As a former consultant I can appreciate your point in dealing with others that use the concept of ROI and marketing.

The point I wanted to make is that part of the problem is in the way consultants and/or internal employees present online marketing initiatives.

Yes managers and clients want a return – but on what? To many times consultants are “selling” online marketing. My personal belief as a CFO is that what owners and managers really want is some sort of quantifiable result – profit being the highest result (usually).

For example, if a consultant said we want to use Twitter to engage with our customers, as a CFO I would stare blankly at them. But if the consultant said I wanted to decrease customer service costs by 15%, I would listen intently.

What owners and managers want to “buy” is something they can quantitatively understand. When people “sell” online social media marketing, they usually discuss the tactic and not the benefit. Hence the idea of an “investment” is based on the ability of the tactic to meet some unquantified objective – a risky proposition that leads to the ideal that is is an “investment” with some down side risk.

But if the “sell” was for a quantifiable objective, then the tactics become secondary to the buyer. The risk is in the ability of the party presenting to meet the objective they are selling.

In truth, the reason why so many people in your scenario use ROI is because what they are buying are usually tactics – not results.

Thank you again for your post on the article at Copyblogger.com and I appreciate you allowing me to bring this up.

I love Jesus but can do without his “people” most often. My solution for Jesus’ marketing problem is living my life as loving him and loving others with not much room for anything more. Do I screw that up sometimes? You bet and I own it, apologize, pick myself up and repeat -hopefully screwing up less in the same areas over time.

thanks for the candor and I look forward to our relationship!