Why have companies struggled to measure marketing ROI for so long?
Marketing managers have tended to focus too much too long on trying to measure the impact of tactics with easy-to-understand measures that are of questionable worth. Click rates for Web advertising are easy to measure, but what do they really tell us? Or consider ad agencies doing copy testing with measures such as awareness that typically do not connect to long-run financial performance. The measures commonly used to evaluate marketing tactics are often easy to apply but provide little insight into marketing ROI, especially over the long run. We should be focused on evaluating not just tactics but both strategies and tactics. Strategy is about positioning and targeting: positioning consists of what the company is providing the customer and targeting concerns to whom they are trying to sell. If the positioning is wrong and the target market is wrong, rarely can tactics alone save the day. We should also be asking, what is the overall impact of all marketing activities: the positioning
