For those of you just joining the blog content this week… we have been writing, discussing, and arguing about the true value of non-measured marketing… I’m convinced there isn’t any true value. The beginning of this process started when I began reviewing budgets for media buys that had no “measured” return to the bottom line of a revenue stream. Yeah, they could see an increase in sales but they had no idea whether or not the increase came from direct mail, newspaper ad, or the billboard on the major freeway.
This isn’t meant to be a week of non-measured marketing bashing… but more a call to action for all the marketers in the world to quit screwing with ideas that are not measured! This may be a little out there but…
If you are a marketing, advertising, or PR firm that is not measuring or trying to figure out how to measure their services… you are going to be eaten alive by companies that can measure EVERYTHING. Your clients will find someone else and you will cease to be relevant.
There will come a time when the thrill of being placed in a magazine or having a name plastered on a billboard is going to lose its sexiness. There will come a time when business owners, executives, and marketing directors will demand measured results.
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine from college, Trevor Noel, on Twitter about this topic. We were going back and forth on the true value of an increase in brand awareness. This is what Trevor said that made me stop and contemplated whether or not I was a complete idiot:
Any billboard advertising a highly equitable brand increases awareness, share of mind and market share. Is that not effective?
And I do realize that effectiveness (resulting sales) are at best, approximations. I can’t say how effective.
I understand the argument of increasing brand awareness in a market by buying space on a highway, television, radio, or any other medium… believe me I get it. I just have an issue with making huge media buys on something that has no measurement. I’ve sold my share of flashy objects… and guess what… they gave no return other than a few fans or comments.
The true reason why people keep buying (without demanding measurement) billboards, newspaper ads, radio spots, banner ads, mass direct mail, and social media consulting is that they are afraid to do anything…
Different.
It isn’t the fact that they actually believe that the billboard is garnering them increased sales year-over-year…
It isn’t the fact that the salesman just conned them into spending $60,000 a year for eyeballs.
It is that they are afraid what will happen if they quit spending the same dollars… on the same things.
It is up to us… as marketers… to teach, sway, and coax our clients into measuring every dollar that is spent on marketing. It is up to Lamar, CBS, ClearChannel, Young & Laramore, my company and Burkhart (and every marketing, advertising, and PR firm) to figure out if what they are selling small to mid size businesses is actually making a difference instead of sapping money from their already thin pockets.
James Ryan
People still buy out of emotion, not logic. Even the CEO or CMO.
kylelacy
You can still sell on emotion and measure the process. I don't understand where you are coming from with that comment.
Marc Rapp
Essentially, all new things (ideas, products and services) are not quantifiable. In-fact, most of the *new* will break your metrics.
I do agree with you regarding client education and, to some degree, measuring the effectiveness of the campaign(s) through their channels and funnels. However, those numbers do not represent the possibilities thereafter. Another salient problem with metrics, and why they're often pushed aside is; they're used to iterate tired ideas. Even worse, they're used to gauge the value of something new, which almost always hinders the possibilities. Those numbers are also used as a catalyst to drive creative, which is wrong.
As the previous comments have mentioned, emotion is the x-factor. You can argue that technically today we could track a sale from engagement, lead generation to sale, but that fragmentation is tedious, intrusive and still subject to *creative* interpretation.
Marketing is an end result, it has no true form.
Clients know this.
Ben
I would disagree. Everything is quantifiable, sometimes we just haven't figured out the correct manner in which to quantify them (or we are still working out the math). The beauty of being in marketing today is that we can easily track sales and revenue from engagement through the end sale from pretty much every avenue of marketing available. The main difficulties now are not measuring and quantifying but rather in being overwhelmed with the amount of data available, knowing how to decipher what is important and taking appropriate action in a timely manner as markets move.
There are four reasons that I see why companies are not doing this:
1. They don't know they can.
2. They are too lazy to do so.
3. They are afraid of what the numbers will say (i.e. the company owner or CEO or marketing director is an idiot because he's been spending $40K a year on Yellow Pages which delivers no results)
4. The marketing companies these companies hire are afraid of the results (i.e. everything they have been recommending doesn't work and they will look like idiots)
Indiana Chevy
Here is what I read into this; why do people spend the most money on the things that are the least measurable. It should be the opposite. Spend alot of money on things you can tie into ROI easier and less on things that have more of a soft ROI like brand awareness. We are in this exact situation now with some radio advertising. Perhaps the radio ads are whats driving the traffic. Perhaps its our social presence that made them even listen to the commercial and not turn it off in the first place. So many factors that make alot of marketing so hard to quantify but I agree with Kyle there should be a bigger emphasis on it.
Chris Theisen
Director of Digital Communications
Hare Chevrolet
Yair Yona
I think the advantages of online marketing and advertising is driving everyone crazy. In the past, only big companies with huge budget could afford 20 seconds of TV commercials. now, when the mom and pop shop around the corner, can dedicate 50$ a week for a google Adwords campaign – everyone's a marketer.
the access of the masses to online advertisement and the fear to be left outside of the party if you don't use this medium, leads everyone to be marketers, without the proper knowledge. most of the people in the world don't have the slightest clue about how to monetize, read reports, use Analytics etc etc, but they do know how to pay 100$ a week on 4 words and 40 click in Adwords.
So I guess the real problem is that the number of advertisers became incredibly huge, due to the easiness of the procedure, but the number of people who know how to do it effectively remained little in comparison.
Bojan
You know how they say, every day new sucker is born…
hananhalabi
[…] Lacy, K. (2010, November 24). Marketers are selling dreams not reality. it’s time to change. [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://kylelacy.com/marketers-are-selling-dreams-not-reality-its-time-to-change/ […]
Latoya
Thanks alot – your answer solved all my problems after seaverl days struggling
fyonas
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