We've all heard lots about the importance of return on marketing investment (ROMI) or marketing ROI (return on investment). To be sure, returns on investment are important. It's how business even works. But, when applied to marketing, it's a losing battle. It's a losing battle because marketing isn't (usually) allowed to win. When the ROI is being planned, no one really knows the long-term benefits. And then marketers are forced to guess or, better, fudge the numbers. And when the project is over, marketing isn't usually allowed to claim the success. There is usually no way to tell if whatever results were archieved were a result of the marketing or something else. It's easy to say "we would have gotten those results anyway". In other words, companies that value marketing trust it and those that don't don't. Marketing ROI seems frequently to be used by companies that don't value marketing. It's offered as a chance to marketers to "earn" their way into the respect of the business decision-makers. And yet, as we've discussed, it often becomes the tool of even further devaluing. When marketers fail to measure up to the ROI standards (because it's rigged), then the business takes that as further evidence that marketing has no value. It seems that if you don't inherently understand the value of marketing, no amount of apparent ROI will convince you.