Marketers don't need better stats, they need better questions.
I had a client once who tentatively asked if I could remain on the conference call after the others had left because she had a few questions. The first was about why the line on a recent reporting grid was going down instead of up.
The graph I'd provided was of how the cost per click for an ad campaign was decreasing over time whereas previously I'd been reporting on how clicks and impressions were going up. So I'd confounded my poor client by always showing stats with line graphs going up and then suddenly highlighting a stat that was going down.
The stupid thing about data is anyone can puke out a set of numbers. Every social network and analytics dashboard has top-level metrics and reporting screens that are meant to be helpful. Marketers export these numbers and then cite them in various reports. But real insights hardly ever lie in a metric that you can easily extract.
What is a marketer to do? Ask better questions so you get better stats.
In my February 6th eBOUND Canada webinar, Social Media Metrics In Depth, we'll be looking at
- Which columns in the Facebook Ads reports are most important. Cost per click is not one of them.
- Why exporting Facebook Insights Data is the first step in understanding at a per post level what content resonates with your fans AND why you should be calculating ratios for things like Fan Engagement vs. Fan Reach and segmenting the data by post type
- How to track your Twitter reach vs. number of fans
- Using the Twitter API to track and measure content shared by communities of interest
- Ratios that will help you find efficient ways to execute your marketing efforts, and
- Reporting dashboards and alerts that reveal the reason behind traffic fluctuations, conversions and on-site behaviour.
Here are some better questions to ask from your data:
- How many times have book-detail pages served as landing pages?
- Which books are most viewed, lead to the most bounces, generate the most sales?
- What categories have the highest conversion? Most revenue?
- Off all our content, what links are people sharing most on social media?
- How long does it take a user to complete a purchase?
- If there a difference in behaviour for different payment methods, i.e., people who pay with VISA vs. PayPal?
- What referring websites send us “big spenders” vs. “small” or “average spenders”? What is an average spender?
- Did our recent campaign perform well? What basic segments should be applied to find out if we met our targets?
- How does each marketing channel contribute to successful conversions, whether those are sales, email signups, catalogue downloads, etc.
- What is the per visit value of our site and how does that look like to each social media channel?
- What is the business value of an email signup, catalogue download, or click on a Buy Link?
