The Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA) released a report Wednesday to help its members better measure value in a nuanced way. The report, Measuring Marketing Communications Effectiveness in an Ever Changing World—The Role of the MarCom Dashboard, is a tool to help marketers think about how they measure against their objectives, all while teaching them to understand and use the ‘dashboard’ approach to marketing communications measurement
The dashboard approach uses a set of customizable metrics based on company objectives as well as financial, cultural and community factors to determine the value of marketing programs. The ACA advocates this method of measurement over the ROI method, which simply compares overall marketing investment to revenues generated over time.
“When you look at a dashboard, you get to see what is happening, and if things are tracking as they should or they should not. That enables you to address [any problems] in real time to [help you] get to your destination,” Susan Charles, vice-president of member services at the ACA, told Marketing.
The report builds on the ACA’s 2005 report, Measuring Marketing Communications Returns—ROI or Dashboard?, which first introduced the dashboard approach.
The update was necessary to take the dashboard approach into the modern age, said Charles. Since 2005, social media has changed the world of marketing metrics, and the new report takes that into account along with many other changes and refinements in measurement since then.
After all, back then, the return-on-investment (ROI) approach to measuring value was all the rage.
“ROI is extremely difficult to demonstrate. If I put out a television campaign and more sales come in, how do I know it was the television campaign that drove the sales? I can’t prove that because there are so many factors that drive the ultimate sale. ROI is the wrong question, but it addresses the right issue,” said Charles. “Dashboard is the right question, and it addresses the right issues.”
The new report is available at the ACA’s website and has been distributed to ACA member organizations.
