 |
|
Remember when measurement devices were really simple? |
Experiential marketing genius Erik Hauser from Swivel Media published a study recently to help framework what marketers are doing these days in regards to experiential marketing. One of the aspects of this really interesting publication is the use of the term Cost Per Touch, which means the amount of money it costs to get a potential customer to experience a specific brand or product.
Although the term very regularly means the customer if literally touching the product, that isn’t always neccessary to get a positive brand experience.
I wonder if this new term is brilliant or confusing. I see many positive values, in that being able to prove how many people physically interact with your product is a huge selling point. Salespeople have known for years that getting the customer to sit in the car, or hold a product is a huge step towards getting them to buy something. Likewise, smart marketers are aware of this, and a metric that can show how they are achieving this can be very helpful in managing marketing and advertising dollars.
On the other hand, are all of the “Cost Per” metrics useful in the long run? The most important one, Cost Per Acquisition, is the only one that measures actual sales. What good is a Cost Per Eyeball of five dollars or a Cost Per Touch of eight dollars if neither converts into a customer opening his or her wallet?
Right now, Cost Per Touch seems like a smart short-term way to help the experiential marketing guys pull the wool from the eyes of marketers who don’t see the gigantic value in experiential tactics. In the long-term, though, I think the war is going to be won by the agencies and shops that do away with metricky garbly gook, and have one measurement: how much money they helped their clients bring in.