I'm shocked, shocked to learn that marketing and finance see metrics differently

The latest study from the Association of National Advertisers Accountability Study: Marketing, Finance Not on Same Metrics Page  contains some fascinating  data, but it all points to one thing. Marketers are still pretty clueless when it comes to measurement. 42% of respondents said they were dissatisfied with ROI measurement. Here are the  most frequently cited metrics by respondents:

• Changes in brand awareness (81 percent)
• Changes in market share (79 percent)
• Changes in consumer attitude toward the brand (73 percent)
• Changes in purchase intent (59 percent)
• Return on objective (36 percent)
• Lifetime customer value (23 percent)
• Changes in the financial value of brand equity (20 percent).

All of which seem like perfectly valid measures, but where is the disconnect? 70 percent of respondents said "return on objective" was an important measure, only 36 percent were using that as a tool for measurement.

Comments

[KDPaine]

That's why small companies get to be big companies and big companies get to be elephants.

[Cece Salomon-Lee]

Very interesting study. Another point of particular note is - "Only 55 percent of respondents said their marketing ROI goals were closely aligned with their company's overall corporate goals..."

As a small company with a limited marketing budget, we definitely track our ROI back to our corporate goals. Every activity we do, from conferences/tradeshows, advertising, email campaigns, webcasts, and to a degree PR, is mapped back to our corporate goals. Because we start with our corporate goals first, we can pinpoint which metrics we want to or need to track.