"Computers are useless. They can only give answers."

That famous quote comes from an unlikely source: artist Pablo Picasso. If you think statistics is a subject for the numbers geeks, you're missing the point. It's about so much more than that. Back in the days when computer storage space was precious and costly, the phrase "fact-based decision-making" hadn't been born yet. Managers were prized for their "golden gut," or the ability to make decisions with good outcomes in spite of a lack of information. Today most companies understand the value of managers with superior quantitative abilities, coupled with leadership, organization, communication and other key skills. The age of "quant" is responsible for the proliferation of MBA's, as well as job notices that declare, "MBA preferred" as a qualification. While those who understand the more subjective art of decision-making may decry a quantitative approach as mechanical and limited, it's hard to argue with the facts.

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Social media isn't a fad. It's just media and customer karma.

It's funny to read all the speculation about the destiny of MySpace, Twitter, Digg, etc. It makes you picture boardrooms across America, nay, the globe, discussing whether their companies should start a Twitter account. Almost as plentiful are the articles giving advice about how companies should be dealing with social media, what it takes to be a "social media expert" (as if such a thing existed), or whether social media is replacing search.

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We need a new word for "optimization"

Many would agree: SEO's are the rockstars of the web marketing world. [Post editing note: This applies to good, real SEO's. Not the snake-oil salesmen who try to pass themselves off as SEO's.] Not that they shouldn't be. Ethical SEO's provide a critical service to website owners and web surfers alike, when they help websites find targeted visitors and make it easier for visitors to find exactly what they're looking for. But over and over you hear, "Internet marketing is a 'numbers game'." What does that mean? To a certain extent, all marketing is a numbers game. But a weak way to play the game is to get as many people as possible to your site in the hopes that you will get lucky and somebody will convert. That's just not very smart, because it can be extremely costly, thereby driving down your ROI and wasting the time of those who don't find your website of interest.
 
Enter "the other kind of optimization": website optimization. If you are looking for more information on website optimization, good luck. You will be swamped with information about how to improve traffic to your website with search engine optimization. Is website optimization the redheaded stepchild of the web world?
 
It's a mathematical fact that it is cheaper to have a higher conversion rate than it is to get more traffic. SEO's are important here, too. They are the ones who get you the targeted traffic that has a higher interest level in your product or service. From there, the types of things you can practically test are somewhat dependent on your audience size. If you are Amazon, you may test every dot and tiddle; You have the numbers to deliver a statistically valid result from which to make a decision. If you're a little smaller than than that (most websites are) then you have to be a bit more judicious about what you are testing. Since you may not have the opportunity to dynamically generate an experience based on a visitor's past history, you will probably be focused on figuring out what motivates your various target segments to take a desired action. Both disciplines require the cooperation of your creative team, copywriters, web analysts, IT, etc. Both disciplines require careful planning and consideration of the overall marketing strategy. But they NEED each other, otherwise the SEO's beautiful traffic gets wasted as it heads out the back door and the website optimizer's tests never get enough numbers to be conclusive.
 
Everyone involved in marketing on the web has heard of SEO by now, or, the less frequently used "search engine marketing." I think we should find another term for website optimization, because it's confusing to many people. Any suggestions?

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Marketing Execs Struggle to Show ROI

via marketingcharts.com

Really? Data availability and integrity is the number one barrier to showing ROI? Technology and infrastructure is number two? This is shocking! When so much great information is available, when web analytics and website optimization tools are FREE, this is very hard to believe. Is it possible that the survey results are dead wrong? That the issue is a lack of people who understand the data or know what to do with it?

One big gap that companies struggle with is inter-channel results, meaning, someone goes online to research a product, then finalizes the purchase in the bricks-and-mortar store. But hasn't it always been the case that retail purchases could not typically be attributed to a particular broad-market advertising activity? That may be a part of the ROI of the site, but you have to get creative about what you are capturing. You may not always be able to capture the sale itself, but if you can at least capture the fact that the visitor achieved their purpose on your site, that is one type of ROI that is also important.

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Don't hire me to do your web analytics!

As much as I love wrapping my mind around the results of a well-executed, carefully measured marketing plan, analytics are only a means to an end. The point is to make smart decisions, period. Better decisions than your competitors, one would hope. You ask questions of your markets (prospects, loyal customers, even listeners) and they answer honestly, unfailingly, in the form of statistics. That is, if you do it right and if you know how to listen.

 If you're not making decisions with the metrics you track, you need to have a hard talk with yourself. Because if your metrics aren't actionable, there are a thousand other more important things you could be doing with your time, liked understanding your competition better, understanding your customers better, or better yet, understanding your competition's customers better!

 Here's one approach to help you get focused. Before looking at your web analytics reports, try coming up with business rules for the decisions you will make about each one.

   1) Open up a spreadsheet
  2) Down the left hand side, list each metric you track for your digital marketing activities (PPC campaigns, email campaigns, social media sites, etc.)
  3) Across the top, list columns: Business Goal, Result, Tolerance 1, Action 1, Tolerance 2, Action 2, Tolerance 3, Action 3.
  4) For each metric, list the business goal that metric addresses and how you will know when you have achieved it.
  5) For each metric, select appropriate tolerances and define the actions you will take if your results fall within these tolerances.

 If you think this takes too long, maybe you have too many metrics. If you are focusing on the critical few, this will be a quick and simple exercise that will help you focus your thinking and will make your report review go very quickly. If you have metrics that don't fit neatly within this template, this process should at least get you started thinking about how to make your metrics more actionable. You can take the same approach with each of your target segments. It may sound a bit mechanical, but it beats swimming in a sea of data and not knowing where to start.

 Start out with a stand-out product or service, add a genius marketing plan, execute and manage that plan with discipline. Every step along the way can be improved with great analytics.

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