Numbers by stewf on flickr

Why are marketing people so obsessed by numbers and measurability? Especially with large numbers which are often assumed to be better than small ones. This obsession clouds judgment and so we seldom stop to think much about those numbers, what they stand for and even to understand what a good number looks like, and we often measure what we can measure rather than what is meaningful to measure.

In broadcast media planning we look at Gross Rating Points (GRP) and opportunities to see and audience numbers, in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) we want to drive  people to our website, and we are looking for unique visitors and conversion rates, on twitter we are looking for followers – the more the merrier.

But do these particular numbers have any real relevance? I understand the need for a large audience if you are flighting a TV ad, if say only 20% of people notice the ad its better that its 20% of the largest possible number. The same goes for SEM driving as many unique visitors as possible to the site, really for the same reason.

But this assumes that the purchase process is a linear one (steo by step from awareness to sale) which increasingly its not (The new customer Journey : The OPEN Brand), it also assumes that the objective, the end of the purchase journey is THIS sale instead of this and all possible future and related sales.

Furthermore If the major task of marketing is idea diffusion then do the numbers matter?

I don’t think they do, I would rather have 100 of the right people engaging with me, on my site or wherever, my customers about whom I am passionate about or people who could be passionate about my product and influential enough to spread the word, than 100 000 randoms. In this case 100 is a far better number than 100 000.

The numbers that would make sense would measure the quality of our engagement and the quality of the interaction.

Driving into the office this morning I thought about some of the conversations I had had last night at the graduation ceremony of the aaa school of advertising. The conversation often turned to digital marketing and advertising and I felt that I needed to share my thoughts.

Firstly we cannot understand what can be done until we free ourselves from the interruption marketing/advertising paradigm.

We have been conditioned to think that our job as branders, marketers and advertisers is to change people’s perceptions by presenting them with a message. We know that the more impactful the message is the easier it will cut through the tremendous clutter of information that surrounds every human being. We feel that the way to do that is to find someone doing something and deliver the message to them, interrupting what they are doing and  if we grab their attention the message will get across.

So we find people driving down the road and set up a billboard, people watching sport and the insert a TV spot or people browsing the Internet and we insert an CPC ad. We know that the more relevant that ad is to the person whom we are interrupting’s frame of mind at the time we interrupt them the more successful we will be at getting our message home.

But, we get stuck there and we think of the digital space as we have been conditioned to as a different activity that we can interrupt, and so we miss the point.

The opportunity offered by digital media, especially by the Web 2.0 technology should really force us to think totally differently about our whole approach to advertising.

• We need to recognise that in a connected world, we as advertisers we don’t control the message any longer.
• We need to understand that we have the opportunity to engage in a two way conversation.
• We need to understand the ability to build communities around our brand.
• We need to use our ability to test and get feedback from the community.

In an earlier post, the one on Alice’s Restaurant I spoke about building a brand by creating a movement around an idea and a concept. I believe that’s what Barack Obama did with the “Yes we can” mantra.

Is the trick to find the idea, the customer value proposition, then to follow this formula?

• Find the talkers
• Give them something to talk about.
• Give them a way to help them talk about it.

I believe that that’s how we could use digital media in our marketing efforts, find the value, the idea, get it out there using the incredible characteristics of the Internet and online mobile connections to let it spread supported by building communities and then accelerate the growth of the idea using traditional media.

We are still making the rules so I would love to hear your comments.

Photo credit: alicepopkorn on Flickr