Weekly Alert: Time to Rethink How We Measure

mlns='> Final Deadline Today: Content Marketing Awards [View Message in Browser]( / [Add Us to Safe Sender List]( Weekly News 6.19.20 Connect with CMI Your Audience Is Not the Same as Your Marketing Database Your marketing database is NOT your audience. It has a different value. Explore what an audience really is, why it’s valuable to your brand, and how to build one. [Read more]( By Robert Rose [High-Level Strategy] Some more of this week's best stuff: - [Even B2B Audiences Want Emotion in Their Content]( [by]( [Jodi Harris]( [Content Creation] - [3 Keyword Research Trends to Get Your Content Seen]( by Ann Smarty [Distribution and Promotion] - [How to Optimize Your How-to and List Posts]( by Alex Chris [Distribution and Promotion] - [Are You Measuring the Right Things? [The Weekly Wrap]]( by Robert Rose [Trends and Research] - [Want the Best Ideas to Flourish? Learn How to Cultivate Support]( by Jonathan Crossfield [Chief Content Officer Exclusive]  A Note From Robert Rose Time to Rethink How We Measure What was the most successful company last year? Was it Momo, the Chinese social search and instant messaging company that topped [Fortune’s 2019 list of the 100 Fastest-Growing Companies]( Wait, isn’t Walmart the most successful company? The retail giant may have only grown by 2% last year, yet it still ranked first on the [Fortune 500 list]( with more than $500 billion in revenue. Some might consider The Zildjian Company to be the most successful. The family-owned maker of cymbals, mallets, and drumsticks has hardly grown at all over the last 10 years and earns only about 1/100th the revenue of the last place company in the Fortune 500. Yet, it's [the oldest, continuously family-run business]( in the United States and has smoothly weathered financial depressions, world wars, cultural change, and digital transformation. Then there’s number 653 on Fortune’s list: Edward Lifesciences, which has seen 10% growth, year over year. The 60-year-old company has also seen its stock price double in the last couple of years due to its top ranking as an ESG company. [ESG]( (which stands for environmental, social, and governance) is a new measure for impact investing, which factors a company’s efforts to be a good citizen into its standards for financial evaluations. Which is the most successful? Which would you most want to work for? One of my favorite business thinkers, Eliyahu M. Goldratt, once wrote, “Tell me how you will measure me, and I will tell you how I will behave. If you measure me in an illogical way... do not complain about illogical behavior.” People adjust their behavior to the measurements they’re held to – no matter how illogical they may be. One of the most common examples in B2B content marketing is the debate over whether to put content behind a registration gate. When I’m asked to help decide, one of my first questions is why they want to [gate]( the content. The inevitable answer is, “because we’ll get more leads.” But are all the people who download that content really leads? When you’re measured by the number of leads you produce, you’re probably more than willing to redefine the concept of a lead. This flawed behavior sometimes leads to different definitions of a qualified lead for each team (demand gen, marketing, sales). Then, teams spend their time debating the adjudication of how each lead matches each team’s qualifications. The behavior you measure is the behavior you get. I believe classical marketing measurement can be made more logical. But what intrigues me is how the concept of measurement may be completely rebooted. It makes sense that these new measurements will influence the way we market products and services, too. Marketers are on the cusp of new ways to measure that go well beyond the efficiency standard of how much revenue we can drive against how little we can spend to do it. We have the opportunity to use customer data more responsibly. We can create, acquire, and sponsor content-driven experiences that deepen trust and deliver to a more inspired and educated addressable market. We can evolve marketing into something more important than an efficient engine of revenue. The action we measure is the action we increase. Maybe it’s time to start looking at new ways to act. It’s your story. Tell it well. Robert Rose Chief Strategy Advisor Content Marketing Institute This article from Robert is available only in this newsletter for you, the newsletter subscriber. If you have friends that would see value in Robert's weekly updates, please have them [subscribe](. 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