Return on Investment, return on Engagement or what?

I had a prospect call to arrange a briefing meeting today. A nice guy he was too. A medium sized businessman wanting a website and a digital marketing campaign.

During the conversation, he asked me what kind of return-on-investment he could expect for his money. Dancing around my handbag, I tried to tell him that I couldn’t possibly speculate without knowing the obvious stuff about his product, his market, his competitors and such like crucial information.

Yet, he persisted and still wanted me to give him a ‘topline view from my experience’ of what he could expect.

Only courtesy and good old Scottish greed for his account stopped me from telling him straight that if he wanted a guaranteed way of turning a small x into a big Y, he should maybe go and raise King Midas from the dead.

If only I had that x to Y formula, I’d be rich. I certainly wouldn’t give it to clients for the sums of money they pay me now. I’d keep it to myself or charge them a fortune.

Any sensible marketer knows that it doesn’t work like that but I wish someone would tell that to non-experienced marketers and particularly procurement departments.

Of course I know that it’s us that should be telling the inexperienced how it works, because we are meant to be the experts. The trouble is we all talk about ROI but how many agencies really have a proper handle on it?

Yes, we can measure Direct Mail or EMail responses, clickthroughs and the like. We can even track user journeys from obscure social networks to the point of the closure of a sale. We’ve long been experts at pre and post awareness and attitudinal research – for what that’s worth. But do many agencies really deal in the business of specific financial return on the client money that goes through our hands?


This is a great blog piece by Rob Morrice on ROE,really good take - Robs regular blog can be found at The Drum

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Nowadays, we’re even talking about Return on Engagement (ROE). I love that term. Can anyone explain it to me?

My favourite current ad guru Tim Williams summed it up for me perfectly in a recent article in Advertising Age. He sagely wrote; ‘Agencies – and many advertisers – still have the wrong-headed view that effectiveness is too difficult to measure. Too many red-herring arguments get in the way of agencies getting more serious about analytics: Of course there is no silver bullet for perfectly calculating ROI. Of course agencies can’t be held responsible, fully responsible for sales. But this shouldn’t stop agencies from helping clients identify and test the key drivers of brand success. Marketers with leaner budgets want and need to reduce uncertainty, and that’s exactly the help analytics provide.’

Wise words indeed and, in my view, the most obvious approach to the subject of ROI. But is it a philosophy shared across the industry?