• There are too many intangibles to measure ROI in dollars returned on investment.
• You can’t measure ROI from marketing efforts.
• You don’t ask any other department to show ROI. Why do we need to demonstrate it?

Dear marketer, they don’t care about our challenges and problems. When we try to explain why measuring marketing ROI is difficult, we make a huge mistake. I know. I made this mistake in the corporate world and with my clients. I finally figured it out. Let me say this again: They don’t care and they don’t believe us. Furthermore, many of them see what we do as discretionary spending, so if we can’t deliver ROI, they might as well cut our budgets or eliminate us all together. The reality is that no matter how we feel about it, no matter that intangibles matter when it comes to marketing, our bosses and our clients want to know what the ROI will be from our marketing efforts.

Let me be so bold as to say I think I know the problem and the solution. This ephiphany, if I may, did not come to me overnight. I guess I’m a slow learner or enjoy pain.

When we talk marketing to those outside our field, we all too often discuss tactics (tools). We need to stop doing that. When we tell bosses and clients that we will drive sales through direct marketing, blogging, advertising, PR, they then believe that each of those tools deliver ROI. Now we have painted ourselves in a corner and gotten caught with the paint brush in our hand. The solution lies in Marketing 101.

Never, ever verbally discuss tools with a non-marketer. Instead, talk objectives and goals. Then we can reasonably predict ROI. What am I saying? In short, we owe it to those to whom we report to provide them with a strategic integrated marketing plan for every objective expected of us. Go back to your college days and remember the old template. In brief, the plan is a ladder built from the top down that starts on the top rung with an objective. After we state the objective, we complete the ladder with:

• Strategies to achieve the objective.
• A measurable goal for each strategy.
• Tactics to achieve each strategy.

Simple right? Well, only if you keep the plan from gathering dust on a shelf; hold everyone in marketing responsible and accountable for the plan; build in tracking devices and metrics that measure in dollars and cents; (Include intangibles, as well. They provide an excellent source of data.); and add the right tactics under each strategy that will achieve those strategies and the measurable goals. There is no fluff and “no nice to do’s just in case.” This is a tight plan, built on a tight budget, to reach the right people, at the right time, in the right place. This isn’t about reach; it is about targeted and segmented marketing. (For most businesses, reach is yesterday’s marketing news and too costly and ineffective to consider. Unless you aa business like Duncan Donuts, why are you investing in reach? But that’s another post.)

The Key: There is but one objective. Everything in the plan is designed to achieve that objective.

The Key to the Key: The objective should be about sales; otherwise, you will not be able to measure ROI. We must work closely with Sales to ensure that when our strategies drive sales upward, we are aware of when and how. (This is another subject, but if we aren’t working closing with Sales, whether as a CMO, Director or Manager of marketing or as a Marketing Consultant, our chances of delivering and measuring ROI are limited at best and impossible at worst.)

What About Brand: Look, you and I know we need to build Brand Image. We need to drive customers to the web site(s) and to the company blog(s). We need to create PR that gets picked up and advertising that is meant to enhance our image. But these things don’t deliver measurable ROI usually, and we don’t need to argue or try to convince others of their importance. And that’s the beauty of an integrated marketing plan. There is but one ROI, and it is based on achieving the objective. So whether the plan is an annual one or a quarterly one or project based, create an objective based on sales and build in some tactics that will enhance brand image. You will become a hero because you delivered ROI. All the other stuff–hits, links, media mentions, great customer comments are icing on the cake.

With this kind of integrated planning, you can have your cake and eat it, too. Even a blind marketer should be able to see that reality.

The tools available in today’s Web 2.0 are attractive. However, they are just tools. No different nor any better than the tools you already have in your marketing toolbox. And like the tools you already have, they will do little to impress your CEO or your client, if they aren’t part of an integrated marketing plan. Think about it: If you are a hammer, you spend all your time looking for something to hit. If you are a blog, you spend all your time looking for readers. A hammer won’t build a house and a blog won’t build a business when they are the only tools used to achieve either of those objectives.

In a recent interview with CNET News, Adam Sarner, an analyst with market research firm Gartner, says that “over 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with Web sites have undertaken some kind of online social-networking initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes. Fifty percent of those campaigns will be classified as failures.

“(Businesses) will rush to the community and try to connect, but essentially they won’t have a mutual purpose, and they’ll fail,” Sarner said.

Sarner is saying that businesses are unable to balance their interests with that of their customers. To that I add that too many marketers and consultants have become social media and social networking evangelists. It is a mistake to evangelize tools. Instead, we should be creating customer evangelists. To succeed, we need to create integrated plans, strategies and goals that meld traditional marketing with Web 2.0 tactics to achieve measurable goals, including ROI (return on investment as measured in revenues and profits not hits or links). It’s simple. It’s why we succeed in all that we marketers do, and why we fail miserably when we become tool managers instead of marketing leaders.

It’s natural to want to be seen as cutting-edge, which in today’s conversation age means having a blog and a social networking presence on LinkedIn, Facebook or Plaxo. But that presence likely will do more to annoy customers and potential customers if they are created absent a reason for being. Here, briefly, is how to create that reason before you jump into the deep, dark waters of Web 2.0.

Meld SM and SN into the Integrated Marketing Plan

Marketing Plans to be strategically focused must contribute to the overall company goals, not to meet departmental goals in a vacuum. Here are the questions you must ask and answer to meld Web 2.0 tools within your integrated maketing plan to achieve that goal:

• Who are your ideal customers? The ones who deliver the most value? What do they look like? What do they want and need?
• Where do those customers live online and how do we reach them, engage them in conversation?
• What should be the focus of a blog (or a social networking presence)? What content will be of interest to those readers who make up our ideal customers?
• How do we ensure that social media is seamlessly integrated with our other marketing tools?
• How do we drive those readers to our blog and then to our web site, using the blog as a way to interest them in our expertise because of the great content (conversation starters) we create on the blog?
• How do we create content that is not viewed as simply a marketing and sales vehicle?

The Bottom Line: Social Media and Social Networking are about content that readers want, need or desire. They are not tools to deliver marketing messages or sales pitches. They are designed to be about the reader, listener, viewer or visitor, not about us. They are not advertising tools nor or they direct marketing campaigns. They are pull, not push. And they will fail if they are not integrated and if they are not customer-centric, meeting or exceeding customers’ content wants and needs.

Recommendation: If you don’t have someone on staff who understands and is experienced with Web 2.0 tools,  don’t use them until you either hire someone who is or outsource to a consultant who can get you started in the right direction.

Why This Matters: X, with X being integrated planning, = Y, with Y being ROI. And in today’s lean times, those who fail to deliver Y will soon be victims of budget cuts. And without an objective, goals, strategies to meet those goals, and tactics (tools) to achieve the strategies, we shall perish, no matter the tools we use.