Ah, haven't blogged for a while, but luckily Precision Marketing has come to the rescue by publishing an article I wrote on digital's over-obsession (I think) with data. Here it is:
Data, data, data. Everyone in digital marketing loves data. All those beautiful ones and zeros, streaming in realtime from websites, banner campaigns, email and all the rest.
Sadly some of that data isn't quite as solid as we might hope.
"Take something as simple as a visitor to your website. No two analytics companies have precisely the same definitions for a visitor, or a unique visitor, or a repeat visitor. So it is pretty much impossible to run two different sets of analysis on your website, and to get the figures to agree.
Avinash Kaushik, Google's analytics evangelist, writes about customer pathway analysis: "What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing." He is equally scathing about one of the most quoted online metrics, the website conversion rate.
When it comes to allocating sales to online activity, the standard rules for calculating cost per acquisition are just plain silly. To use a fight analogy, the last punch wins - which means that the last recorded click on a banner or text link gets all the credit for the sale. In truth, the 'fight' was won by a long and random combination of editorial, online advertising, Web searches and any amount of offline activity.
I suggest that once in a while the digital industry ignores its mountains of precious data, and instead bases its decisions on nothing more scientific than hunches and instincts.
We might just start thinking that eye-catching display campaigns on leading portals have more brand value than text links on dozens of affiliate sites. We might believe that search marketing is about as good for building brands as a small classified ad or that online advertising which is fun, involving and relevant is also more likely to build positive brand attributes.
As an experiment, ask your agency or web team to report on digital activity without touching Excel or Powerpoint. Ask them to tell you a story about how your customers felt before your campaign, how they were moved by it, and how it made them feel afterwards.
You just might discover more insight in that story than in the next million cells of Excel.
Data, data, data. Everyone in digital marketing loves data. All those beautiful ones and zeros, streaming in realtime from websites, banner campaigns, email and all the rest.
Sadly some of that data isn't quite as solid as we might hope.
"Take something as simple as a visitor to your website. No two analytics companies have precisely the same definitions for a visitor, or a unique visitor, or a repeat visitor. So it is pretty much impossible to run two different sets of analysis on your website, and to get the figures to agree.
Avinash Kaushik, Google's analytics evangelist, writes about customer pathway analysis: "What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing." He is equally scathing about one of the most quoted online metrics, the website conversion rate.
When it comes to allocating sales to online activity, the standard rules for calculating cost per acquisition are just plain silly. To use a fight analogy, the last punch wins - which means that the last recorded click on a banner or text link gets all the credit for the sale. In truth, the 'fight' was won by a long and random combination of editorial, online advertising, Web searches and any amount of offline activity.
I suggest that once in a while the digital industry ignores its mountains of precious data, and instead bases its decisions on nothing more scientific than hunches and instincts.
We might just start thinking that eye-catching display campaigns on leading portals have more brand value than text links on dozens of affiliate sites. We might believe that search marketing is about as good for building brands as a small classified ad or that online advertising which is fun, involving and relevant is also more likely to build positive brand attributes.
As an experiment, ask your agency or web team to report on digital activity without touching Excel or Powerpoint. Ask them to tell you a story about how your customers felt before your campaign, how they were moved by it, and how it made them feel afterwards.
You just might discover more insight in that story than in the next million cells of Excel.
