Read Between the Ps

Almost every youngster I have met looking at the next big thing wants to work in Digital Marketing. Some of them, just by posting few Facebook posts, consider themselves to be the Digital doppelganger of Philip Kotler (or maybe Byron Sharp now!) Digital is largely experimental and it is still not mainstream - every brand believes that Digital is the next big thing - the best way to connect with millennials is to catch them online. However, in 2012, Ehrenburg-Bass Institute, based on a study of 200 brands on Facebook,   found that less than 0.5% of fans actually engaged with a brand (that is, undertook meaningful activity, including comment and share, rather than just ‘Like’).  It also found that Facebook fans were skewed towards heavy buyers, and that purchase frequency didn’t increase after someone became a fan. Again, for the uninitiated, Digital is not the same as Social Media. Have hardly met 'neo-experts' who talk beyond Social Media and SEO while re-enf...

Marketing should have an ROI - or shouldn't it? An article from the recent publication of Harvard Business Review  (July 25th) by Amy Gallo highlights the right manner of driving the ROI from Marketing Investments. Though the article is largely generic, it does highlight the biggest challenge in calculating ROI from Marketing initiatives - what we should include in 'returns'! As per Amy, One of the downsides of marketing ROI is that it is easy to only recognize the incremental profits in short-term sales and underestimate the long-term benefits that marketing brings to brand value. While Customer Lifetime Value can rationally explain some part of ROI, overall this is still a tricky area to touch. On the other hand, Prof Byron Sharp does not believe in ROI for Marketing per se. According to him , Do you want to lift your marketing ROI OR grow your brand (share/sales)?  Because ROI is seldom a recipe for growth. or what he mentioned almost a year back , ...