Another favorite excuse for marketing failure is “You can’t measure the effectiveness of a marketing piece.”

I love that. It justifies spending tons of client’s money on stupid ideas, bad copy, poor placement, etc.

And it is a lie, lie, lie.

Anyone peddling this load of horse-pucky is trying to cover up their own incompetence.

Of course one of the great things about Internet Marketing is the ease with which effectiveness can be measured. Visits to a website either happen or they don’t. Sophisticated web analytics programs can tell you who your visitors are, where they came from and what they did when they got there – just about anything short of Social Security number and location of birth marks.

The effectiveness of direct mail and other direct marketing efforts is just as measurable. Count the number of phone calls or business reply cards you got. Where’s the mystery there?

It may not be as easy to measure the effectiveness of a new brochure or print ad, if there is other marketing going on. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

And it MUST be done. How else do you know if your marketing dollar is worth it?

Which of course is the point of anyone who discounts the possibility of measuring marketing effecdtiveness.