What ROI?

As the growth and globalisation of the current day continues to excel into a technological ‘able to get anything or anywhere at the click of a button’ age, of course business have adapted and channeled marketing into any outlet possible from social networks to search engine optimisation, behind us are the days when campaigns could be measured by website traffic “Measuring the impact of online advertising used to be relatively easy. It was all about analytics: Unique Visitors, Page Views, Cost per Clicks – safe, measurable, defined metrics” (Fisher, 2009) , so the question has to be asked:

How are companies really measuring ROI from digital marketing campaigns?

To be able to answer the question appropriately, we first need to acknowledge what is meant by ‘ROI’. To do so the goals of the company need to be understood, as in what do they wish to achieve from this campaign? as a company can measure the cost of launching a blog and then calculate return of sales from that investment, but it dives deeper than that “But a company could also start by thinking about what marketing objectives such a blog might satisfy (e.g., brand engagement), why its customers would visit the blog (e.g., to learn about new products) and what behaviours they might engage in once they got there (e.g., post a comment about a recent consumption experience) that could be linked to the company’s marketing objectives” (Hoffman, 2010). KeyPoint Indicators (KPI) can be used for this, below Marler (2015) outlines a few:

1. General Performance – Traffic, leads, Reach
2. Channel Based – Website, blog, social networks, search engines
3. Source based performance – Direct traffic, Organic search, referrals, email, PPC
4. Campaign based performance – Lead generation, click throughs, conversions, conversion rates
5. Setting realistic and measurable goals

Measuring ROI with these KPI’s throws numbers and figures out the window, the measurement rather for these cases is more story telling,”What happened, where are we now, and where are we going? Did more folks come into the forum? How? And why? What are they doing now? […] What really matters are the opinions, voices, and experiences that people are sharing.” (Fisher, 2009). constant KPI’s are forever being changed or added but Connie benson (2008) identified some more important attributes that were exposed to a necessity for measurement:

• Attention=Time on website (sometimes it’s not yours)
• Interaction=Click, Comment, or Embed
• Conversation Index: Ratio between blog posts and comments+trackbacks
• Velocity=Distance/Time (Rate of how fast your message is travelling in a given time)
• Sentiment=Tone, opinion
• Qualitative=What did they say?
• Impacts=What did they do? (influencers)

As ‘the internet never sleeps’ campaigns require constant measurement, and Connie (2008) identifies more factors that will require a monthly or weekly basis measurement:

• ongoing definition of objectives;
• web analytics;
• interaction – Trends in members, topics, discovery of new communities;
• qualitative quotes – Helpful for feedback and marketing;
• recommendations – Based on interactions with the customers;
• benchmark based on previous report

If looking for numerical value as a means for measuring ROI from digital media campaigns is the only answer you are looking for then look else where, digital media is ruled by deeper connections and understanding of consumer experience and loyalty, creating brand awareness and reaching new target markets, all these inherent characteristics measurable, and valuable.

References:

• Fisher, T., 2009. ROI in social media: A look at the arguments. Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management, 16(3), pp.189-195.
• HOFFMAN, D.L. and FODOR, M., Can You Measure the ROI of Your Social Media Marketing?.
• Taylor, C. (2009) Will the IAB’s social media metrics definitions help crack the engagement code? Media Post, 6 May, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=105556, accessed May 2009.

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