The Tendo View

I had a nice Memorial Day week off and returned to work this week refreshed. And thinking about ROI. And metrics. And measurement. Why? Several reasons.

First, I attended the CMO Leadership Forum on Tues. with some Tendo colleagues and heard sound bites like these:

• “Fear of waste is more prevalent than fear of price in recessionary times. ROI is key.” -Bill Pearce, SVP & CMO of Del Monte Foods (who also explained why investing during times of recession is the best marketing tactic)
• To retain customers, focus on “less eyeballs and more mouthfuls“, because it’s more cost-effective than going out and finding new customers - Umberto Luchini, Marketing Svcs. Dir., Skyy Spirits
• “Marketing is the new finance” – Ann Lewnes, SVP Corp. Mktg for Adobe, referring to how marketing needs to rely on ROI and measurability to support its campaigns.

The second reason I’ve got ROI on the brain is that I am a 2009 Fellow for the Society for New Communications Research (or SNCR) and as such, I get to contribute to a research project with some pretty interesting folks. The project, which is beginning to gain momentum, focuses on social media metrics and measurement. Our project overview points to what often appears as a disconnect between what an organization sets as goals and what they actually measure-for instance, so many of Tendo’s clients say they want to “get closer to our customers” but the primary metric they use to gauge effectiveness is click-throughs from the blog to the corporate website. What’s the true definition of the word “engagement” and how do you measure its ROI? While our project is focused on social media metrics, I think that many of our findings will apply to metrics for content and communication. Call me weird, but this stuff is really fascinating to me.

I’ll keep you posted on the status of the project-right now we’re gathering names of companies that want to participate as case study subjects and/or survey participants. Our research results should be out by the end of the year.

In the meantime, I’ll point you to one of the “pretty interesting folks” on my research team-Katie Payne. I met Katie at SNCR’s NewComm Forum last month and can’t wait to read her book “Measuring Success-The Data-Driven Communicator’s Guide to Measuring Public Relationships“. Though much of what she writes and studies is framed in the context of PR–which isn’t what Tendo does–I do think it’s relevant to any form of communication (Web content and social media included) in which you’re using words to establish or deepen a connection. Katie founded a consulting firm focused on measurement–KD Paine and Partners–and also writes a blog here.

Next week, I’ll focus on video–Suzie Reider, head of advertising for YouTube, gave a great presentation at the CMO Leadership Forum on how marketers can use YouTube’s tools. Plus I’ll tell you about a cool new “video case study” service that Tendo’s developed.