Fine Print

Great question, David Cushman, who asked it via LinkedIn today, and is now inviting answers.

“ROI can’t come down to increased traffic. Traffic is just eyeballs — it’s just the page impression number. ROI has to get closer to and be more comfortable with the smaller, but more important numbers, of engagement,” he writes. Nearly a perfect answer.

In my opinion … some companies do want increased traffic. To them, a page impression is a successful ROI for their purposes. I don’t understand why; it just means they pay more for hosting costs, but if that’s their measure of success, then good for them.

So, how do you convince the disconnected that they need to engage, not just look at the bottom line? You have to scare them a little. Spend an hour — that’s all it takes — to do some monitoring. Find 10 disgruntled customers who are criticizing their products or customer service. Who feel unheard. Do a trackback search to those posts, and see who is linking to those 10 non-advocates. Find out who those people are, and who their audience is. Repeat until the client gets depressed.

But! All is not lost! Ask for their trust … go in on their behalf, contact those original 10 people as fast as you can, and ask if you can help them with their problem. In probably 60% of those cases, it may be too late. Mr. Disgruntled has already made his mind up and is off to spend his $$$ elsewhere. So, by simple math, that leaves the other 40% who do appreciate the feedback. Shocked even that Corporation X has bothered to take the time away from the boardroom, and is actually talking to them, the customer, the person that has put $$$ into Corporation X’s piggy bank.

Those 40% are now, with the right engagement, happy that their problem has been solved — maybe with some tech advice, a free coupon, a personal e-mail out of the blue — and will possibly blog about their positive experience.

Maybe social media will do away with the cold term ROI, and it will become ROE — return on engagement?

[These people get it.]

[A quick and dirty way to track a lot of stuff at the same time.]

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada