David Meerman Scott Rants on the ROI of marketing on the web…

Earlier today, joined by my new co-host @StaceySoleil (Director of Social Media Strategy for Karma Media Labs), we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing David Meerman Scott author of the BusinessWeek Best-Seller The New Rules of Marketing & PR. We talked about the definition of social media, cultivating a strategy and David’s upcoming 2nd Edition of The New Rules of Marketing & PR (affiliate link). While discussing some of the challenges of social media and its influence over ROI, David passionately offered up his insights about this industry wide hot topic.

ROI in social media…(aka THE ROI RANT)
(See clip below)

Listen to David’s rant on ROI (approx. 2:51 sec)

While David argues that you can’t measure the Return on Investment in social media in the ways that people commonly think, he offers some alternatives to things that you can measure: (to quote from his most recent article)

  • How many people are getting exposed to your ideas?
  • How many people are downloading your stuff?
  • How often are bloggers writing about you and your ideas?
  • (And what are those bloggers saying?)
  • Where are you appearing in search results for important phrases?
  • How many people are engaging with you and choosing to speak to you about your offerings?
  • How are sales going? Is the company reaching its goals?

You can listen to the full broadcast here:

  • irinanetchaev
    Loved listening the rant on the ROI... actually, in real estate, ROI from blogging, for example, is way easier to measure than from traditional marketing. How much simpler can it be to know that an X number of leads came from a particular site and that you had an X number of closings resulting in X amount of revenue.

    I know how much I spend on my site and how much time I put into updating it. It's a fairly easy item to measure.

    I think the problem is getting mired in too much minutia and trying to get overly analytical. It's more of an art than science and it's important to know generally what your ROI is so that you can make important decisions in allocating your $s.

    However, loved David's rant... he is passionate and obviously very engaging. What a fun interview!
  • LOVE HIM! I can't wait to listen. Hope you're doing well!
  • Hi Shannon! Great talking with you today and thank you so much for sharing this segment with your office :-)

    We have a lot of fun speaking with David and am certainly thankful that everyone else enjoyed it as well.
  • BagelTechNews
    Be Yourself and believe in yourself. The ROI is in what you do for your own product and persona.

    US companies spend too much time talking about what their competitors don't do than what they do. The recent Verizon v AT&T episode said it all. In the UK that would have died an instant death, we are more into people informing that 'marketing' and when the information is good, we buy in droves.

    Right product, right price and see a need, fill a need. Big Weld had it right

    Ewen
  • As far as Funny Typos and songs about needing men with chainsaws go, I think I've cornered the ROI market. So now I need to branch out!
  • BagelTechNews
    "Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts" - Einstein

    I get this totally, We do 50,000 downloads per month and we have no click throughs. Our main sponsor is our Hosting and Bandwidth Provider and by their own admission, they never check the stats, they believe in our product.

    He had me at ROI

    Ewen
  • @bageltechnews I remember when I found out you had over 40K listeners (now 50K!) and couldn't believe it. That's amazing. I love that your main sponsor trusts that you're delivering "roi" - the good, the bad, and the BS. lol!

    @juliefogg
  • I dig the Einstein quote!
  • David Meerman Scott was an AMAZING guest. Kudos to you for attracting such an interesting and knowledgeable thought leader. Excellent interview. Two thumbs up!
  • Amber: thanks! You're the best :-) Thank you for participating on the call and I'm glad you enjoyed it. David is very well spoken and Stacey did a phenomenal job guiding the conversation as well.
  • I loved listening to this! As a social media professional, I understand the desire of executives that want to see factual evidence, but sometimes I feel like I'm thinking the exact same thing that David says during his rant. Why is social media met with such scrutiny when areas like PR and Market Research are widely accepted? In my opinion it's all part of the same thing, but now it's more about knowing how to relate to the public (as in directly, in conversation), how to use the technology available, and how to interpret data. Most likely people are already out there talking about you or your industry whether you like it or not. Why would you not be a part of that?
  • Rachel: pleasure to meet you! Stacey had some great things to say about you (just sayin')... Thanks for listening in on the podcast (I'm hope you enjoyed it).

    You're right, no matter who you are or what industry you're in, consumers are having discussions about your service/product. it's wise to listen in on those conversations and be responsive to what those consumers have to say. To quote from a recent book that I'm reading:

    "To be successful and grow your business and revenues, you must match the way you market your products with the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products."

    This includes listening in and participating in the conversations that are being had about you in and around the web.
  • Its a common misconception that you cant measure the 'ROI' on Social Media. Lots of good entertainment in the broadcast! I really appreciate the effort. The broadcast offers a good elementary starting point for people 'not-in-the-know' ! good job!
  • Porsche H.: I'm glad you enjoyed the broadcast. I personally think that some things are easy to measure (as suggested in the bullet points above) while others are not. Definitely a discussion I look forward to continuing...
  • I listened to the bite about ROI on Social Media and was drawn into the whole interview. David M Scott knew as soon as the rant was over that it was the hook for this interview. The guy understands marketing like an art collector can spot the next Picasso before he's famous. Incredible interview. I had to share it with the award recipients from www.makemineamillion.org because I was blown away by the interview. I liked how David talks about delivering the information in a format that prospects seek and understand information (ignoring ego). I was impressed that David researched the people interviewing him then weaved something incredibly relevant into the conversation (about music and Stacey Soleil) that I wanted/needed to hear.

    There was an excellent point about not being boring when marketing. Stacey Soleil didn't say that exactly but boiled down both David Scott and Stacey point out how being quirky is an asset. I can't be bothered to pay attention to boring people. I liked hearing it from the professionals (by professionals I mean David M Scott who was rejected by Harvard but is speaking to a group at Harvard next week LOL!).
  • Julie: thank you so much for the support! I'm glad you managed to work out the sound issues and listen to the podcast. Stacey and I really had a great time interviewing David. He's so knowledgeable and very well spoken!

    Thanks again for the support and I definitely love to hear any feedback here and for future shows...
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