Even love.
As Douglas W. Hubbard outlines in his book How to Measure Anything, the key aspect to remember is that we don’t need to make very accurate measurements to understand where we should focus to create value or make improvements.
Nothing can be measured to its exact value. Not your height or weight because you couldn’t possibly get to the smallest unit of measurement to be 100% precise. Not even the money you have in your bank account is precise because several factors affect its real value such as inflation, future expenses, conversion rates, taxes, etc. However, you can have a good enough estimation to make decisions about them.
Why does this matter? Especially when we talk about marketing and business strategy.
First, sometimes we get stuck on making decisions to move forward or seek help because we exhaust ourselves trying to find the exact measurement of something. What would our ROI be? How much will our customer engagement increase? How long would it take to see the results I want? What is the exact risk of doing this or that? etc.
Second, understanding that everything can be measured can give you a solid foundation to make or avoid making decisions about important aspects of your business. For example, there is a big difference between redesigning a website because “I want a more professional look and feel”, vs “We’re considering redesigning our website because we’re getting about 20% more visitors than 6 months ago but 30% fewer people are signing up for our newsletter”.
Furthermore, accepting the fact that nothing can be measured to its exact value removes the need for reassurance to take a risk or create something that could be highly valuable or that it might not work. We may have a rough expectation of the results we desire but we can never be sure of that outcome.
Finally, we can use our inexact measurements to identify where to focus or what to prioritise so that we can continue serving those we want to serve in the first place. To keep our promise to be there with a product or service that will lead them to where they want to be.
Measurements are important to make key decisions about your strategy and marketing efforts. Yes, you can measure everything about it, how much your customers love your brand, how much your employees feel satisfied about being part of your business, how big of an increase in revenue you could have after a brand redesign, etc. But, don’t worry too much about being 100% precise with what you measure because you will never be.