Should you risk a major investment in marketing and business development if you can’t measure the results?

This week we asked: How much are you willing to invest in something you may not be able to measure?

1) Nothing. – 35%

2) A small amount…and let’s see what happens. – 50%

3) I’m all in, and I don’t need to measure. – 15%

My Thoughts: Not surprising only 15% of you said you would go all in for an initiative that had no way of measuring ROI. On the other hand, a whopping 50% of you said you would be willing to invest a small amount. Great!

Here’s the bottom line (at least in my opinion): It’s silly to miss out on a marketing opportunity as powerful as social media/blogging just because you cannot get a detailed measurement of ROI. The benefits of blogging especially, can be anything from building relationships to gaining recognition to building credibility. Who knows how many clients (or potential clients) Googled you, found credible information (rather than just some directory listings) and hired you. Trust, and belief in your expertise, is unmeasureable.

Seth makes two points in his blog: First that its never a good idea to try and measure the unmeasureable and use that to make decisions. I agree wholeheartedly. The second is trickier. He believes “Small investments in unmeasurable media almost always fail. Go big or stay home.” I disagree. Jumping all-in into an unmeasureable marketing effort will only cause stress and frustration. You have to understand your own comfort level and choose something that you’ll stick to. If that means testing the waters with a Twitter account or working contacts through LinkedIn for a few months then I’m fine with that. Just be sure to be consistent with your efforts. If you’re not comfortable you won’t place a consistent focus on the initiative… and it will fail.

Black Pearl: Here is Seth Godin’s full post “On buying unmeasurable media,” as well as a recent post from Kevin “Do law firms need to measure ROI on social media?”. And yes, I know it’s our second reference to Kevin in 2 weeks, but what can I say? (We must be on the same wavelength lately?)