Mind the Gap
8th April 2006 by Merry Elrick
In a recent BtoB article by Kate Maddox, “Measurement calls for more resources,” she cites a study that indicates marketers place a high priority on marketing measurement and analytics.
And last week the Association of National Advertisers released a study that found accountability is the No. 1 priority for senior marketing executives.
But if measurement is so important, then who can explain these astonishing stats in Maddox’s article:
In a recent survey of marketing executives, 47% said increasing brand value is a priority, but only 19% have a process in place to track this.
In the same survey, 48% of respondents are expected to measure ROI on individual campaigns but don’t have a process for doing this, compared with only 9% of companies that are expected to measure ROI on individual campaigns and have a process to do this. The remaining 43% are not expected to measure ROI on campaigns.
There may be a lot of resources available for those who want to measure, as Angie Jeffrey said in an earlier blog, but there’s a big gap between those who say they want to use them and those who actually do.
What’s up with that?
April 13th, 2006 at 9:28 am
Merry,
You make a good point. I think one reason there is a gap is that the senior executives who demand accountability don’t know enough about marketing/PR to dictate exactly how this should be done, and the marketing/PR practicioners don’t know enough about measurement to guide their executives. The result is stasis.
April 14th, 2006 at 8:19 am
Yes Mark, I think you’re right. And on top of that, there’s the usual resistance to change, plus a healthy does of fear that measurement will reveal our efforts aren’t bringing in a good return.
April 27th, 2006 at 6:22 am
Merry - it is mind-boggling. We funded a study in 2004 for PR News on ascertaining attitudes toward measurement among corporate and agency types, and learned that 81% felt it was “important” or “very important,” but only one out of five firms had a budget for it, and the average spend was 2.3% of the PR budget.
As discouraging as that seems, we also noted that 42.3% claimed some measurement of outcomes, as opposed to just outputs, which was a big leap forward from a similar study we’d done two years prior. So, slowly but surely …
Angie