Posts Tagged ‘ROI’
Achieving Measurable ROI Via Your Organization’s Private, Online Member-Community
The difficulty in embracing public social networking outlets is the current inability to measure the success of your online community. A recent survey from Jupiter Research and Verse Group found that achieving measurable results was the number one goal of marketers in 2009. Which begs the question — If you want to know if your efforts are paying off, what can you do to obtain measurable results?
Public social networking platforms (like Facebook and MySpace) offer a free space to cultivate connections and collect friends. The data is frequently erroneous and the site lacks reporting features. On the plus side it is free and available and comes with a site name that everyone knows.
Private online communities and membership sites offer your members the same robust, entertaining features and ability to connect, while providing your administration with something that we all long for — accountability. Reporting features within private communities deliver a strong level of accountability and allow you to monitor and export data on your members and their activities.
The number of friends (or fans) on your public site is not a viable measure of return on investment. In addition to bogus information/member data, the ease at which someone can become a friend or fan of your site actually becomes a negative for your organization as many individuals will merely succumb to the ease/pressure of pressing a fan button because their friend sent it to them, not because they have any interest in your organization. Becoming a member of a private online community is a much bigger commitment because it is an active approach and one that speaks (silently) to their intention.
The perfect fit for your organization may be a combination of both approaches — having a public membership site that funnels traffic to your private site. It’s often a good tactic to incorporate public social networking sites into your marketing mix. It’s certainly a good idea to fish where the fish are! But be sure to bring them home to your organization’s private community — where you can capture valuable member information and provide measurable value to them in return.
About YourMembership.com Inc.
Founded in 1998, YourMembership.com Inc. develops online member communities and web-based membership software for associations, non-profits, government organizations, corporations, congregations, secondary schools, universities, foundations, fraternal organizations and private social networking sites. Serving hundreds of customers around the world, YourMembership.com creates truly dynamic, secure and connected member communities with all product features, design, hosting, future product upgrades and customer service included for one low fee.
David L. Sieg
Vice President, Strategic Marketing
YourMembership.com Inc.
Author: David L Sieg
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Creditcard Currency Conversion Fee
ROI = Rely On Instincts
Several years ago some marketing consultants got smart and realized that CFO’s and other finance centric professionals live in a world that is focused on ROI (Return on Investment) and want to run spreadsheets that show the outcomes of dollars spent before committing to the expenditures. Since the money people make many decisions, these consultants and other “gurus” created programs that spoke the language of the finance department and created “ROI” algorithms to sell their services to these decision makers.
By speaking their language they were able to appear more intelligent (key word: appear) and win the business. Left-brainers everywhere rejoiced, as now these disciplines were under their control.
For too long marketing, business development, networking, direct mail, advertising, branding, PR (and more recently social media) were viewed by the left brain professionals as “the Black Arts”. They admitted that these were necessary, but since they were more creative and not always predictable, that they were some how less important to the success of a company than the more predictable departments on the org chart.
However, while this trend toward analyzing “return on investment” on everything makes people feel good — it has paralyzed many companies.
During a job interview years ago I told a CFO that sometimes to find success in marketing you have to try a variety of tactics. I used the old saying “throw some spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks!” The CFO responded that if a marketing campaign could not prove out results in advance, then his company would not do it. “No spaghetti could hit the floor!” The company hired a “ROI” oriented marketing manager (they did not hire me) and the company had minimal success in growing its image. The person they hired lasted 14 months on the job before the company changed direction, yet again.
While you do not want to waste dollars in promoting the image of your company, if you think there is a magic formula that will guarantee success, you will spend your life over thinking every opportunity and you will miss out on the allusive successes you seek. There is a difference between throwing money around and having an instinctive feeling on how to have an impact on your company’s positioning in the marketplace.
Instead of spending hours looking at the return on every investment on a spreadsheet, you should redefine the definition of ROI in regards to marketing.
ROI = Rely On Instincts.
Raising the visibility and brand of your company is not as easy as building a new website, joining Twitter, or sponsoring an industry conference. You need to fine tune your instincts or hire someone who knows the landscape of how all the “black arts” actually work together.
