Its the Conversation economy dude!!

The eternal debate between Finance and Marketing teams in every organization is the calculation of a return on investment for the marketing spend.

This has led to many marketers focusing on Conversion - wherein every ad is measured in terms of either a lead generated or sales. The concept is that, if you have got the consumer to buy now, then the ad must be truly engaging.

The problem with this approach is that marketers try to give the consumer a hook to purchase now and that hook is very often a promotion / freebie.

Conversion as the basis of marketing spend justification is a very narrow approach. You are targeting the one consumer who has seen your advertising and no one else and he buys your brand partly because it has an offer attached.

Nothing earth shattering about the fact that great brands are built when people talk positively.

A new measurement has to be used to track marketing spends. Social Media has allowed conversation to spread rapidly on the internet and at the same time allow companies to track it. Conversation tracking could well be the measure we are looking for.

Once tracked, Should you control it is another question and another post.

Conversation tracking does seem like the way forward to measure marketing spend. How do you attach a value to the conversation generated is the question?

P.S Just wondering if Conversation Economy is an original term that I can claim as my own. Have you read about this anywhere else?

Update: I am not a genius after all :)

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Concept of Conversion vs Conversation derived from The 3 philosophies of Word of Mouth Marketing