Metrics in marketing is a toughie. It is made easier by online marketing tactics, such as Facebook, YouTube pages. Still, the challenge oftentimes with a site like Facebook is that people will join groups or Fan pages, never contribute and perhaps they will not remember that they joined in the first place. Especially if there is not much activity in those places.
There are two big questions for marketers that challenge the profession:
How do you keep customers from being disengaged?
How do you measure their loyalty?
This came about as I was trying to define a set of metrics for a business. Defining a set of metrics is challenging because you have to start with the outcome and then define the issues that would explain whether your analysis is unbiased. It bothered me that it could be so arbitrary, such as “Increase sales by 20%”–and how do you know you are doing that through your marketing campaigns? And does this really matter to your customer? Even if you track page views for a website, there is no real way to know whether someone consistently visits your website, unless they consistently leave comments on your blog.
Here are a few articles that I am reading on the subject. I will update this list with more, but if you know of any good links related to the subject, feel free to comment as well.
This is a GREAT story about what happens when business is inefficient and overly bureaucratic.
