• by Jeremy Hull , October 14, 2009

Being alone may be frightening, but it's time

"ROI, we need to talk. I know we've been together for a long time, but maybe it's time to, you know, think about seeing other metrics."

Moving on from ROI might sound a little heretical, but before you grab torches and pitchforks, consider a couple of factors. No online campaign exists in a vacuum - each program you participate in affects all others. Nonbrand search drives brand awareness, leading to more searches on brand terms. Behavioral media campaigns drive visitors to your site, increasing the volume of your re-messaging campaigns. While nonbrand and behavioral campaigns may not hit your ROI goal, they are essential for sustained growth, which is a vital consideration in the current troubled economic climate. Social marketing is finally coming into its own as a viable promotional channel. Viewed within the contexts of maintaining growth in a weak global economy and the Facebook update you're composing as you read this, is it time to look for "the new ROI?"

Not exactly. ROI is a powerful indicator of your business' health and had no signs of becoming obsolete. However, there are multiple metrics you should look at to bolster ROI, evaluate the true benefit of your online ad spends, and help you allocate your budget where it will drive the most overall benefit.

Part of ROI's staying power is intrinsic and simple: when you see that the dime you spent in advertising has turned into a dollar of incremental revenue, it's a solid determiner that's tough to dispute. Not only that, but marketers have grown accustomed and even dependent on real-time reporting. You just can't beat the insight provided by a daily report.

What you can do, however, is augment it by tracking New Customer Acquisitions. NCAs factor in a customer's lifetime value, which is a significant number. If you can get an idea of their purchase path, you can figure out what is bringing them to your site. If nonbrand keywords played a role in bringing new customers to your site for the first time, these same or similar terms will likely bring even more first time buyers in the future if you continue to fund them.

Tracking NCAs is important in long-term planning, and it also makes a case for more aggressive nonbrand strategy. One way to do this is look at order IDs - by combining as much of your data as possible into one place, you can use order ids to figure out what percentage of purchasers from each online campaign or program were new customers. From there, you can determine which of your many online media touchpoints initiated, influenced and eventually closed the sales process. Factor in the lifetime value of a new customer, and the typically lower ROI of nonbrand keywords increases significantly.

Another useful metric tool that is often undervalued: your Web site. A brand's official site typically has several opportunities for a visitor to connect, interact with your brand, and hopefully become a loyal and vocal customer. Your site probably has options to sign up for promotional emails, share on Digg or Facebook, forward to a friend, etc. These are all touchpoints in the path to conversion, but they're also useful to you as measurement devices.

If you determine an estimated dollar value of the interactive elements of your site, you can add measurability to customer interaction. This is a little nebulous, nearly on par with measuring the engagement in social networking, but it's still highly relevant to your ROI.

All in all, marketers and ROI are made for each other, so parting ways or "just being friends" is really out of the question. You should, however, not become locked into an exclusive relationship with ROI. You can underscore the value of ROI by maximizing the utility of campaign tactics, data and customer interactions you already have on hand to make better long-term decisions for your business' health.