Brand Building and Marketing Measurement

I have been talking with other marketing professionals lately about the challenges we face today in the "age of accountability". I completely understand, support and agree with the need to measure the effectiveness of your marketing investments. But does every measure have to be leads?

At a recent CMO roundtable dinner I asked a colleague about how they measured the effectiveness in other geographic regions, she very promptly answered "I know exactly how many leads they generated". At CMO Council Marketing Performance Measurement forums every speaker talks about how their efforts translated to leads and eventually sales.

What happened to building brand preference? Customer loyalty?

While I clearly understand that businesses exist to make money and that money comes from leads that turn into sales, what about the activities that create preference and loyalty? These activities happen earlier in the consideration life cycle and cannot be directly tied to revenue.

As marketers, have we succumbed to the measurement game and only offered up the easy metrics? The metrics everyone already understands. The metrics we can get out of the CRM system. Is this the only one that matters? At a conference in Las Vegas I heard Pat LaPointe of MarketingNPV state "measure what matters, not just what you can".

Don't you think that brand building investments translate to higher response rates in demand creation? Aren't you more likely to response to direct marketing campaign from a brand you know, and trust? Don't you think that interacting with customers and providing them value throughout the life cycle of their experience with your brand builds stronger loyalty?

This topic really came to light for me when reading Charlene Li's recent posting on blogging ROI (a must read). Who can argue that in a business where you sell the knowledge of your people, that communicating WITH your market is not a good thing? While Charlene is backing off the $1m number she threw out, I agree with her premise entirely! Blogging gives her a communication vehicle to share her insights in real-time, and more importantly she can collect feedback that will make her research more relevant to her audience.

Building brands takes a multi-discipline approach to marketing. This is especially true for start-ups where you are not only building a brand, but in many cases you are creating a category. This requires market education and continued communication about why the product or service you offer is better than the current state.

Can we find a way to appease the measurement gods, while staying true to our trade? Let's not get caught in the measurement trap and forget that building brands and creating markets require you to do things that can only be measured by how many people you have shared information with.

We MUST continue to find ways to attach marketing activities to financial outcomes. However, while industry accepted measures are developed, we need to continue investment in building awareness, brand preference and customer loyalty.

Today, I found a posting on the Blackfriars blog that stated "consumer must be brand aware, brand attributes must be delivered as a brand promise, and the brand experience must live up to the promise. Any break in the sequence is the difference between success and failure". This cannot be measured in the currency of lead generation alone.