Analytics

Sarah Worsham / Feb 25, 2009

Want Your Statistics To Make Sense? Attach Dollars

dollartheritters Impressions, page views, hits, visits, unique visitors, clicks, CTR, conversions… what do they all mean? Unless you can translate them into how you’re doing business, they’re just numbers… and pretty useless ones at that. While using the Internet to help your business may be relatively cheap, you still should understand what efforts are working and which are not. Most Internet strategies require iterative improvements to get the most out of them – and that means knowing where you’re making money and where you’re not.

Every statistic should be related to the money you’re making. If you’re selling things online, this is a bit easier, since you can track how many sales you’re making and how much per sale versus how many page views, visits, clicks, etc. If you’re using the Internet to advertise your products or services, hopefully you have some way to collect leads online – or at least track that they came from online. Then you should be able to figure out how many leads you get for how many actual sales (your $), which you then can relate to how many page views, clicks, etc. it took to get those.

As an example, many clients think they are doing really well with Internet advertising, but when we take a look at how much money they’re getting per conversion, click, etc., we often find that they’re spending more per conversion than they’re selling their product for. It’s often hard to see this at first glance because people tend to look at overall spending when deciding what’s working. If I spend $500 per month on Google ads, but I make $5000 per month, I might not think that’s a bad return. But if you take a closer look, you may be getting most of your sales from other places, and you’re spending $500/month and not actually making anything from that traffic (if you’re spending more than you’re getting).

We all have a limited amount of time in our day. If you can attach dollars to your Internet statistics, it will help you understand where you need to make changes, what’s working, and how to move forward.

(photo by theritters @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: analytics, business, marketing, ROI, statistics

Sarah Worsham / Feb 2, 2009

Are You Measuring the Right Metrics?

measureaussiegall Avinash Kaushik had a great post this morning about the different types of keywords visitors use to reach your site, what their intentions are, and how to measure keyword effectiveness based on where customers are in the sales funnel. This got me thinking about metrics in general. I often hear people complain that they are not getting enough hits to their website (which is a very outdated metric in any case). But when you ask them what goal/objective they are trying to measure, they usually cannot tie the two together.

From both a business and sanity point of view, it is imperative that you use metrics that will give you the information you need. For example, if you are trying to measure whether or not your website is giving you leads, the number of hits isn’t the right number. You need a way to collect leads from your website, or some way to tell if people were there (an offer unique to the website) to measure lead generation from your website.

So before you start pouring over your web and advertising statistics, take a moment to figure out exactly what it is that you’re trying to find out. Then decide what metric will help you answer that question. Matching up metrics and goals/questions/objectives will give you much more reliable informaton – saving time and resources and allowing you to focus on efforts that are actually working for your business.

(photo by aussiegall @ Flickr CC)

Technorati Tags: analytics, statistics, internet marketing, metrics, business, marketing

Sarah Worsham / Jul 17, 2008

Internet Strategy Forum Summit – End to End Marketing: A Fundamental Shift

Presented by Nancy Bhagat, VP Sales & Marketing Group, Director Integrated Marketing, Intel

Cost of media is low per person, but is unfocused.

There is a 300% growth rate in timeshifting TV. But TV is not media, it’s a delivery. Video will continue to exist, just in different places through different delivery strategies. Behavior has changed in how people interact with ads. 56% say skipping ads is important part of timeshifting.

Technology is no longer about who is tech saavy and who is not anymore. It is about the desire to purchase. 80% turn to Internet for information to make a purchase decision. Our targets are online.

People are looking for a person like them, but they don’t need to see or know them directly. This is defined much differently than previously.

Great brands are no longer the brands that tell the best stories, but are the brands that have the best stories told about them. (needs source)

Power of online marketing:

Impact
Agility
Targeting
Scale

Leadership requires flexibility and focus. Online vehicles offer speed and flexibility to test multiple content types in one place and to determine what content is best.

Success metrics are shifting away from traditional impressions and CPC. The ability to evaluate success is critical. Content is increasingly delivered through social media which is difficult to measure. We now need to measure what matters – user engagement, behavior, movements & trends. Data that is not actionable is meaningless.

We need to know what place people are in the buy cycle/qualification. Data without valid business context is meaningless. We need to understand what activities are valued. And if things don’t go well in those activities, we need to know what and why.

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, analytics, end to end marketing, internet strategy summit forum

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