Jim Signorelli, Co-Founder and CEO, ESW StoryLab

Jim Signorelli is an advertising executive whose career has been spent at major national advertising agencies, including N. W. Ayer, W. B. Doner, Marsteller, Lois/USA, and Frankel & Co. His clients have included Citibank, General Electric, Toshiba, Burger King, Arby’s, KFC, International Harvester, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, McDonald’s, the American Marketing Association, and many others. Jim is the co-founder and CEO of ESW StoryLab, a Chicago-based, full-portfolio marketing firm. Crain’s Chicago Business magazine has cited ESW StoryLab as one of the top 25 agencies in Chicago, and it’s been named to the Inc. 5,000 list the last three years in a row.

Will you provide some background on your thoughts behind founding ESW StoryLab and its basic principles?

StoryLab is a separate division of ESW Partners and serves as our answer to what many agencies refer to as account planning. Like account planners, our primary aim is to advise clients on their communications strategies, but we come at this task from an entirely different angle.
 
StoryLab has its roots in the belief that a great deal of advertising gets in its own way. I often explain this phenomenon through the example of my two youngest grandkids. Both the 3-year-old and the 5-year-old were watching TV one day when a commercial came on proclaiming, "We like to make you smile." The 3-year-old exclaimed, "They don't make me smile," to which the 5-year-old responded, "That's ‘cause it's advertising, stupid."
 
Boastful, self-admiration is fairly commonplace in advertising and perhaps even expected by our audiences. It should not come as a shock to anyone, however, that in Gallup's annual measure of people we trust, advertising professionals consistently rank toward the bottom of the list. If even a 5-year-old can see right through the brags, why do advertisers continue to make them? Could it be because those in the advertising profession are conditioned to believe that blowing one's horn is merely “de rigueur”—an expected sign of self-confidence?
 
Clearly, one of advertising's most important functions is to inform prospects about product features and benefits, especially when they are distinctly unique and desirable. This is what we refer to as the brand's outer layer. But when we get into the area of brand essence, or its inner layer that encompasses brand beliefs and values, self-definition can have a boomerang effect. It's a little like a job applicant who informs us that he values his high degree of intelligence. A claim like this puts a heavy rock in his own wagon.
 
Studying story structure helped us to arrive at a better way to communicate the belief system that makes up a brand's inner layer. Stories are structured to allow audiences to come to their own conclusions about the characters. Novelists don't explain the meaning of their prose, comedians don't explain their punch lines, and poets don't interpret their own verse. Storytellers of all types connect with their audiences by pulling them into their point of view, not by pushing it upon them. This, more than anything I could tell you about StoryLab, is our primary objective when faced with helping brands become better known and respected for what they stand for.
 
What are some of the main ideas of StoryBranding, and how do you feel that it fits within the strategic plan of today's senior marketer?
 
Account planners typically start their work by unearthing consumer insights, or those flashes of understanding that identify unmet needs. Whereas we, too, excavate consumer insights, their importance cannot be estimated until we understand the brand's genuine narrative or cultural logic, which is oftentimes hidden behind unspoken norms, beliefs, and values.
 
Our "brand-first" approach to market analysis encourages marketers to understand the truth behind their brands before they begin a deep analysis of their prospects. Having witnessed and worked on a few failed accounts during my career, I have seen too many clients set out to fulfill consumer needs they are ill equipped to satisfy. This classic mistake is best exemplified by a brand of automobile that was once in high demand. Contributing to its ultimate demise was the decision to convince younger targets that "This is not your father's Oldsmobile." Young people couldn't change their well-entrenched perceptions, and older customers became confused and, at worse, insulted.
 
Mistakes like this one come about from working outside the lines that have been established by a brand's legacy. So before all else, we make certain that both management and the agency are able to clearly articulate what that legacy is. We realize that this approach does an about face on traditional marketing practices that put consumer needs before all else. But our aim is to help brands achieve authenticity. As we see it, authenticity stems from both an acceptance and amplification of what's already in place. We cannot pretend it isn't there and that dressing it up differently will make it disappear. And yes, sometimes we have to find the beauty in our beast. Social media has given consumers even greater means to see all of a brand's cracks and wrinkles in the form of comments and reviews. Consequently, consumers cannot and will not be fooled.
 
StoryBranding, the planning process we employ, is about digging up the brand’s real story as opposed to creating it. To do so, we employ different techniques that give management the vocabulary it needs to better talk about their brand's underlying meaning and aspirations. We might employ story archetypes, for instance, for the purpose of understanding and articulating the brand's character traits and motivations, or what we refer to as the brand's inner layer.
 
Once assessed, we then look to the outer layer, which is made up of the brand’s features and benefits. What we look for is alignment between what the brand believes in and how that belief is manifested in what it delivers. Taking a cue from story structure, if a story is disjointed or inconsistent, audiences will pay more attention to the mistakes than the story. In contrast, when all of the story's elements join together to form a logical and fluid whole, we see brilliance. Alignment of the inner and outer layers makes brands like Apple, Nike, Disney, Southwest Airlines, Harley-Davidson, and others like them into true StoryBrands.
 
Finally, once the story scaffolding is built, we set out to tell the story. The word "tell" is used loosely, however. One of the reasons stories engage us is because they do more showing than telling. One of my favorite quotes is from Hannah Arendt, a little-known German philosopher who said, "Stories reveal meaning without committing the error of defining it." As such, the StoryBranding process that we practice can best be described as a means to creating advertising that invites audiences to share the brand's belief instead of telling them what to believe. This advertising is epitomized by themes like "Just Do It," "Think Different," "Find Your Beach," "Life Should Be Delicious," or "Never Stop Exploring." These are ideas that the brand wants to be associated with. They invite subscription far more effectively than questionable promises.
 
Especially in light of today’s emphasis on all things digital and social, how can the principles of StoryBranding be applied through these media?
 
To provide some background, I was once asked how to tell a story in a banner ad that flashes on the computer screen for less than three seconds. This question, and many like it, are outgrowths of a common misinterpretation of what we advocate through StoryBranding.
 
StoryBranding is a strategic process that has its roots in story logic. On the other hand, storytelling is a communication technique. The suggestion that every ad should literally be a story about a character with plots, arcs, conflicts, and resolutions is highly impractical. However, we do believe that every ad should tie together with every other ad to become chapters of the same story.
 
I recently purchased some software for my Mac. It came in a very attractive, gotta-see-what's-inside, elegantly assembled cardboard package. One might ask why Apple goes through so much trouble; if the software is good, does it need to bring a high level of graphic finish to its packaging? Apple would no doubt answer yes, and without hesitation. In fact, everything Apple does is joined together by bringing high-touch graphics to high-tech function, which is an outgrowth of their "Think Different" story. Combining its inner-layer belief system with its outer-layer demonstration is what we call alignment, and when that exists, the brand's story is both told and reinforced through every touch point.
 
Social media is a very important touch point, but we have to look beyond its potential capabilities to trigger "buy now" responses and instead look toward an understanding of how social can enhance a brand's story. Facebook is the quintessential story medium. When I post a picture, what I choose to post helps tell a story about me and what I believe is important. It's the same for brands. Too often we see brands using Facebook to provide information exclusively related to their outer layers, features, benefits, and special offers. This is fine, but to ignore social media’s ability to help shape the brand's inner layer with helpful information or human interest content related to the brand's story is to ignore a huge opportunity. Our advice to marketers is to look for ways to supplement “buy now” offers with interesting ways to associate with ideas they support. It's now a cliché, but I have to use it: Content is king.
 
What are some of the challenges or obstacles marketers may face in implementing the StoryBranding process?
 
StoryBranding is highly introspective, and because of this, it forces realizations that are sometimes difficult to accept. We see this a lot with service companies who tell us that what they stand for is a deep regard for customer care. A frank look at the distribution channel will sometimes reveal hard-to-accept realities about how that belief falls apart at the point of sale or their less than user-friendly website.
 
The subject of brand marketing is mistakenly relegated to marketing people. Brand marketing is everyone’s job. We feel it is important to involve and engage all departments that can impact the brand's story. Especially today, brands are only as strong as their weakest link. Social media will continue to make brands highly transparent, so if you’re thinking of wrapping your brand in a friendliness blanket but you have a reputation for being a difficult employer, you risk creating dissonance among your prospects.
 
We once worked for a client who had a strong, long-lasting relationship with a charity. Simply out of loyalty and tradition, it kept up its support for this charity. However, when we considered what the brand stood for, it forced some difficult questions about whether this charity was the most appropriate against alternatives that better enhanced an association with the brand's universal belief. Our job isn't to recommend wholesale changes to the brand and the way it operates, but—at the risk of killing sacred cows—StoryBranding forces us to recognize all the potential impact points. We leave it up to the client to decide what’s best.
 
Overall, how do you feel this tactic is a game-changer for marketers across all industries in terms of establishing a stronger brand identity moving forward?

To answer this question, I’ll point back to the story I told earlier about my grandkids. The extent to which prospects give up their “this is advertising stupid” reactions correlates to the extent to which advertising can become less of a necessary evil and more of a sound investment.
 
Those of us who have grown up with TV advertising have seen it go through many changes. Over time, it has lost a great deal of credibility. I’m showing my age, but the days of believing that Keds make you run faster and jump higher are long gone. My guess is that the extent to which brands misalign their inner and outer layers is the extent to which they will continue to lose their usefulness.
 
Furthermore, I believe that StoryBranding addresses an important consumer need in and of itself. As social animals, we are always looking for ways to advance our own stories. A StoryBrand, unlike one that is differentiated on the basis of function alone, gives its owner a great chance to satisfy this need. Why else would someone wear a Harley-Davidson tattoo or, for that matter, anything with a logo on it? This need exists for the procurement officer in charge of purchasing factory equipment as well as the mother who wants to think of herself as a responsible and caring guardian of her children. As my friend and well-known author Annette Simmons says with the title of her book, Whoever Tells The Best Story Wins, brands who tell stories that resonate with our own belief systems are the brands we want most to be associated with.

Dave Lewis, CMO, Message Systems

One CMO’s View: How Security Relates to Marketing
By Dave Lewis, CMO, Message Systems
                             
Like you, I’m a CMO and probably spend my day much like you—worrying about how to drive near-term revenue while building durable customer relationships that will enable my company to prosper in the future. But perhaps unlike you, I work for a company that specializes in messaging technology. So when the much-publicized data breaches began to occur, they struck uncomfortably close to home, and I began to think about what advice I could offer my fellow CMOs about them.

The first thing I want to share is my view of the problem and why it’s highly relevant to us as CMOs. We’ll then talk about a few things that can be done about it.

Let’s start with the obvious: You do NOT want to be breached. Apart from the adverse publicity and damage to your brand are the hard-dollar and customer loyalty costs—more than $200 per compromised record and 40 percent loss of impacted customers by some estimates. Even if those estimates are high, no CMO wants to deal with the disruption (and distraction) a data breach can cause.

But I’d encourage you to put those important self-interests aside for a moment and look at the broader picture of what’s at stake—the preservation of trust.

We live in a technologically connected world where everything is taking digital form. And next in importance to the technology that allows us to play in this world is the data that drives both communication and commerce. Our customers provide data to us that we then manipulate and move around in a split second using a variety of partners and suppliers across the ecosystem. All stakeholders benefit—customers get an astounding array of choices for value-add services and products enhancing the quality of their lives, and we post huge gains in innovation and productivity fueling our competitiveness and profitability. Indeed, data is the currency of our age. And it will become increasingly valuable as technology enables more one-on-one, real-time interactions.

Fundamentally, this entire data usage ecosystem is predicated on one thing—trust. Customers entrust their data to us with the expectation that we’ll use it consistently with their desires and keep it safe. And we share data with our partners and suppliers based on similar trust expectations. But what happens if these trust relationships break down?

As I look at the data breaches and the spear phisher attacks behind them, that’s my greatest concern. As bad as the damage inflicted on individual companies may be, these attacks do greater harm to our ecosystem and the trusted relationships that underpin it. These criminals are smart, know our relationships, and subvert those relationships in attacks on one of us to get to another, whoever might be the holder of the data currency they’re after. And their attacks make clever use of our own marketing tactics to induce us to open their malware-laden email. Once we do, they steal our data, hijack our systems, and send out more malicious mail, but this time it’s in our good name to the unsuspecting customers, partners, and suppliers who’ve placed their trust in us.

This isn’t a pretty picture relative to the preservation of trust, but uglier still are the potential consequences—customers being unwilling to share the data that makes digital communication and commerce work because they no longer trust companies to keep it safe. Equally devastating would be a breakdown in the trust relationships we have with each other and an inability to effectively work together as partners in this ecosystem. These are the things that worry me if the breaches continue. They jeopardize our ability to generate revenue and build customer relationships as CMOs, putting our individual and collective success at serious risk.

So what can we do about it?

For starters, I’d suggest that my fellow CMOs consider the following points:

1. Advocate safe and secure messaging. As CMOs, we’ll never be security experts and shouldn’t try to be, but we can’t defer all security-related issues to our CSO or CTO, either. Our revenue and relationship objectives are too closely tied to the security on which preservation of trust depends. I’d suggest our role should be to make safe and secure messaging a guiding principle for our respective companies and profession. This can’t just be lip service. It will take a shift in how we think, plan, and operate, as well as a realignment of priorities, including budget allocations.

2. Start with your own area of responsibility. While your CSO or CTO will want to form a cross-functional team to examine infrastructure and practices across the company—and you’ll want to be part of that undertaking—the place for CMOs to start is with their own people and organization. In affecting the required mind shift, we need to make clear that safe and secure messaging is a marketing issue that we own. Security can no longer be an afterthought. So take a hard look at the data workflows within your marketing organization. Map them out, and scrutinize how you handle data at each step, who touches it, and why, from collection and storage to transmission, usage, and destruction. If third parties are involved, closely examine how you interact with them as well as their internal policies, processes, and practices. Pull in outside experts to conduct this assessment if you need help. While the objective of your review is to close down opportunities for unauthorized access, don’t overlook the obvious vulnerabilities in how your own employees handle data. Some of the largest, most embarrassing data losses have come from lost memory sticks and laptops that contained files that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

3. Don’t undervalue your marketing data. Some companies have assumed that because marketing data may not contain personally identifiable information (PII), it somehow doesn’t require the same protection as other data assets. They may also assume its loss is less serious, as "It’s only an email address" is a common retort. These are dangerous assumptions that disregard the essential nature of these attacks; the spear phishers are looking for a way into your organization, and they win if your marketing data (even an email address) enables them to reach your customers or partners. Think about it this way: if you can leverage your brand name or data to prompt others to open your email, so can the spear phishers in their socially engineered attacks. While they may lack all ethics in their criminal pursuits, don’t underestimate their skill as direct marketers. They understand the value of data and how to use it.

4. Educate your employees about how to protect themselves. As holders of access credentials to customer databases and messaging systems, you and your marketing staff are frequent targets of spear phishing attacks. Make sure your team knows how to spot a phishing attempt and what to do about it, including how to confirm that an email has actually come from you if a phisher attempts to spoof your identity. You can help safeguard the integrity of email communications by insisting that your organization authenticates inbound email as well as outbound.

5. Educate your customers, too. Some companies have hesitated to educate their customers about the nature of the phishing threat for fear of alarming them and undermining their confidence in transactions with their brands. I’d suggest that this is a dangerous and arguably irresponsible position because nothing is worse than allowing customers to be caught unaware. Obviously, the right balance must be struck, but there are strategies to educate customers without causing undue alarm. In fact, some safe practice initiatives, such as the Online Trust Alliance’s “Why Your Browser Matters,” can create a halo effect for your brand. But regardless, you should minimally convey to customers what they should expect/not expect in legitimate communications from you, and give them ways to validate those communications if you’re a frequent spoofing target. Of course, you should also ensure that all of your outbound email is authenticated and comes from a limited, predictable set of subdomains to reduce the opportunities for exploitation.

6. Reduce your points of vulnerability. With expanded use of email and other forms of digital messaging, there has been a proliferation of deployment systems and outsourced arrangements at many companies by individual business units or functional areas. While perhaps well justified at one point, such multiple systems and arrangements multiply the points of vulnerability you must now protect. This is a good time to consolidate them onto a single, integrated platform with security technologies and protocols to adequately safeguard your valuable customer data and relationships. Platform consolidation can also pay dividends by enhancing your coordination across channels or units and improving overall operational efficiency.

7. Invest in smart messaging technology. Sound security practices are essential to locking down your messaging environment, but alone they can’t stop (or even spot) a breach. Your practices need to operate within an integrated messaging technology framework that features multi-layer prevention and mitigation stages, as well as other advanced capabilities. Chief among them is the ability to capture, interpret, and act on data in real time, share that intelligence across your messaging environment, and learn from what it sees to better respond to future threats. Yes, an advanced messaging infrastructure like this may require an investment on your part, but the payback is there, and not just in terms of a safer, more secure environment. These are exactly the capabilities needed to address the challenges of cross-channel communications with your customers, too. So as a CMO, think about how you can rationalize the required security investment relative to your marketing agenda.

8. Anticipate the inevitability of a breach. In the ever escalating and morphing war with the cybercriminals, CMOs should anticipate losing a battle or two. There are simply too many attack vectors (technical and non-technical) to block them all. Ultimately, a breach will occur despite your most determined efforts to prevent it. This is where mitigation plays a crucial role. Yes, you need an incident-response plan at the ready to alert customers or partners and deal with an unfriendly press. But mitigation must mean more than after-the-fact damage control. It should be about proactively spotting a breach and shutting it down before significant damage can be done. For example, a spike in customer complaints or ISP bounces/blocks could signal that your outbound email stream has been compromised due to an undetected breach. Responding to these conditions in real time is the kind of proactive mitigation you need to prevent a data breach incident from becoming a data breach disaster.

Jim Lenskold, Lenskold Group

Social Media Marketing ROI: To Measure or Not to Measure?

Jim Lenskold is founder and President of Lenskold Group, a firm specializing in marketing ROI measurements, analytics, dashboards, and scenario planning tools. Visit www.lenskold.com for additional articles, white papers, and recorded content. Contact Jim at jlenskold@lenskold.com and follow him on Twitter at @JimLenskold.

The question as to whether social media should be expected to generate a positive ROI continues to be debated throughout the marketing community. Many marketers are adamantly arguing that social media must be exempt from ROI expectations. According to the 2011 Lenskold Group Marketing ROI & Measurement Study, 77 percent of marketers are using social media to promote their businesses, and these marketers are just about evenly split on prioritizing social media measurements as either high or low (55 percent versus 45 percent). The need to measure social media is a low priority, largely for those marketers still testing and experimenting on a small scale. Measurement priority is high for marketers who cite a need to increase effectiveness and improve integration.

The research study found that one in five marketers rated their ability to measure the ROI of social media as a strength, establishing that measuring ROI is attainable and already in progress. If ROI measurements are possible, is the debate over measuring ROI more about marketing’s role or a desire to avoid more stringent accountability?

The reality is that the need to measure ROI comes down to more than just a simple yes-or-no question, but we will address the following 10 questions to establish a more complete perspective around if, when, and how you should measure ROI on your social media marketing.

1.  Should our investment in social media marketing be expected to generate a positive ROI?
This first question is not about measurements but about having objectives or expectations for a social media marketing program to generate incremental profits in excess of its marketing expense (including labor). It’s amazing that questions like this get asked by marketing professionals. To put it in perspective, let’s pose a similar question on a personal level.

To evaluate the broker managing your retirement fund, you might ask, “Are you generating a good return on my retirement investment?” How would you feel if the response was, “I am the top-ranked broker among all brokers with more than 20,000 Twitter followers and the most Facebook friends? Isn’t that enough to prove you are with the best broker?” Of course, it is not the response you want. A well-respected broker with many followers and friends could be important when you first choose a broker, but after that, all you really care about are the bottom line results.

The perspective should remain the same even when you are not managing your own money. For-profit businesses expect a profit from the marketing resources you use, regardless of whether you spend it on social media or other forms of marketing.

This means at a minimum, you should run an ROI projection using your best data and assumptions to quantify your expected financial contribution, even if it will not be measured. If you don’t have a good idea of how your social media outcomes are likely to translate into purchase decisions and revenue, your strategy is not complete.

2.  Should some forms of social media be exempt from ROI expectations?
Social media is a broad umbrella, and we are focusing on social media marketing. Other forms of social media—such as customer feedback, service, or support—may not be held to the same requirements as marketing, although ROI analyses are possible, and these uses may have much greater potential than promotional marketing.

As with general marketing, it is reasonable to expect that emerging marketing channels or new strategies may not generate a positive return in the short term, but offer high profit potential once improved and increased in scale. When experimenting on a small scale or building critical mass (such as Twitter followers) that can serve as an asset for future larger-scale initiatives, ROI expectations are set based on longer-term returns and not just on the current period impact.

3.  What outcomes must be measured to determine ROI?
There are many forms of social media with different objectives and outcomes. Whether these initiatives are designed for branding, awareness, engagement, leads, or some other purpose, all play some role in the buyer's decision process that can and should generate financial value for the company.

Here are examples of outcomes very closely associated with sales and financial contributions:

• Incremental sales directly from social media (e.g., e-commerce links and coupons)
• Lift in the effectiveness of existing marketing and sales initiatives
• New leads that convert to sales
• Incremental customer value generated through retention and value-added relationships

There are also short-term outcomes that require integration with additional marketing efforts to ultimately generate sales and financial contribution, such as the following:

• Higher awareness and interest that increase the base of potential buyers in early funnel stages
• Increased demand and preference that lead to higher sales conversions
• Increased reach to new contacts from viral initiatives in social networks
• Higher preference from implied endorsement and advocacy in viral initiatives

Measurements and analytics should assess the effectiveness of marketing on driving outcomes and also examine the integrated impact of social media working with other marketing channels. The insights are likely to include a mix of solid conclusions and directional information, providing reasonable assumptions to link initial outcomes with sales outcomes.

4.  Are engagement, follower counts, or similar measures important?
The immediate outcomes of social media marketing initiatives are absolutely important. These measures can serve as early indicators of the business outcomes that follow or as a diagnostic assessment of where the marketing program has strengths and weaknesses. They should not be program objectives since there are some forms of marketing that can generate short-term outcomes that fail to have any influence on purchase decisions now or in the future.

As mentioned earlier, the use of ROI projections is also beneficial here since your strategy would clearly establish the expected connection between immediate outcomes and sales contribution. In addition, a broader purchase funnel framework that examines the path to purchase across all forms of marketing can help relate metrics such as engagement or awareness to sales, regardless of the marketing channel. If these measures are not in place for other media and marketing, it does not make sense to develop them only for social media marketing.

5.  Is it necessary to measure the ROI on all social media investments?
No, it’s not necessary or possible to measure the ROI or incremental impact on all marketing investments, although it’s certainly good to track all readily available metrics. Measurements must be prioritized based on the profit potential from improved effectiveness and the cost. It is more important to measure marketing initiatives and programs that consume a large portion of the overall budget, play a strategic role in influencing outcomes, or are in need of major improvements in effectiveness. If the social media spend is low, running on a small scale, or not critical to the business, measurement may be a lower priority.

6.  What measurement methodologies should be used?
Marketing measurements generally fall into one of these four categories: results tracking, pre-post trends, market testing, or modeling. The choice of methodologies must be driven by the strategy, tactics, expected outcomes, and conditions for measurements. Many aspects of social media are challenging to measure based on the open, unstructured exchange of content and the ripple effect through social networks over time.

As a starting point, here are some general guidelines for each methodology:

• Results tracking is used to measure direct actions where data is accessible. It tends to work for a single attribution and may not capture behaviors all the way through to a purchase. This form of tracking is good for a relative comparison of similar marketing on similar outcomes.
• Pre-post comparisons provide a directional measure of marketing impact that is large enough to show a spike over the pre-marketing levels. It does not eliminate the impact of other marketing and non-marketing factors.
• Market testing is a very reliable measure that requires a comparable control group. For social media marketing where marketers may lack control exposure or engagement, innovative measurement designs and the use of analytically simulated control groups can help.
• Modeling is also a reliable measure that can capture the individual contribution of each marketing channel, including social media, within a complex marketing mix. This requires detailed data and careful design to analyze the cause-and-effect impact of social media.

7.  What about social media’s brand impact?
Social media marketing can certainly have a positive impact on brand positioning and loyalty. There are comprehensive measurement techniques to assess brand investments and the impact on sales and financial value over time. But these should be established for the broader marketing mix and not just for social media. If you are working without these comprehensive brand measures, at least establish how social media will influence specific brand attributes that are believed to influence purchase decisions. Also, keep in mind that “brand” encompasses much more than awareness.

8.  Why are you being asked about your social media ROI?
Executive pressure is one of the reasons that social media measurements are a high priority, cited by 48 percent of respondents in our research. It’s possible that executives initially asked what marketing was doing with social media and now ask what ROI is being delivered, showing the maturity social media is reaching as part of the marketing mix.

Executives may be monitoring the use of their limited marketing budget, may be interested in the effectiveness of this emerging channel relative to their expectations, or may be ensuring the company stays competitive in this area. Understanding the reasons behind the question will guide measurements to alleviate concerns, maintain support, and secure necessary resources.

9.  What is the intended use of your ROI measurements?
In addition to assessing executive motivations, look closely at your own. Are you pursuing ROI measurements strictly for reporting and justifying your spend, or are you designing these to improve effectiveness? As we established earlier, measurements should be prioritized based on the potential gains of applying the insights to future cycles of marketing. The first two priorities are 1) marketing programs that are repeatable and 2) marketing programs that are scalable. One-time social media programs or initiatives that can only be run on a small scale are most likely lower in priority.

In addition, in order to gain big wins in effectiveness, design your measurements to understand strategies, buyer behaviors, leakage points in the purchase funnel, and the impact of integrated marketing. The knowledge of strategies and the influence on purchase decisions can be more broadly applied across social media and other marketing programs. This type of insight will be more valuable over time since social media technologies will change at a faster pace than the general stages buyers go through in their paths to purchase.

10.  Is it worth the effort?
The final and most important question to ask about measuring social media ROI is what will you get for all of your effort. The insights generated should shape your marketing strategies and boost performance. It is not necessary to seek perfection in ROI measures, but to continually move forward in expanding capabilities. Even basic measures or ROI projections have an incredible effect on credibility with senior executives.