How smart people think about ROI.

Somewhere along the way in my travels I picked up a reputation of being an "anti-roi" guy and I am here today to tell you that you got me all wrong.

I think more about ROI then you could imagine.

The difference between you and me may be that I only care about the metrics that meet my company goals and I don't care much about the metrics that everyone tells me I need to care about.

If you buy a book on metric measurement or listen to a speaker talk about the importance of ROI Metrics they will speak to generalities and "Best Practices" and not know, understand or meet your unique objectives.

You should know your business better then anyone and that makes you just as much of an expert as people saying they are experts. Understand your needs and find the things you need to track...and chances are it isn't always "hits" because as Avinash Kaushik says "Hits = How Idiots Track Success"

To further make my point, here is a panel I did at SMartCamp last May in NYC. The beautiful Julia Kaginskiy (moderator) pitted myself against Israel Mirsky (Porter Novelli) to discuss the value of Metrics. He is a smart numbers guy who makes an excellent defense but still had no real response to my analogy of not using metrics to get pretty girls to make out with you and if I had to pick a clear winner I think it was me (by decision, no knockout) due to the fact that like this blog post you need to know your audience and decide what goals are the ones that match them...not what people tell you are the standards.