What’s happening to your Marketing ROI?

Large companies, like Ericsson, DSM and Philips claim not to be using ROI as a metric for Marketing and are looking for alternatives. Those who still use it, claim to only use it for certain parts of the marketing mix, not being social media engagement and brand activation. IBM’s recent CMO Study shows that while 63% of CMOs still believes that the Marketing ROI metric is needed to justify their expenditures, a minority (44%) actually thinks they are ready to do so.

If anything, the Enterprise Marketing 2.0 conference in Amsterdam by KGSGlobal showed that marketers are divided in this area. Those that have own retail channels are likely to be more Marketing ROI driven in their choices (like e.g. T-Online / Deutsche Telekom); others, especially where sales cycles are longer and value chains complex, depend increasingly upon more qualitative approaches and learning by doing.

Seems to me that we need to start making some choices.  And we should stop taking for granted that Marketing ROI is the holy grail of marketing KPIs…

Can we or should we come up with meaningful metrics to replace Marketing ROI? Join me in discussing the topic during the FREE Webinar “Marketing ROI, a great big lie?”, on November 2nd 2011.