Marketing ROI

An article by Robert R. Johnson in CMO Magazine supports my contention that product revenue is not a reliable metric for evaluating a product manager's perfomance.

The article makes a number of points beyond what I've mentioned, including the fact that it's difficult to trace long-term increases in product revenue back to original strategy recommendations. Nonetheless, at least for strategic marketing activities, I'm highly skeptical about Johnson's suggestion that we can decompose marketing initiatives and measure their success in isolation.

Indeed, Chris Lynn comments:

"Viewing a marketing initiative in isolation or as a component of a
greater whole do not represent mutually-exclusive alternatives."

Hat tip to Steve Johnson on the productmarketing.com blog.