people who may or may not have any understanding of what we do. Instead of looking at ROI as a limit to creative freedom, we should be embracing it as our single best path forward in expanding that freedom.

Looking at point 1) Can one measure the ROI of a billboard or a T.V. spot? Possibly. I would say probably. But lets say for the sake of argument that we can’t. What does that have to do with anything? Shouldn’t we be measuring the value of our work where ever we can? And besides, the web stands to be possibly the most important marketing tool available precisely because it can be so well measured. I have no idea why we’d ignore such a powerful aspect to this medium.

As for point 2) The fact of the matter is this: Every single thing our clients “invest” (or, for clarification, pay us) in, has some sort of “return”. The fact that aspects of this return may be hard to measure doesn’t mean it’s not there. Without knowing what to measure, and how to measure it though, we’re left just guessing if our work has any value. Worse, we can’t prove its value to our clients. The real problem here arises when agencies fail to ask questions of their clients at the start of projects. Is increased sales the reason your client came to you? Then you better be sure you design a program to increase sales, and then measure your results. Is “engagement” the most important thing to them? Then the return on their investment is a demonstration of increased engagement. Find out how to measure that.

Continuing to ignore the role of ROI in marketing, or worse, couching it in some sort of pseudo-science, is not just a sign of systemic laziness in our industry, it’s keeping us in the backseat when it comes to our role in business when we should helping to lead the way.

NOTE: This was originally posted on thisisviolence.net

justin
  • I think this hits it dead-on, though I'd like to add what I would call a sort of parallel point. But first, to add a bit to the point you've made, this disregard or resignation regarding ROI also becomes an easy path towards neglecting appropriate CRM efforts and other corollary needs, which, in turns, then becomes a self-reinforcing argument to "this is not measurable." What I mean is that if we start by saying we "cannot" measure ROI (or care not to), then it follows it is less urgent to determine even exactly who is showing up on our digital platforms...which in turn of course makes it darn hard to measure! So this argument is a sort of Escher trap or Morpheus loop in my view.

    But there's something I would call parallel to this whole ROI discussion, which is the importance of brand goals and vision, which must be tied to ROI in order to make sense of the picture at all. It's not merely that we measure the ROI (which can and should be done in its own right) but that we understand the relationship to larger brand goals, and furthermore, even, we should not be so fetishistic about ROI and measurability that we do not abandon those brand values and core communication styles that express the purpose of the brand and in turn (should) engage the appropriate audience. I think this is why some people have reacted against ROI, as the ROI discussion sometimes neglects to say such as (for example) "well, we are the type of company that simply must express itself via the public stream because that reflects our core values and relates to our brand's inherent audience" [e.g., Twitter, but I don't want to digress into a mere tools or even specific technology promotion, speaking here more in mode of engagement]. The real necessity is of course to marry these two aspects, brand values and return metrics, holistically, not to either get mired in numbers for their own sake (what good is profit if it brings us into a dead end avenue?) or brand communication for its own sake (what good is communication if it yields no measurable benefit?).

    Incidentally, Justin, I am not saying that you have stated anything otherwise, in fact I perceive Fight to be wholly engaged in this way of thinking, but I am elaborating as I think too often the ROI discussions have neglected the values/goals discussion and in turn this has, I believe, created the fuel for too many people to say "the hell with ROI" (in effect).
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