Marketing Value Metrics: A Model for Profitability?


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"Marketing Value Metrics: A New Metrics Model to Measure Marketing Effectiveness" provides a model for tracking, using, and forecasting online marketing metrics.

Marketing Value Metrics

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Are we collecting profits or just numbers? Marketing metrics are everywhere and increasing by the day. They’re things like Facebook Likes, Twitter followers, email subscribers, ROI, Cost per Customer Acquisition, bounce ratio, conversions, and leads.

At no time in history has the marketing and sales process been so quantified. Marketers can tell you with growing precision whether this article gets clicked and who bought an item from this webpage because they clicked on a certain advertisement.

At the end of the day, every aspect of business should be about making a profit. Is modern-day marketing (whether it’s one person or a whole team) pulling its weight in regard to this?

Many businesses aren’t so sure anymore.

Is it worth it to pay for someone to write blog posts, Facebook posts, and Tweets when the proof isn’t readily visible?

The Problem: Online Marketing is Confusing

Malcolm McDonald, Peter Mouncey, and Stan McKlan, writers of “Marketing Value Metrics: A New Metrics Model to Measure Marketing Effectiveness,” claim that this confusion is a sign of the times. Marketing, especially social media, suffers from several problems that most marketers don’t want to face:

  • Increasing number of marketing channels and increasing complexity with those channels
  • Time lag between marketing techniques and marketing ROI
  • The concept that “cold hard data” shouldn’t be tied to profitability

In a world where businesses are expected to be competitive on a world stage, marketing budgets and expenses have grown as business owners chase metrics (Likes, comments, ratios) in order to get their customers.

This leaves marketers and business owners in a bind. Most business owners know they need a strong online business presence to thrive in an always-online world, but they don’t know which efforts will give the best return on their marketing expenses.

Metrics Must be Direct, Adaptable, and Structured

Online marketing, the authors of “Marketing Value Metrics” assure readers, is not the problem. The problem lies in the lack of an adaptable, but structured model to track, adjust, and implement marketing metrics that are tied directly to the bottom line or the long-term growth of a company.

“Marketing Value Metrics” states that this is the missing key to effective online marketing. Without it, businesses will end up chasing short-term marketing wins without long-term success.

3 Levels of Accountability

The concept behind the comprehensive model introduced by “Marketing Value Metrics” is structured around 3 levels:

Level 1: Shareholder-Value Added (Profits)

This level addresses basic questions of marketing effectiveness tied to overall business planning. [aka Executive Level Planning]

  • What are we trying to do as a business?
  • How do we measure what we are trying to do?
  • How often should we measure?
  • Who should be responsible for what we measure?

Level 2: Action

This level involves picking strategies to achieve the objectives and goals planned in Level 1. [aka Middle Level Management Planning]

  • Strategies — What do we need to do?
  • Critical Success Factors — How do we know we are going in the right direction?
  • Budget — How much do we spend to reach those goals?

Level 3: Micro-Measurement

This level involves choosing the day-to-day metrics and activities that will reach the objectives and goals discussed in Level 1. [aka Front-line Planning]

  • Awareness — What steps of the buying cycle are we measuring?
  • Testing — How do we know if our ad campaign went well?
  • Forecasting — What response do we anticipate for next year?

The purpose of the model is to encourage a couple of behaviors that “Marketing Value Metrics” sees as successful marketing planning:

  1. Linking budgets to specific performance indicators
  2. Testing specific indicators and using those indicators to forecast performance
  3. Adjusting performance standards as needed
  4. Engaging in whole-business efforts

Pros and Cons of New Model

The model presented in the book seems to serve as a breath of relief to business owners who want a more specific method to integrate their online metrics to their marketing budget. Compared to other business books, “Marketing Value Metrics” provides specific advice to many of the confusing elements of online marketing, like how to segment your customer base (discussed in Chapter 2). Through a plethora of models and graphs, the book takes social media concepts (like awareness) and drills them down to a specific measure or ratio.

On the other hand, the graphic of the model is a bit overwhelming at first look. The authors do an excellent job of walking readers through the individual characteristics in their model, but it can be overwhelming. If you are not comfortable perusing articles from magazines like Harvard Business Review, you may be too overwhelmed to continue reading.

Should You Read “Marketing Value Metrics?”

The answers depends heavily on your background and interest. If you are looking for a simple “12-step guide to social media profits” book, “Market Value Metrics” would not be for you. The book, however, will be of great value to marketing managers, executive-level managers, and boardroom members who want a more effective model for linking their marketing efforts to profits.

Small business owners may find that the model is too complex for their budget. Regardless of background, however, every business owner can find at least one or two concepts in almost every chapter that can help improve marketing effectiveness. This review is based on an electronic copy of the book provided for reviewing purposes.

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Charles Franklin Charles Franklin is a Book Reviewer for Small Business Trends. He has a background as a professional reviewer, and is also a content provider and customer relations professional.

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