Blog ROI

With all of the recent buzz about blogs, more and more businesses are considering blogs as an element in their Marcom mix.  A big challenge that marketing execs face is measurement.  How can they quantify the return on their blog investment and justify the investment of time and money. 

The challenge is that blogs are equal parts advertising, public relations, and promotions and marketers use different metrics to buy and track the effectiveness of their advertising, pr and promotional campaigns. 

There is a great article on Click Z on measuring blog marketing read part one and part two. (thanks to Corporate Blogging Blog for the pointer)

In Malcom Gladwell's new book Blink, The power of Thinking  Without Thinking, he talks about the power of instinct and the adaptive unconscious.  Every corporate marketing executive that I have talked to very quickly comes to the realization that blogs are a very powerful marketing medium and could benefit their business.  The struggle comes when they try to justify their investment in time, money and exposure.  Marketers and media buyers still want an integrated measurement matrix that will track the qualitative and the quantitative impact of blog marketing to help them rationalize and justify their investment.  Unfortunately the very power of blogs as advertising and pr tools make it much more complicated to measure.  The tools are there but they will never be as simple as CPM, CPC, or CPP.