In this module, we discuss:

• The tangibles and intangibles in measuring the success of The Business of Media

KEY TERMS:

• Customer Experience - a customer’s end-to-end journey with a business, as opposed to the key touch-points or critical moments when customers interact with a business

Measuring the success of The Business of Media is similar to measuring the success of any other marketing approach.

Certainly, The Business of Media is not direct response marketing, but you can still measure metrics like:

• Referrals to your website
• Engagement with content
• Relevant audience growth
• Sentiment (how many comments, both online and offline, you are receiving, and what is the nature of them — positive or negative?)
• New and/or existing customers who mention content that they saw, engaged with and even enjoyed

Of course, the bottom line is the bottom line: So long as your customer experience is at least satisfactory, and you experience increasing revenues and profits within six-to-12 months of adopting The Business of Media, then it is doing the job.

However, there are many intangibles that you may not be able to measure with numbers. For instance, how do you measure trust?

"Trust is the essential ingredient in customer loyalty, but it isn't a direct function," Stefan Tornquist, Vice President of Research for Econsultancy, writes in this report. "Without trust, the customer relationship is driven by short-term needs and is limited in scope and potential. Trust is a reflection of the customer experience."

In this ever-growing connected world of mobile devices and the Internet of Things, trust will become the most valuable form of currency, because the more customers trust a business, the more they are willing to provide them with their precise data.

According to the aforementioned report, 72 percent of consumers are willing to share geo-data, and 61 percent are willing to share personally identifiable information, with businesses they trust. For comparison's sake, less than 40 percent of consumers are willing to share geo-data and personally identifiable information with any business, regardless of trust.

As a result, trusted businesses will be able to access and leverage geo-data and/or personally identifiable information in order to offer a more personalized customer experience, which in turns produces greater returns on your investments in creating these experiences by virtue of greater relevance and thus engagement, more scalable word-of-mouth, and higher lifetime customer value.

That's precisely why 88 percent of businesses agree that growth depends on personalizing the customer's experience.

In effect, the most vital indications of a business' health and growth potential — likability, popularity, loyalty, word-of-mouth, and customer lifetime value — are all a product of trust, which in turn is a product of familiarity and experience.

The Business of Media enables you to expedite the process of developing trust with your existing and potential customers by providing them with a suite of content experiences at scale, which garners more of their time and attention (familiarity), while offering them experiences that are inherently relevant, relatable, interesting, entertaining and informative on a day-to-day basis.

If you sell something today, you make a customer today. But if you build relationships today, you make customers for life.

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The Business of Media is presented by yarn, a collective of talent across media, journalism, marketing and design that helps brands create, distribute and monetize memorable content experiences.

For more insights and observations about the future of marketing, check out our publication and podcast.