Not Everything That Counts Can Be Counted! How Campaign Metrics Can Stifle Success

In this guest post, Luisa Paton (lead image), JOY Agency’s head of strategy and insight, discusses the simple yet powerful solutions to unmeaningful metrics, including trust and delivering fundamentals…

While driving back from a client meeting with my boss this week, we had one of the those ‘shooting the breeze’ type chats that there rarely seems to be time for these days.

At one point he asked me this question: ‘What would you say is the most important thing you do at work every day?’.  After a little bit of thought, I answered something along the lines of ‘Keeping everyone and everything focused on what really drives outcomes’, he replied ‘Me too’.

This includes making sure every single element – our clients, our partners and our team plus our decisions, our creativity, our strategy, and our measurement – remain focused on what really drives outcomes.

We all work in an industry that is about creating success for business and brands, and I don’t know anyone in the industry who isn’t working their butts off right now, so what is getting in the way?

The problem is that un-meaningful metrics are being used to shape decisions. Under increased pressure to provide proof that advertising investment will deliver a measurable outcome, too many clients make decisions based on what can be measured in the short term, as opposed to what will deliver true consumer impact and business outcomes.

And this issue will only be exacerbated by the challenging economic times we know lie ahead, which will likely dampen consumer spending, tighten client budgets and increase the demand for proof of ROI.

So, what is the solution?

1. Trust is the first step to release us from the confines of un-meaningful metrics.

Through building trust with clients, based on the combined substance of knowledge, expertise, experience and ‘meaningful’ metrics, clients are released from making decisions based on the perceived safety of ‘campaign metrics’ in isolation, and are conversely empowered to consider layers of knowledge regarding how communications work and consequently, sign off on solutions that are known to deliver ‘real’ outcomes. This places clients in a significantly advantageous position.

Once trust is built and the disproportionate influence of campaign metrics diminished, we move to the second part of the solution:

2. Delivering communications fundamentals that count

A great integrated communications plan has many components; I’ve found sticking to the following guiderails keeps a campaign focused on success.

Are we creating emotional desire for brands?

Put simply, are we getting consumers to deeply want and even need your brand? If consumers have an emotional desire for your brand they will pay more, buy more often, be more loyal, talk about more with friends and forgive mistakes more easily. The value of emotional desire is undisputable; therefore we must invest more in creating desire.

Are we balancing the long term and the short term?

Far too often we see efforts only focused on ‘harvesting’ at the bottom end of the funnel, with little efforts in ‘sowing’ at the top end of the funnel. If we are not creating a pipeline of future customers, the existing potential pool will dry up, and data shows unequivocally that performance results dwindle to the point of drying up over time without appropriate upper funnel support.

Are we capturing consumer attention?

The desire for low ‘cost-per-media-result’ campaign metrics ultimately leads to choices that deliver efficient reach at the cost of quality attention. Yes, reach levels and reaching the right people matters, but unless it is coupled with delivering experiences that really grab attention and are memorable, then the reach opportunity is lost.

Are we connecting every campaign element, so they work harder together?

Rigorously ensuring every part of the solution is truly connecting and transiting consumers through to an action is crucial. We’ve all had those experiences where we have fed thousands of willing consumers to a website that just isn’t set up to convert!

Everyone in our industry, clients and agencies alike, are experiencing busier days, fewer resources, more work and higher expectation than ever before. All of this creates an environment that naturally acts to pull focus away from an end goal and towards a ‘what needs to get done now’ focus.

So for now ‘keeping everyone and everything focused on what really drives outcomes’ appears to be a good place to invest energy.

Achieving this through building client trust based on substance, creating campaigns framed by communications fundamentals that count, and importantly releasing ourselves from the constraints of ‘un-meaningful metric’s’ has led to stand-out success for many JOY clients.

Albert Einstein puts it best; ‘Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.’