Measure or Die

It seems like every day there is more talk about the need to measure all aspects of marketing.  For those of us in the digital space, this is par for the course as we’ve had the ability (and therefore had the responsibility) to measure all of our efforts online.  And for one, I’m glad that this is becoming more of a norm in the non-digital marketing arena.

I just finished reading a report entitled, “Measure or Die” by Beringer Capital.  Unfortunately I can’t find it online, so you’ll have to take my word for it, but its a great read.  However, there’s something in it that confuses me.

They have a ranking of areas of marketing that marketers feel are the most important to measure.  At the very top of the list is email and direct mail.  At the very end of the list is newspaper and social networking.

Now, I’ve had no less than 3 meetings over the past week with clients to talk about their need to measure their social networking efforts.  In today’s economy my perception is that companies aren’t willing to “experiment” with social networking UNLESS they can measure it.  And measure it directly to sales, mind you.

I’m curious if anyone out there has a different perspective on the need to measure social networking.  Certainly no one would say that its not important, but where does it rank in terms of your marketing efforts? I started the conversation on Twitter…

Tagged as: marketing, measurement, media, social