Conversions and ROI are the ultimate metrics… right?
Emarketer.com recently posted an article that included the below table listing the performance metrics Senior Marketing managers are most interested in per a survey.
A Rise employee found the article this morning and emailed it to the whole company leading to a “Are you kidding me?” reaction throughout our staff. How is it that CPC (media spend), conversions, and ROI are believed to be “Least Important” by 59% of the marketing execs out there. I mean isn’t generating revenue at the crux of all things a business, much less a marketer does. Of course there is the branding argument that engagement today will lead to loyalty and sales in the future. We would argue that even if it is a branding initiative, when using the Internet as the marketing channel, there are too many metrics available not to measure and keep track of your ROI.
We would be interested to know what type of companies the respondents to the survey in question work for. The only way their disinterest in Internet marketing ROI can make sense is if a high percentage of them work for companies that still sell the vast majority of their products through bricks & mortar channels. I mean if I was a marketing executive at P&G, Coca Cola, or McDonalds I suppose time on site and unique page views would be the best KPIs to measure success. Interestingly enough one of the comments that went across today during Rise’s initial reaction to the table was:
“Not to mention that time on the site can also mean that people cannot find what they are looking for. It does not necessarily mean that people are engaged. It might mean that you need to work on user experience.”
The above could very well be true and should definitely be taken into consideration if you have to rely on ‘engagement’ metrics to measure your success.
Rand Fishkin at seomoz.org has also written a blog responding to the topic at hand. We recommend giving it a read as we concur with most everything he said. As one of the Rise staff said after reading his blog today, “Amen Brother!”
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Tags: Internet Marketing ROI
