• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 10, 2008

A new set of metrics has been designed that goes beyond the sell point to measure the way in which consumers engage with products and services.

It was unveiled this week at the Forrester Research Marketing Forum 2008 in Los Angeles. The engagement model is based on Discovery, Evaluation, Use and Affinity for products and can be used offline and online to measure the interaction that consumers have with brands.

Marketers have lost control of what consumers say about brands, and "many have begun to realize they never had control in the first place," Forrester Research analyst Brian Haven told Marketing Daily. "They thought they did, but in reality brands live in the perception of consumers."

The metrics tie to a concept presented in a report--"Marketing's New Key Metric: Engagement"--released in August, which outlines the framework of the four "I" concepts: Involvement, Interaction, Intimacy, and Influence, that help marketers lay the groundwork to measure success or failure.

• "Involvement" tracks site visitors, time spent, page views and more through Omniture software, statistics from comScore or Nielsen.

• "Interaction" measures the contributions to blogs, purchases made, or upload a photo or video.

• "Intimacy" tries to understand consumer attitudes, perception, and feelings about a brand through surveys or monitoring technology, such as Symphony and Nielsen Buzz Metrics, as well as applications providing an interactive chat environment between brand and consumers like Passenger or SodaHead.

• "Influence" measures the likelihood that consumers will recommend or advocate products or brands.

After consumers discover and evaluate products, marketers typically move on to sell to someone else. Now, analysts like Haven say, it's not enough. While the four "I" metrics provide insight into why consumers buy products, marketing professionals must also understand what happens after the sale, so they can assure the consumer has a positive relationship with brands and products from cradle to grave.

Social technologies have demonstrated that marketers do not have control of brand perception in online and the real-world. For example, Jen from Cincinnati--a big fan of Ikea--launched a blog to persuade the furniture retailer to open a store where she lives. For four years, Jen documented the process. Through the blog, she encouraged other consumers to shop at Ikea, but there were plenty of negative and ugly posts from consumers who were dissatisfied with purchases on the blog as well.

Then there's the consumer who sees a neighbor mowing his lawn in half the time it takes him. The neighbor shouts out: "This thing's great. You have to get one." Another example of the lack of control marketers have.

Measuring engagement requires marketers to pay close attention to both the discovery and the evaluation processes, which becomes important whether consumers visit the Web site or the brick-and-mortar store. Interaction metrics become relevant as consumers click on a banner ad or make a purchase using a loyalty card, Haven says. As products are used and the consumer develops an affinity for the brand, the model takes into consideration the intimacy, or relationship, as opinions are formed.

"There's not one formula that every company can apply because an engaged consumer will be completely different in each scenario," Haven says. "The trick is to develop a definition of an engaged customer for your products and tease out the metrics to track the process."

The metrics tie in with a concept known as "engagement mapping" from companies like Microsoft's Atlas and DoubleClick, which helps media buyers get the most bang for their bucks. Ad networks do this by tracking the consumer's movements through the Internet to the last click via cookies and Web site tags, feeding the information into software applications that analyze the process.

"The concept is so new that it feels as if we're in the Model T Ford era," Haven says. "Measure of Engagement," written by Haven, along with fellow Forrester analyst Suresh Vittal, will publish in May.