I spent 17 years in the ad biz, creating marketing for everything from guitar wah-wah pedals to medical textbooks to burritos. And in almost every case, I can tell you the means of measuring marketing effectiveness was exactly the same:
Did it sell? Did it move the needle? Did it make the cash register ring?
From advertising's earliest glory days, that's always been the dynamic: advertising is glorified salesmanship, hoping to convince the reader/listener/viewer to buy something. It's one of the building blocks of capitalistic society, after all.
But I'm wondering, more and more, whether that holds true in today's marketplace.
Let me start by saying yes. There will always be a place for retail-oriented marketing that focuses on price or specials or loss leaders.
But I'm not talking about that kind of promotion-oriented marketing. I'm talking more about marketing designed to raise awareness and create a brand in the marketplace. Now, folks who love branding-speak will say true branding efforts don't focus on sales. To an extent, I suppose. But the hoped-for result of a unique brand is differentiation in the marketplace...resulting in more sales. Much of Nike's work from the late 80s on has been very brand-centric--but they've been able to be brand-centric, because those efforts have sold a ton of swoosh-clad shoes.
So, I think even in today's world, we tie marketing to sales. And I also think that's a mistake, because it makes companies miss out on a ton of sales in the long-run. Well, let me correct that a bit; I don't think it's wrong to tie marketing to sales. That's what it's all about. But I think it's perhaps a bit misguided to look at many marketing efforts today through a traditional marketing lens—it's wrong, I think, to say, "How's this going to help us sell more product?" and use that as a sole benchmark.
Instead, I think it's more important to get people talking about you, or your brand, or your product, than it is to actually sell anything. The sales have to be a natural end result of the process, rather than the primary upfront goal. It might seem I’m splitting hairs, but I think it's an important distinction, because modern efforts can be seen as failures is the product doesn't "sell," when in fact the marketing behind it has done its job.
I'll give you a specific example tied to something near and dear to my heart: books. Consider this article in Wall Street Journalabout a recent novel by Chad Kultgen. The article devotes a fair number of words to talking about the racy viral videos produced for the book, and the success of the videos (the article claims they've been viewed more than a million times, although the YouTube view counts don't indicate that). Then, the article says: Still, the limits of the strategy are clear. Only a fraction of the million views has so far turned into sales, likely because the people watching the videos aren't frequent book buyers. As Mr. Kultgen says, "Now we'll see if the views translate into book sales."
The article takes great pains to explain the success of the effort...then deflates it by saying it really didn't sell that many books. The culprit? We're told it's "because the people watching the videos aren't frequent book buyers." Hmmm, I'm betting many of those "infrequent book buyers" have a few Harry Potter books, or The DaVinci Code, or any of a number of other titles sitting on their shelves. It's not that folks aren't interested in books; it's more, I think, that the book just didn't close the deal. Guys, especially the "under 40" crowd the book aims at, are much more visual than verbal when it comes to, ahem, racy content. That's why they were drawn to the viral videos...but not the book itself. (Women, on the other hand, are more imaginative and verbal, which helps explain the enduring popularity of romance novels.)
My point in all of this is, I think this campaign was viewed as a grand experiment that failed. And yet, I don't think it did fail at all. A million views, in my mind, means folks passed it around and talked about it. The marketing did its job. (And before you click through and watch the viral videos, please be advised they're not, um, family friendly. We're talking about crude humor.)
I'm not necessarily saying I like the campaign (I am, after all, outside the noted demo for it). But I am saying its remarkable among book campaigns because of its viral success. It certainly blows away most other "viral video" campaigns for books of any kind that I know about.
Take, for instance, recent videos created for Douglas Coupland's "The Gum Thief," many of which, I think, are quite interesting. The first in the series has a very respectable 240,000 views so far, but the rest of the videos—almost all of which are better than the one with 240,000 views, I think—only have between 3,000 and 16,000. Not that those figures are anything to scoff at; even after a couple hundred views, I think you're getting some benefit from viral videos. I'm just saying we're a long way from the 1,000,000+ views.
And "The Gum Thief" is probably one of the more successful virals produced for books; look at average numbers, and you'll see far fewer views.
Consider one of the biggest names in fiction: Dean Koontz. He's always doing something interesting, and I personally loved the campaign for his "Odd Thomas" books—I saw the spots on broadcast television (no small buy), and they were also distributed as videos on YouTube. Yet they've only attracted a few thousand views. For his most recent book, "The Good Guy," Koontz did a "Shoot the Good Guy" contest asking people to make their own videos for the book. A neat idea, but the top entry still only generated 20,000 views.
On the flip side of that, we know Koontz sold a bazillion copies of those books, so who's to argue? But it does say something about the odds a viral video faces when an author with a large and fanatical following can only generate a few thousand views on YouTube.
