In the world of ROI measuring, it seems that advertising always wins over marketing. Advertising has very measurable costs and very measurable benefits, while marketing seems to have neither.

The position chart is ubiquitous. A set of X and Y axes representing 2 dimensions in the market and dots representing company's positions with respect to those dimensions. There are many versions. Price v. Quality. Capabilities v. Price. Price v. Value. Luxury v. Reliability. Price v. Economy. These are all interesting and useful, but why are there 2 and only 2 axes?

It's common to try to measure marketing ROI. And this works pretty well when tied to lead generating activities. But what about traditional marketing that doesn't seem to generate any leads?

Printing is dead, right? Oh, it's definitely down, but it's certainly not out. It just needs to be thought about in a certain way.

For some, it's always seemed like "how things should be". But, it's certainly not a common approach. Indeed, for most people, marketing is just a department of people who generate "marketing materials", which are usually seen as hit-or-miss (mostly miss) pieces for sales people to use. Or, marketing can be the essentially fluffly and useful "mass" communication tools that no one reads. Either way, marketing is usually considered a necessary evil at best and expendable at worst. So, what do we do about this?

As we discussed last time, a new vendor is judged on quality and a current vendor is judged on service. Hence, the new vendor must stack his/her quality against the current vendor's quality. So, the new vendor must create a value proposition that not only shows the quality of the service. It must also undermine the service of the incumbent.

It's a common bragging point for service businesses that their service is better than their competitors. And it's just as common for marketers to complain about such 'value' propositions. They say that service is not a differentiator and that no one buys on service. Instead, there must be some differentiation or value in the product or result. In this sense, marketers says that the quality must be paramount. So, which really is better?

It seems clear that Google rankings depend on inbound links to your site. But it also seems clear that the rankings depend on actual clicks. And one of the biggest click sources is Google itself. It's certainly true that being higher in the search rankings means more clicks.