Customer Reviews

Return on Marketing Investment

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

in a world where every marketing dollar invested should count, marketing roi is becoming more and more "basic" in the companies' operational procedure. that is a given.
the premise of this book is that "marketing roi is important". the author conceptually introduces marketing roi, hammers on and on about its importance, and offers possibilities of measurements. if you are looking for a "what is marketing roi" and "why is marketing roi important", this is the book for you. but if like me, you've already been awakened - rudely or gently - to the importance of marketing roi and its possible contributions to your business and are looking for ways and means to effect significant changes in your organization, this is not the book for you. this book is more of a PR work for the author's firm than a book that seeks to contribute to its readers' coffers of experience.

I admire Mr. Powell for tackling a subject that is ignored at many corporations - how to add accountability to branding with hard numbers instead of the "soft" metrics like "creativity" or "impact" that unfortunately drives a lot of branding today. For that reason alone, the book is worth reading. However, if you are already working to quantify your branding efforts, the book is a little simplistic. It amounts to little more than a long discussion of the common financial concept of IRR (internal rate of return). If you are familiar with basic accounting concepts, this book will represent familiar ground. If not, then it is a good introduction to the metrics required to determine whether a marketing investment will pay off.

Enormously disappointing, not at all what I expected, no way that this could be put into practice - erronous theory, weak examples.

Even the central idea is flawed. Ratios should almost never be maximised (see Argenti, 1980 for a simple, clear explanation), and ROMI certainly shouldn't. The examples of spreadsheets in the book are simplistic and in some cases misleading. With lots of white space and wide margins the content of this book is very light, probably equivalent to 100 pages. The key issue of where to get the elasticities, and other parameters is glossed over, leaving the reader wondering how to implement this in practice.

Suggested reading:
- Marketing and the Bottom Line (ISBN: 0273661949)
- Customer equity (ISBN: 0875847641)
- Marketing Payback (ISBN: 0273688847)

I just finished reading this book today, and frankly, I feel like I've just been cheated out of $28. This book qualifies more as a sales brochure than it does as a serious book about marketing ROI.

To tell you the truth, I'm not actually sure who the intended audience for this book is. If you are a marketing manager who has no previous experience with marketing ROI and needs an introduction, then this book is NOT for you. As an introductory book, the author provides you with a lot of theory and reasons for why you should be concerned about marketing ROI, but he does not support any of his ROI calculation examples with clear & concise explanations about exactly how he arrived at these figures, leaving you to figure out how he does it on your own - a difficult task (to say the least) for any marketing person with only a basic understanding of accounting and financial terminology/methods. So, as an introductory book to ROI, it fails.

If, on the other hand, you are a financial officer or someone with experience working with marketing ROI, then once again this book is NOT for you because the contents of the book are far too simple for anyone with even a preliminary understanding of marketing ROI. The author barely even touches the surface of ROI theory, and he does so on a very superficial level. So, as a book for the seasoned ROI professional, it fails.

However, if you are Guy Powell, then this book is definitely for you! Not because you would learn a lot from reading it, but because this book is more of a sales tool and PR vehicle for the marketing consulting company that he owns than it is a serious book about ROI. It gives the reader a list of reasons to be concerned about marketing ROI and then gives them just enough ambiguous information to be interested in this topic, but not enough information about how to apply it in practical situations, therefore encouraging the reader to seek the services of Guy's marketing consulting firm. Bottom line, this book belongs on his company's website as a free downloadable PDF whitepaper, not a hard-cover book you pay $28 for. Seriously, you can learn more about ROI simply by searching for 'marketing ROI' in Google.

If you're looking for a more authentic & practical guide to Marketing ROI that will actually teach you something, try Measuring Brand Communication ROI or IMC the next generation, or perhaps you could just give the author's marketing consulting firm a call.

Though measuring the return on marketing investment has a great deal of value to any organization the value of this particular book is for Guy Powell to claim he has authored a book on the subject. What you will not find are suggestions of ways to attribute sales to particular campaigns regardless of the length of the sales cycle. You will find statemnts indicating the importance of doing just that.

I agree with the review above entitled "simple? yes. actionable? no". However, the 1-star rating given by the reader is a bit tough.

The book does give a good overview of ROI tracking. There are a few good tips. However, the author never addresses in-depth topics related to the complexity of tracking ROI. I was expecting more. I've already worked on ROI analysis and haven't learned much from this book.

If you're a beginner, or have just started to work out ROI for your marketing campaigns, it will be useful (4-star).

However, if you've already tracked and analyzed ROI in your company (and hopefully you already have!), then paying $25 or so for this book is not that good a ROI (ahah!). Although I did pickup a couple of interesting thoughts which still made the book worthwile for me (average ROI at other companies, how to use the accounting department for better ROI tracking). Don't expect much though.

Based on his many years of in-the-trenches experience, Chicago MBA Guy Powell offers convincing proof that there's nothing as devestating to an opinion as a number. ROMI is an outstanding book that is packed with dozens of industry-specific examples and worksheets that any marketing executive can use to quantify the promise of any marketing initiative. I loved it.

Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) was developed to deliver tools and methodologies that tie successful marketing communications and sales programs together. It is meant for any sized organization, but will be particularly relevant to marketers at small to mid-market companies - marketing managers and upwards/director-to-VP and downwards/associates-to-coordinators -- as well as less analytics- and technology-driven companies. The strengths of this book is it complete practicality, which translates into instant usability by the reader post-reading. The strongest sections and topics covered in the book are its program selection guide, its risk comparison overview for marketing tactics, its section on the appropriate allocation of funds between different marketing programs, sales alignment messages, and its ROMI Hurdle Rate Calculation Worksheet, and ROMI Calculation Worksheet. The examples given are also practical and extremely useful in "showing" the concepts presented. The only suggestions I'd have for improving this book would be to present marketing ROI decision making trees, to look at benchmarks and present industry data, and to present a case study briefing on going from zero marketing ROI calculations to a successful implementation. A greater emphasis on the importance of research and marketing ROI forecasting would also be good.

I am not sure who this book is targeting....if you are a marketing/finance novice, his ROI spreadsheets and calculations are vague and full of holes. On the other hand, if you have any kind of financial background, you will find this very simplistic.
Quick (short) read...but falls short as a resource book.

I was waiting a lot from this book. But the chapter are really short.
Deception about Romi on Direct Marketing, more innovative about Advertising cost.