Posts Tagged ‘measurement’
Is marketing evolving through social media?
August 11th, 2011
Two opposing pieces focused on social media understanding within the marketing sector caught my attention earlier this month.
Allow me to set the scene, the following piece was published on the Telegraph’s site on August 1st: ‘Businesses still don’t ‘get’ social media - and it’s 40-year-old marketing directors that are to blame.‘ By Alexis Dormandy, of LoveThis.com
Here’s a snippet to whet your appetite:
“Our 40-year-old marketing director probably spent four years at an agency, before going to work on the client side. They spent the 1990s pulling together billboard campaigns, debating what they could say with the Advertising Standards Authority, agreeing joint promotions with other big businesses, and sponsoring celebrity sportsman. Life was still a lot of fun.
“They turned 30, the dot-com bubble came, and a small number of the more enterprising ones became entrepreneurs. Most kept rising up their businesses, learning to take eighteen months to launch a consumer product, and working with retailers to plan their Christmas sales nine months in advance. The really good ones rose to the top and had teams to look after all this stuff for them.”
Although obviously designed to be controversial, the article sparked some good debate, well in the main (see the comments on the Telegraph piece, some of which were not really about debate). However, one of the best reaction pieces was by Gordon MacMillan at Brand Republic: Are Generation X’s class of marketing directors to blame for businesses failing to get social media?
In his piece, Gordon opened up the requirements for a marketing director, confirming: “While he (Alexis) makes some interesting points, I’m sure he’s wrong. Marketing isn’t about analytics, maths and measurement. It is about ideas. Sure you have to understand all of the above, but being brilliant at understanding analytics is not going to help produce great marketing.”
I tend to agree with Gordon here, Alexis’ piece makes some strong points, and to be fair his piece starts off by focusing on social commerce, and in that case, analytics is crucial to deliver sales. However, marketing, or social media for that matter, is not just about, or mainly about, maths. Nor is it focused purely on data and analytical dissection of your audience.
Yes, I completely agree measurement and analytics is a hugely important part of the mix, and researching and understanding the brand’s community is the foundation for any campaign, combined with constant monitoring, measurement and evolution based on the numbers. However, although the importance of analytics and audience research has increased, it’s certainly not a new tactic, which is where I think the argument fails, are we really saying marketing campaigns did not employ market research and analytical measurement strategies 20 years ago?
I’m the first to agree the marketing landscape has changed, but the main point for me is not that we’ve just changed from long term campaigns to listening and engaging immediately, although that is true. It’s not that we just need great ideas, although again that’s part of it, and it’s not about the maths. The main issue is that we can’t live in our previously disparate and comfortable marketing specialisms, because the barriers have been blurring for so long that they are practically non-existent.
In-house marketers need to have a good understanding of the full range of marketing strategies, and to some degree, the possible tactics as well. As Gordon says, yes you can hire agencies to help with specific knowledge, and of course I support that, but the agencies are having to be more generalist as well.
The simple economic reason for this is: why would a client pay for three or four agencies to cover a range of specialisms (e.g. search, social, PR and web dev) when one can do them all - and do them better and more coherently without the painful time management required to bring agencies together?
That’s without even getting into the complementary nature of these services.
At Liberate Media, we experience a full range of enquires in terms of their understanding of social and how it should be utilised as part of any campaign. We have social-savvy clients that are fully immersed personally, through to RFPs from those that just want ‘some social media‘ because their boss or competitor mentioned it. This situation has improved dramatically over the last five years and today we are getting smarter briefs and better questions, and I expect that to continue developing.
I agree that the world of marketing has changed, and I think it’s a great change, and honestly believe marketing of the past was really advertising in disguise, as we were telling people what they need, not asking them what they want. Today we are truly grasping the meaning of marketing and evolving that role. Today we are able to call in specific and useful tools to assist in practically every element of our jobs, but the understanding across the board, the knowledge of what our customers want and how we can help them by being useful is the key for me. The maths, ideas and other elements are pieces of that puzzle, and to be successful we must solve it all.
I do however agree with the Telegraph piece that the social media managers of today will inherit the earth, or at least have the understanding, cross-discipline skills and versatility to have a bright future!
European PR measurement summit - really?
June 28th, 2010
As you may have seen in PR Week last week, the so-called ‘Barcelona declaration of research principles’ was created at the second European summit on measurement, in partnership with AMEC (the Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication), and incorporating the CIPR’s Measurement Group, the Global Alliance for Public Relations, the IPR’s Commission on Measurement and Evaluation, the PRSA and the ICCO to agree a set of measurement and evaluation principles.
On reading the story, my initial reaction was full of hope, finally we can put the ghost of measurement to rest in the PR sector by agreeing relevant industry-wide standards, and hopefully kill off the AVE scores once and for all.
In fact the Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) system, and its relevance as a PR measurement, was highlighted in the third principle, which reads: ‘AVEs do not measure the value of PR and do not inform future activity; they measure the cost of media space.‘ Spot on!
The full list of seven principles are below:
SEVEN KEY PRINCIPLES
1. Measurement and goal setting are fundamental for any PR programmes
2. Media measurement requires quantity and quality - clip cuts are generally meaningless
3. AVEs do not measure the value of PR and do not inform future activity; they measure the cost of media space
4. Social media can and should be measured
5. Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results
6. Business results can and should be measured where possible
7. Transparency and replicability are paramount to sound measurement
I’m sorry, there must be some mistake, surely this is the agenda for discussion, not the outcome of an ‘expert’ summit that involved 200 delegates from 33 nationalities, supported by 5 global bodies?
Far be it from me to call into question exactly what they did for the rest of the time at this summit, but isn’t this a starting point? And if this is the second event, what exactly took part at the first event?
The mind boggles at how this feedback is supposed to be relevant at a time when PR in general is already being left behind in terms of how it measures and justifies spend, let alone how PR understands and utilises social media, and surely point 4, (above) only goes to prove PR is still very far from doing this.
As for the quotes from various ‘industry figures’ and bodies represented in the PR Week article, i agree, it is important, and it is a positive platform to grow from, which we should support. However, it’s really not a huge step, in terms of steps, it’s pretty tiny. Where is the urgency? Where is the delivery? We all know what the PR industry should be doing, but surely the issue is ‘how’.
Perhaps that comes out of the next event? Is it unfair of me to expect more? If this was the outcome of a client-facing event would the client be patting us on the back and saying well done, you’ve stated the obvious, and it’s taken you years to do it, but at least you’re on the right path now.
Yes, i understand the event was developed to set ‘principles’ and in fairness that was achieved, but come on, can we really afford to continue moving at such a slow pace?
It’s great that the PR industry is going to leave AVEs behind, but the truth is, the fact that AVEs are still being discussed underlines how far behind we are.
Oh, and apparently the Barcelona Principles will be refined based on detailed participant feedback, and will be built on by AMEC and its partners over the coming months and years.
I think it’s best that i don’t comment on that little gem.
Social media ROI - sharing our experiences
November 19th, 2008
Three months ago I wrote a post about the importance of standing fast and explaining the reasons that we cannot always provide traditional measurements, such as ROI, as part of a social media campaign when questioned by our clients and peers. I still stand by this.
On Monday, Todd Defren wrote an excellent post, titled: ROI for social media marketing: it’s complicated, which summed up many theories and quotes from around the community, and has since received comments from even more influencers - great job Todd!
Reading Todd’s post, and looking back at Liberate Media’s own experiences, I thought it would be useful to share our thinking and progress, which has informed our position on the subject.
First of all, in reference to the big question of ROI for social media - Todd hit the nail on the head, it is complicated! In a traditional sense of: a rate of return used to evaluate the efficiency of a financial investment, ROI is specifically complicated by trying to apply numeric quantities to human interactions and conversations - as highlighted by Jason Falls.
So we fight the good fight and educate our clients - right? Right. But when speaking to metrics-dominated sectors such as retail and travel, as we have been recently, education is one thing, but in a harsh economic climate clients are far more likely to be swayed when they are told what they want to hear; that they can spend X on social media marketing and get X back.
Now don’t get me wrong, i’m not advocating that we just tell clients what they want to hear because the economy is tough, or in fact that we lost out on those clients as they went for alternative providers, neither are true. But, what I am saying is that while there are so many differing opinions on the subject, and therefore options, educating our clients on the issue is made even tougher.
This was a point of frustration, but over the same time period we’ve been busy continuing to develop our own metrics and frameworks to help clients to measure the tangible elements, while also communicating and evidencing that social media contains many points of human interaction that require a different approach.
As we developed our frameworks, and looked at the options of how social media relates to search marketing and other elements of the digital marketing mix, it became clear that as social media influences the function of digital marketing as a whole, the metrics that we use don’t need to be reflected through a single metric or score, so why make it so?
Furthermore, as has been mentioned previously on this blog and on many others, each campaign is unique, so a static metric framework, while undoubtedly useful, does not tell the whole story. In reality, the measurement points need to relate to core business objectives which will change from campaign to campaign.
This leaves us with an assortment of measurement points, including traditional metrics, all of which are useful, but need to be presented with a large dose of translation from the consultants involved, not by a single metric. So why try to distill the information down to a score when the power is in the detail?
I hope this brief overview has been a useful exercise, and helped in some way to move the conversation on, if not for many of the afore mentioned bloggers as they’ve undoubtedly considered this already, but from an education point of view.
The development of our own framework continues on an almost daily basis, different campaigns add new angles and considerations, and we will share more thinking as we continue to build.
Let me know your thoughts.