Call me “geeky” (I’ve been called worse, today in fact) but I think a book published last year by Wharton School Publishing entitled Marketing Metrics: 50+ Metrics Every Executive Should Master by Paul W. Farris, Neil T. Bendle, Phillip E. Pfeifer, and David J. Reibstein should be required reading by anyone calling themselves a marketer.

This book does a superb job distilling all the chatter about marketing measurement into understandable and, even more importantly, “actionable” guidance for marketers from the neophyte to the analytic type.

It strikes an excellent balance between what I’d call “finance light” – its heavier accounting and finance than many marketers have dealt are – but its past time we got better at this, with marketing decision-making guidance based on the results of those financial measurements.

Its textbook in nature (what would you expect, its from Wharton!) so its not a cover-to-cover read but something you can refer to again and again.

Here’s how I’d approach using it. I’d start by reading these chapters:

Measuring share: hearts, minds, and markets
Probing the hidden dynamics behind “market share”

Understanding profitability better than ever before
Accurately quantifying the profitability of products, customers, channels, and more

Advertising and promotion metrics, in detail
From promotional lift and price waterfalls to the latest Web metrics

Linking marketing to enterprise financial metrics
Understanding your true return on marketing investment–and enhancing it

Then take what you’ve learned and apply it! You can refer to other sections as you might need them.

There is much rhetoric out there about measurement…this book is a great guide that can help move beyond the rhetoric to real application of actionable measurement of your marketing programs.