There are Days - and There are DAYS!!

I want to rant. You know that I've been focused on marketing as the ironically weak link in the CRM suite chain. Ironically, because if there is ANY department that you can shove CRM into its the marketing department at a company or the marketing courses at a university. But marketing applications are stuck in an old paradigm - a purely operational one - that is focused around fiddling with data and algorithms rather than engaging customers. Okay, I said this in a blog entry a few days ago that generated some talk. But, I want to take it further. I was reading this VERY interesting article at DestinationCRM this morning on Experiential Marketing that Jessica Tsai wrote on January 28 (you GO, girl!), well worth your time. I'm cruisin' through the article, slurping some coffee (I'm in Toronto to sit on an expert panel at the Microsoft Dynamics 4.0 CRM kickoff here. Eight hundred registrants, though the event is this afternoon. More on that later), and I read the following sentence related to a survey done by the Jack Morton marketing organization: "79 percent said that a key obstacle was "measuring/demonstrating experiential marketing ROI" Even though I GET the idea that people need to account for investments in a business in some way, what just drives-me-up-a-wall sometimes is that it ALWAYS has to have some tangible NUMBER associated with it. I GET IT! NUMBERS ARE IMPORTANT FOR BUSINESSES AND THEY ARE A USEFUL GAUGE FOR RELATIVE SUCCESS OR FAILURE. I GET IT! But, know what? That isn't ALWAYS the best measure. Let me ask you something as an individual. Could you tell me about something that you LOVE? About something that you LIKE A LOT but don't LOVE? About something that you LIKE but maybe not A LOT nor do you LOVE it? Etc. On the opposite side of the coin, can you tell me about something that you HATE? DISLIKE? SORTA DISLIKE? Don't care about either way? I'll bet you with some thought that you could say yes to all of them. Conversely, can you tell me what the actual degree of difference in love, like, hate, etc. is on a scale of 1 to 10. What is the difference between 3 and 4 or 5.6 and 5.9? Does it matter as much as the above? Maybe to your business, but the numbers are not the way humans work. They are guidelines the same way that data is a guideline for judgment - not a substitute. Maybe I'm just frustrated but the reality is that human beings are emotional and the value of successful experiential marketing is an emotional response that makes that person think of your company in a way that is so emotionally positive that they feel compelled to tell others about it. On the other hand, believe me, when you're on the phone angry at customer service for screwing up - again - you're not thinking "I'm going to give them a 2 on a scale of 10." You're thinking "F--- YOU, you....you...." The ROI isn't always a specific metric. Sometimes it's evidenced by the responses you're getting from your customer. Will there be a tangible benefit? Sure, if you're conversing with that customer in a good way by providing them with positive experiences, then increased revenue would be the likely result over time - which are numbers that you should be happy to see. That's "happy" - not 8.5/10.

Comments

[Louis Columbus]

Real results only come from passion to achieve a goal, and while there are enough analytics to fill warehouses with reports from floor to ceiling beams, it all comes down to passion and sincere service to others. Trust created and kept is worth so much more than a dashboard that shows granular measures of ROI. One could argue JUST relying on ROI masks what really matters, and that’s trust. The bottom line is that when a person’s passion aligns with their goals all the measures of performance go through the stratosphere.