DON’T FALL FOR THIS ROI LIE! Obsessive Tracking Can Hurt Your Revenue
A few years ago, Firehouse Subs started circulating an ad that was a bit ... suggestive. The copy played off the then-popular “50 Shades of Grey'' movie. On the surface, it was about sandwiches, but the reference was clear enough to catch the eye of Reddit — and Newsletter Pro CEO Shaun Buck. He posted the ad on Facebook with this question: “Do you think this is good marketing?” Buck’s post got a lot of laughing emojis, but one commenter answered, “I can’t say if it’s good marketing or not without seeing sales numbers before and after the ad ran and calculating the return on investment (ROI).” If you had the same thought, we have bad news for you. You’ve swallowed a big lie about ROI: Everything you do in business and marketing MUST have a direct ROI you can track. You see, the real payoff of the Firehouse Subs ad campaign wasn’t trackable in the traditional sense. People weren’t lining up at Firehouse to buy subs and telling the kid behind the counter, “I’m here because of ‘50 Shades of Grey’!” But they were talking about the ad both in person and online. It generated a ton of buzz that gave Firehouse Subs a spectacular boost in brand awareness. That’s incredibly valuable, but it’s just not trackable.
In the age of the internet, it’s pretty much impossible to track the full impact of every marketing dollar you spend or trace every lead back to its source. In fact, research has shown it now takes at least 16 touches before a prospect even knows your business exists. How on earth are you supposed to know which 16 touches worked magic, or which was No. 16? Of course, you can and should track direct ROI in some places, like spending on lead generation or printed coupons. You should see measurable results there. But some marketing tools, like that Firehouse ad, make direct tracking either impossible or won’t give you the full picture of the campaign’s impact — like SEO, influencer posts, customer reviews, blog posts, and social media posts, just to name a few. As Buck once said, “If you need direct ROI on everything you do in marketing in order for you to risk time and treasure on a given campaign, you’ll never have any real success in business because you’ll never be able to get enough traction or enough customers.” Don’t fall for the direct ROI lie. Instead, divide up your marketing efforts into easy-to-track and hard-to-track categories, and don’t stress if a few things fall into the second bucket. Those just might be your most valuable marketing tools because they help you stay top of mind with customers and prospects — ultimately doing wonders for your lead generation and retention.
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