ROI + Pants

The toughest thing for Social Media Marketing agencies is proving measurable results.  Or translated - how many more pieces of product were sold as a result of our efforts.  It's a tough nut to crack. But it's a nut that has to be cracked.  My hope is that we'll get closer this year.  Or at least get closer to having an accepted ROI measurement system that we can all agree on.

In the meantime, my friend Michael sent me a link to this great blog post today.  A battle cry for measurable ROI.

 ROI + Pants

What’s the ROI of answering the phone?
What’s the ROI of watering your lawn?
What’s the ROI of putting on pants?
What’s the ROI of having restrooms in your restaurant?

These are all actual lines I’ve heard, just this week, in support of ignoring the role of ROI in establishing the effectiveness of brand efforts in the social media space. There are hundreds of others. Ignoring for a second the completely arbitrary and increasing flawed notion that “social media” is distinct from the web in general at this point, each of these examples continues to point to the exuberant ignorance so many of “social media experts” flaunt on a nearly daily basis when talking about their own work and value.

A couple points I’d like to make:

1) Each one of these is used as though it were rhetorical, when in fact, businesses make judgements on these types of questions every single day. Every restaurant owner has to pay ACTUAL dollars to maintain their washroom. This is one aspect of their “I”nvestment in their business. In “R”eturn they hope this invest plays a part in people dining at their establishment. If this restaurant owner wanted to find a more solid dollar value of this investment, she could easily just block off the restroom and see the effect on her business. Whats the ROI on mowing the lawn? Ask Nike how much they spend maintaining the grounds of their WHQ campus. Then ask them how much of a factor that campus is on retention for them. Want to know the ROI on putting your pants on? Try going to work one morning without pants. Then try paying your rent once you’ve been fired. Thats ROI.

My point is this: it’s fun and cute to toss these pithy lines around, but it might be worth your time to make sure they’re based in some semblance of reality first. Your own inability to see the value in these things only proves YOU can’t measure it, it doesn’t mean there isn’t value.

2) I’d be inclined to let the purveyors of this flawed logic hang their own careers expect for this: when you devalue your work, you devalue mine too. While YOU may have to wave your hands at the notion that YOUR work has any measurable return, I don’t. But when you pedal this baloney, you make the hill steeper for all of us.

Please stop.

I not only believe the work Fight does contributes positively to the bottom line of our clients, we work very hard to prove it. When you say things like “Whats the ROI of putting on pants?” you’re basically equating the work I do to something literally any one can and does do every single day. The logical conclusion a client could draw from this is that brand activities on the social web are something that you should do, but not really consider, or worry about, or invest in. Like pants. Im not sure then how this leads to needing specialists. I don’t need to hire a special person to put my pants on me each day. If helping brands succeed on the web is the same thing, why would hire any one to help me with that?