Friday, October 1, 2010

What Analytics Can NOT Do

When talking to companies, people and clients on web presence the subject of Analytics almost always comes up.

Seems everyone wants to know ROI or what a given response rate is. Seems funny that in the same breath they don’t seem to care, well they do but don’t have ways to track it unless it is an online shopping cart, how many actual sales they made off the web.

So were on earth do we start? Well 1st you need to know that although Web Analytics should serve as a primary tool for evaluating your web marketing effectiveness, remember it is only a tool and as a tool you need a human mind to analyze the Analytics. Analytics can measure engagement and time on a page, the number of views and the time spent on a page. But what it cannot do is measure the quality of that visit or the impact that your page had on the prospect. Analytics cannot give us any idea on how your products or service post was thought about or how it is being talked about on the various Social Media venues of twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.

For you to identify criteria for becoming a multi-channel marketer, who is cross marketing yourself, you still need street smarts for quick tactical decision making on individual campaigns to allocate your resources to the right places.

Larson Notes & Satire: Do you know how many hits your web site had last week? I do. Do you know how many web hits your site had last Monday? I do. But more important I know how many sales I had last week. I know that too.

There is analyzing and over analyzing to save your butt. I guess I might rely on gut instinct more than I should but I like it that way. When I revamped my company I made a decision I did not want to be huge and not in total control. Gut instinct works better that way and I like my gut just the way it is.

Am I micro managing? You bet ya, I am. I have my targets and goals just like the big dogs, but when I need to make hard choices I make them within 5 minutes and don’t have to go to a committee or board. Ya I’m that Big Dog in the little junk yard. I am the Grand Poobar of my company with Fred and Barney working for me. I know my numbers online and off line and I know my actual sales numbers and where those sales came from and that, to me, is even more important.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
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P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.


P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I've been blogging about a similar topic -- just because something is stated as a number, doesn't mean it is a valuable insight. http://bit.ly/9qqCkQ

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