While return on investment (ROI) is the gold standard for proving the success of marketing activities, the calculation for some media campaigns can be blurred by cross channel integration, competitive activity and uncontrollable economic and environmental factors.

There is an alternative. Return on objective (ROO) enables teams to prove campaign impact when it’s not possible or feasible to tie them directly to sales. Common marketing objectives include increasing factors like awareness, brand favorability and purchase intent. By starting with these objectives in mind, campaigns are designed and researched to measure these factors.

Increasing Consumer Awareness
The results below clearly show the success of an awareness campaign as consumers that saw the ads had significantly higher brand awareness than consumers that did not see the ads.
Social Media Conversation Begets Loyalty
The impact of social media is also fueling new objectives, including increasing the volume of positive online discussion. By increasing the volume of discussion, engagement increases which can lead to sales and higher levels of customer loyalty.

Empower MediaMarketing recently included ROO as part of a blogger outreach campaign and the chart below exhibits the dramatic increase in the daily volume of online conversation surrounding our client’s brand that corresponded with the campaign launch.

Emphasizing ROO measurement is integral in achieving long-long term marketing success. Implementing programs with these goals helps take customers through the purchase decision – the ultimate goal. Empower clients have embraced ROO options and we’ll continue to consider them as success metrics as long as they continue to impact our clients’ business. 

:: By Dan Mayer, Director of Consumer Insights