• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, January 6, 2012

State of Marketing Measurement Survey shows that while 82% of marketers say their executive management expects every campaign to be measured, less than a third can effectively evaluate the ROI of each channel.

According to a new study by Ifbyphone, the “2011 State of Marketing Measurement Report,” there is a large gap between executive demands and ability to demonstrate return on marketing investment. While four out of five marketing executives say they are expected to deliver measurable results, only 29% cite they can effectively achieve this across all channels.

Irv Shapiro, CEO of Ifbyphone, explains that “The ease of tracking online metrics... (and) the lagging economy... has driven the expectation that every marketing dollar needs to be accounted for... yet, 82% of ad spend still resides in offline channels... difficult to measure... “

However, while 87% of Chief Marketing Officers ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ that every campaign should be measured, more than a quarter of Marketing Assistants reported that they don’t think marketing measurement is important.

“It’s concerning to hear that many of the future marketers of tomorrow don’t understand the importance of measuring the success of their campaigns,” said. “We need to determine the root cause behind this sentiment, and whether it’s a lack of education in best practices, or rather a gap in leadership and mentoring.

Marketing measurement expectations also varied based on company size in a bell curve, with midsized companies most concerned about measurement:

• Under 100 employees: 79% felt all campaigns should be measured
• 100-500 employees: 93% felt all campaigns should be measured
• 500-5,000 employees: 86% felt all campaigns should be measured
• 5,000+ employees: 79% felt all campaigns should be measured

Shapiro says that “... businesses can only get better at marketing if they are held accountable for improving upon what didn’t work in the past... smaller companies lack the knowledge and human capital to effectively track all of their initiatives... larger companies are more likely to spend dollars on brand campaigns and goodwill efforts they know will be difficult to measure... both lead to lowered expectations in those organizations... “

The majority of marketers indicated they could not effectively measure the ROI of their programs. Eighty-two percent of marketers could not measure the ROI of public relations, while 53% of the group reported difficulty measuring the ROI of email marketing.

When asked to choose the most difficult type of campaign to measure, more than half of marketers chose offline channels. 33% cited public relations. and 27% say print advertisements as the most difficult to track, while only 6% selected email marketing.

Programs where it’s most difficult to measure ROI (% of respondents):

• Public Relations (82%)
• SEO (76%)
• Social media (74%)
• Tradeshow Marketing (72%)
• Print campaigns (66%)
• Online ads (60%)
• Direct mail campaigns (59%)
• Email marketing (53%)

The ability to track ROI could potentially be tied to a lack of widespread use of available marketing tools, according to the report. The survey indicated the most-used tools include web analytics (48%), email marketing software analytics (47%), lead counts from online contact forms (38%), social media monitoring (30%) and call tracking (27%).

The study, “State of Marketing Measurement,” surveyed more than 200 U.S. marketing professionals across a wide range of business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries, to uncover current trends, limitations and expectations in measuring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

For additional information from Ifbyphone, please visit here. To access the PDF file with charts and graphs, go here.