Analyze THIS

A few years ago, everyone knew they need an online presence. Companies started taking their offline marketing budget and throwing it online marketing. Web agencies flourished and big ad agencies scrambled to make alliances with smaller web companies to outsource the work to.

All marketing departments were getting the directive:
Put up a website, make some banner ads, get the top search engine ranking, send some emails. "Hell, send a LOT of emails."

Last year it went more like this:
Do some promotions, put up some mini-sites, make banner ads to promote the mini-site, do viral marketing. "Hell, does anyone even know what viral marketing is?"

What marketers like about the web is that you can track user behavior. They like being able to say that a million people watched their video on YouTube. And it does indicate a higher level of interest than say, a million people seeing your billboard on Wilshire Blvd. However, it doesn't tell you much more than that. You don't know why they watched it, whether they sent it to a friend, what they said in the email to that friend, or whether (ultimately) they're more likely to be a customer.

Think of it like a car lot. You've got cars sitting there and people drive by. Sometimes they stop. Sometimes they park get out, come into the office, tell the salesman what kind of car they want to buy and actually drive off the lot with it. Would you attribute any of that behavior to your sign on the side of the road? No.

Would you want to know the background of each customer with the product - their exposure, beliefs and feelings - AND the exact details of their conversation your salesperson? The ones who bought, the ones who said they'd come back and the ones who showed no interest? Yes!

So the web has given marketers a lot of exposure and a bunch of numbers, and even some interaction. How many people just drove by. How many stopped. How many bought cars. Unfortunately, it isn't telling them very much about their marketing and they know it. Now, the marketers' bosses want to know "What's our ROI on web marketing?" because they've been told that everything can be tracked. But it's not like they could ever measure their ROI BEFORE on billboards, print ads, radio and TV commercials.

So analytics becomes very scientific. You have to form hypothesis - known as use cases - what do you think people are going to do? Track it, find out. Make educated guesses as to what's happening. Tweak it and track it again. See, analytics aren't to show ROI, analytics are to improve your offering to your customer. Analytics are what brings the marketer into the user lifecycle.