The Case for Online Advertising - Part 2: Measure Shmeasure

I previously posted about the three dirty letters in social media marketing - ROI.

At the CMO Leaderhisp Forum the VP of media sales east at Facebook said:

-- ROI and social nets: “Return on investment” is probably the wrong thing to be looking for. Instead, the acronym should stand for “return on involvement,” Arrix said. The usual standard of audience “reach” is too limited when it comes to social media and “things like click-through rates don’t cut it. Return on ‘involvement’ looks at what users are saying about your brand. For example, are users taking your message and sharing it with their friends? Every client we do business with, we tell them, ‘You have to divorce yourself from what you’ve done before.’”

This is probably a somewhat controversial point of view since marketers don't know how to measure "involvement" or how to turn "involvement" into preference or purchase.  Is there inherent value in "involvement"?  What does that mean?

IMHO, Involvement is a measure much like Awareness.  You get involved with consumers, become a part of their decision set, and when they are looking to make a purchase in your category they think of you.  Furthermore, involvement can be a great way to spread word of mouth - if your message is compelling, interesting and portable.

Whether you agree with "involvement" as a valid metric or not the reality is that marketers probably do need to adjust their measures when looking at online marketing and especially social media.  Typical Reach, Awareness, Recall measures won't likely capture the potential value that developing a relationship can create.  Social Media suffers from some of the same challenges as Word-of-Mouth or PR in this regard.  They key, IMHO is to be flexible on metrics and look for results over time - including more "equity" based metrics - i.e. what qualities are associated with my brand due to my social media/interactive efforts?  Am I creating a more favorable impresion?  Equity metrics move slowly over time and often aren't measured as a part of interactive campaigns. 

Lets face it - Social Media and Interactive are still relatively new mediums.  It took marketers decades of test and learn to deliver significant ROIs on traditional mediums like TV, Print and DTC.  Measuring returns is VITAL to the success of any campaign, the question is are you measuring the right thing?

Click here to see part 1 of this posting.