Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [26]
Web analytics works best when measurement expectations are clearly defined in advance, not after the fact or on an ad-hoc basis.
—Eric Peterson
This is not only the essence of analytics; it is the essence of business. How can you expect a business to succeed when there are no measurements along the way to provide correction and guidance? I cannot count the numbers of marketing managers who are overwhelmed in their jobs and have no clear measurement expectations. The reports they request have only to do with the “window dressing” of visitors and nothing to do with the bottom line profitability of the website. Those marketing managers are the ones nodding their heads in agreement whenever I show that quote. They understand the circular path of reporting random events, rather than focusing on a specific goal and measuring according to that goal.
If businesses were to simply state their goals and to measure website performance according to those goals, the improvement would be revolutionary. Before there can be any improvement, the first step is to set a well-defined business goal. Those who practice goal setting are those who tend to succeed in business. The same is true of websites. They must have a goal, both for the owner and for the visitor. Unless that goal is declared, there is no way to determine success or failure. The only way to sift through the mountains of data, the hundreds of charts and graphs, and the pages of “top 10” lists is to have a specific set of goals to measure. By measuring against specific goals, the data will suddenly fall away as you remove what is not necessary to the overall goals. Good analytics programs allow you to strip away the stuff you don’t want or need to see. They allow you to focus on the key indicators that are relevant to your site’s performance.
Bottom line, if you don’t have clearly defined goals for your online-marketing strategy, then no amount of analytics will assist you in making the right decisions.
Lack of Consistency Backfires with Social Media
It becomes very evident in social-media marketing when companies don’t have a clear vision or goal of how they want to be perceived or their primary purpose. It results in Facebook pages that are bland, Twitter messages that are overly promotional rather than conversational, and YouTube accounts that contain a 20-minute employee training video from 1977. Without a clear goal and strategy, the rush toward social media becomes one with a directive of “We need to be there!” rather than evaluating “What can we do there?” The social-media message becomes disjointed, because there is no clear message, and the purpose becomes lost.
Non-goal-oriented social-media presences also tend to be stand-alone, because they neglect to drive visitors to a particular destination. As businesses rush to get into social media, they forget to take visitors back to the primary website in order to fulfill their goal. Companies see social media as a confusing and overwhelming necessity, especially when consultants are constantly extolling the many virtues of social-media reach. However, their hesitation is justified. So many companies question the time involved and the results returned. Time management is tough enough already, so what will Twittering a few hundred times a month do for a company? The answer is that different social-media outlets bring different results, so businesses need to focus on different ways to use each channel. Simply throwing time and interns at new social media will not produce results. The social-media efforts need to be tied into the company marketing strategy so that a clear message is always consistent.
The famous Marshall McLuhan mantra “The medium is the message” means you cannot treat all social media the same. Each social-media channel is completely different, so the message and tactics used need to be adapted for each medium. Many companies are more suited to a YouTube strategy, because they need the visual video medium to better communicate their unique advantages. Other businesses