The majority of business marketers don't place enough emphasis on revenue when measuring return on investment, according to a survey released yesterday by Mobium Creative Group.
“Until we stop kidding ourselves that click-throughs, awareness spikes and average response rates are ROI, we, as an industry, are on the way to budget oblivion,” said Gordon Hochhalter, partner at Chicago-based Mobium Creative Group. “True ROI is one thing and one thing only. It is the ability to go to the boardroom where all the people who speak the language of money reside and say, 'You gave us X marketing communications dollars, and because of our efforts it has earned Y in incremental, immediate income flows back to the company and Z in accrued brand assets.”
According to the survey, only 28 percent of business marketers measure program effectiveness by “most of their communications tactics.” Of that 28 percent, only 37 percent use sales as a measure of success when determining the ROI of a marketing program. Fewer than half link tactics to specific dollar results.
Surveys were sent to members of these marketing organizations: Business Marketing Association, Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies, American Business Media, Institute for Studies of Business Marketing and American Advertising Federation.
Mobium found that marketers use the following tactical metrics to justify their marketing budgets:
· 68 percent use Web logs and e-mail response logs.
· 54 percent use survey research.
· 51 percent use lead-tracking databases.
· 46 percent use response codes versioned for specific ads, Web promotions, direct response vehicles.
· 44 percent use internal anecdote gathering among the sales force.
· 26 percent use CRM or a third-party analytics package.
· 25 percent use magazine-sponsored readership studies.
Survey results can be found at http://www.mobium.com/community/surveys/survey_5_result.asp.
