The meaning of marketing measurement — Kelford Labs Daily

“You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don’t wanna know about it, believe me.”

— The Big Lebowski by Joel & Ethan Coen

One of my first jobs in the advertising industry was as a media buyer at a large, national advertising agency.

You remember those old Flash banner ads that would play a video or “creatively” (read: annoyingly) take over the page with an interactive game or element? Getting those banners placed there and paid for and measured was my job.

Back in those days, everything was about the impression, or the number of times the ad was eligible to be seen by a user. Ads were paid for by the thousands of impressions (CPM), and click tracking was largely the responsibility of the advertiser buying the placement.

The clients themselves were primarily concerned, not with impressions, but with those clicks. How many people actually clicked through to their website from the banner?

The problem was, how did you know if those clicks were actually leading to customers?

This exact issue once got me into a bit of a heated exchange with a client, many years ago.

The client insisted that the only thing that mattered was how many clicks they got, and how cheaply they could get them.

In a meeting, on a chilly morning (I still remember exactly where I was sitting), I expressed to them that we needed to think bigger than the cost-per-click (CPC), and a bit more on who was clicking.

“That’s ridiculous,” the client said, “we can’t measure that. We can measure clicks, so that’s what we’re going to focus on.”

A bit of unprofessionalism started to creep up in my mind, which I’ve mostly learned to resist in the years since, and I said: “Okay, let’s focus on clicks. Now, I just need to confirm something: Do human beings need to be clicking on the ads? Or would it be okay if it were just automated bots?”

“Obviously they have to be real people,” they said.

“Oh, okay. Well, do they have to be people who are capable of buying your product? Or would just anybody, anywhere in the world be okay?”

Starting to realize where I was going, the client’s frustration spilled over, and they asked, “What are you getting at?”

“If all you want is clicks,” I said, “I can get you clicks. Tons of them for basically nothing. But if what you want is customers, that will cost more and be harder to measure.”

Because measurement is not about metrics.

It is about meaning.

What we measure is only a clue, a piece of evidence we amass that tells us whether our marketing is working, not just that it’s being seen.

So that means, when you ask me about marketing measurement, I tend to ask you a question back:

“How do you know your marketing isn’t working right now?”

The answer to that question, like: “Sales have slowed,” or “recruitment is more challenging,” or, “contact form submissions are dropping,” tells me how you know things need to improve.

So what you need to measure are the signs and signals that tell you those things are turning around.

How, exactly, you measure that will be individual to every business, though there are standard practices that can help guide you (and, of course, I help my clients set up the necessary tracking systems).

But what the measurement means should be about more than clicks, impressions, or anything else.

It should be about knowing your marketing is working.

Reply to this email to tell me what you think, or ask any questions!

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