Yesterday I talked to a dental professional who spent a great deal of time and money investing in a talking avatar and videos of their office. He told me that the salesman did a great job selling him on how cool everything was (I am paraphrasing and condensing things a bit). I asked him what the response was from patients. Since the site additions had only been up for a couple weeks, I was the first to see them.
Now 2 weeks is not long enough to gauge the effectiveness of a marketing strategy, but this situation happens frequently in the online world. People buy stuff based on the "coolness" and potential, without doing market research on the potential results. Good analytic data can be done to see who is visiting the site in the first place and what keywords they are using. If you are not on top 3 spots for your keywords, is it better to upgrade the site or upgrade the SEO? Will you get more return on an SEO campaign or by appealing more to the visitors the site does get?
Everything online can be measured--make sure you ask what the potential ROI of a particular strategy is and find out how well it is working once it has been initiated.