Marketing executives are challenged these days; they are dealing with greater demands and higher pressures every year. The “life expectancy” of a CMO in his or her position is getting shorter and shorter; expected tenures are dropping and have fallen below 2 years.

According to the CMO Council in their CMO 2008 Report, 53 % of more than 800 survey respondents said that quantifying and measuring the value of marketing programs and investments is their top challenge. Growing customer knowledge, insight and conversations, and upgrading the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing groups are also key priorities.

How does one measure the ROI of marketing programs when traditional media measurement approaches no longer work?

Marketers are demanding more effectiveness from their media buys and digital media are reaching critical mass with consumers. Strategy and Business magazine - one of my favorites; I’ve been reading it for more than 10 years - looked at New Metrics for Media, and defined how results could be measured.

Just think about how media choices have expanded, from print, radio and TV to:

• Web
• Cell phones
• Podcasts
• Blogs/Vlogs
• GPS systems
• MP3 players
• Video games
• PDAs
• and more!

According to Booz Allen Hamilton, publishers of Strategy and Business, “62% of marketers surveyed said they would spend more on digital media if better cross-platform metrics existed to gauge advertising effectiveness.”

So what could some of those metrics be?

• Commercial Ratings: Viewership of ads rather than programs, consumer retention of messages, the impact of the sequence of the during a program break
• Session Quality and Engagement: Recall of ads per session or visit, time spent per session or visit, average sessions per user, strength of brand recall
• Total Viewing Behavior: Number of consumers and total time spent accessing media brands offline and online
• Opt-in Activity: Online registrations, open rates, toll-free calls, online and offline requests for information
• Consumer Participation: Pass-along and referral rates, uploads of brand content to personal sites, length of branded interaction
• Sales Impact: Leads generated, store traffic, and volume lift at retail stores

What’s most interesting is that many of these metrics can be captured using direct marketing media such as direct mail, direct email, and personal URLs and landing pages. The real key is to connect the entire marketing campaign across all media with back-end CRM (customer relationship management), SFA (sales force automation), and customer purchase activity.

Truly the marketing “holy grail;” and it may actually be achieved!

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