Let's talk money

I remember reading the book, Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson when I was studying marketing in school.

It was written in a pre-digital era (1984) which meant attributing customer acquisition from marketing was hazy at best.

Today, we have all kinds of tools to help measure and quantify our work. And yet, we’re seeing more and more that customers live in a multi-touch, multi-channel, word-of-mouth world.

One thing he said in the book that stands out in my memory to this day is that revenue is the overarching measurement of successful marketing.

I’d personally argue that profitable growth is the key metric, but I understand his point. Our job is to drive sales.

The reality is, modern marketers need to be able to speak in terms of revenue, ROI, and profitability with our clients and not just in terms of clicks, likes, and engagement.

We need to show how the activities we’re doing are creating financial outcomes—even if it means using proxy metrics like leads and opportunities of other kinds.

We need to know how things like repeat purchase rates, average transaction value, lifetime value, and contribution margins play into our ROI calculations.

When I ran an agency years ago, I focused too much on vanity metrics like page views, website traffic, clicks, time on page, etc.

They had very little to do with actual money. I left it to my clients to figure out if it was a good deal for them.

No good.

Now, I try to sit on their side of the table. I think holistically about how I’m going to help them generate more money—and profit—in a sustainable long-term way.

Let’s talk money.