DON'T OVEREMPHASIZE ROI AS SINGLE MEASURE OF SUCCESS

Return on investment (ROI) enables financial types to evaluate marketing initiatives with the same approach they use to evaluate capital expenditures and acquisitions. For senior management, ROI makes marketing less subjective. Although the world of marketing has come a long way in terms of analytic capabilities, applying financial numbers to the marketing equation is not always possible or preferable. That's why using ROI to evaluate the overall effectiveness can be a problem. Marketing decisions do need to be made strategically, and a marketing executive should manage and be evaluated on the overall financial performance of a business. But rather than focus on ROI, executives need to use a variety of measures to evaluate marketing programs' success.