Fuzzy Metrics: The Color to Your Big Picture
Wednesday, March 17, 2010 | 2 Comments
Tags: Events, social media goals, social media metrics
Posted in: Measurement and Metrics, conferences
I think it’s fitting that I’m writing this post from SXSW. I’ve done a lot of chatting over the past week, have attended a few panels, and have finally matched faces with names for many people I know online.
From a business perspective, how do we quantify the value of my time here at SXSW?
Adding a Bit of Color
There’s a lot of chatter about fuzzy metrics – those soft metrics, like the value of a conversation at a conference – that have value, but perhaps one value that is harder to define in a business sense.
Thinking of your measurement strategy as a picture, the hard metrics are the outlines: the big, black lines that form the overall picture and define what you’re really looking at.
The fuzzy metrics add color. Things like conversations at conferences, a shared meal, a round of golf or a few quips exchanged via Twitter – those are the items that add color and depth to your picture.
Showing share of conversation for your brand vs. your competitors is an important hard metric to track, but how do you break that share of conversation out to show the exact value one of those conversations has for your business? Do you weigh conversations with people who are influential differently than conversations with people who have less of a direct tie to your business?
Including hard metrics in your measurement is necessary, and is a key way that many marketing, PR, or social media teams justify their existence to their C-suite. But including the soft or fuzzy metrics are equally as valuable, especially as time moves forward and the soft metrics flow into the hard metrics. More often than not, the soft metrics give background, and are key indicators at the very start of trends or changes in your results.
Painting your Picture
My role as a Community Manager puts me on the very long tail of the sales cycle. My job isn’t a lead generation job, but it is sometimes part of what my job entails. My focus, though, is firmly in the land of fuzzy metrics. I focus on the handshakes, the “Hello”s, the @ messages on Twitter, and the ability to connect either online or offline to provide information, solve a problem, or sometimes just show that there is a human on the other end of the line.
I may be on the long tail of the sales cycle, but the fuzzy metrics of how I connect with people still do matter in a very real way. They show how my role fits into our company in terms of helping awareness, driving sales, or even reducing customer support costs (to name a few). That handshake could be the start of a fruitful business relationship, so including fuzzy metrics in your measurement strategy often shows trends that the hard metrics only pick up after they’ve begun.
Framing your Artwork
As time passes, some of those handshakes or rounds of golf will turn into website hits or product inquiries. Some of those inquiries or visits will turn into partnerships or sales, and that’s where things get interesting.
One of the most important things you can do is tie your measurement systems together, not necessarily through integrated systems (though that does help), but by correlating activities and trends to your metrics, and trying to clearly define and report on causation where applicable.
For example, if a salesperson notes that the person they’re speaking with first heard of your company from a conversation with a marketing rep at an industry event, that’s important to tie back into your measurement reports. Suddenly, those handshakes take on a different meaning, and if you’re trying to get buy-in from your C-suite, you have a few more proof points to rely on.
I’m sure you all have plenty of examples of how the fuzzy metrics have impacted your business. The comments are yours to share your stories.
2 Responses to “Fuzzy Metrics: The Color to Your Big Picture”
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