Wednesday 25 April 2012

Analytics and marketing maths

Clients know that I am a bit of a nag about testing and measuring, especially web stats.  Checking your web site analytics tool in an effective way is a vital piece of marketing house-keeping.  So why do so few SMBs actually do this?

Do you need our help to understand and interpret your web stats?
I am reminded of this because I just took a call from an online directory saleswoman regarding a business whose online advertising we manage.  With a sales script that centred on the amount of quality traffic her directory sends to the website in question she felt confident that she was on safe ground, not realising she was talking to a marketing agency.  Armed by the stats that I manage for this business, I knew she was blagging.  Checking referral traffic from paid sources is a no brainer.  We've put in place a sales tracking system which is rigorously followed.  It is our job to keep an eye on what is working and what is not. Poor telesales lady! She finished up trying to suggest the client should pay for the directory entry out of loyalty; such a desperate attempt to play on the emotions was wasted on my role. My job is to take this pressure away from the client. Looking at the stats I am certain the client would think re-booking this entry was not best use of a tight marketing budget so I politely thanked the caller and suggested she contact us again in 6 months.

Sales calls to clients are directed to us precisely because we can make informed decisions and not be bamboozled by telesales claims about Google rankings and quality traffic etc.  But clearly those sales tactics work or they wouldn't be so prevalent.  (By the way, I am not against paid directory entries - far from it, if they work it is great.)

So, please, check your stats.  Check them and use the information!  If you don't know what all those numbers mean and how to interpret them we can train you.  If you can't bear doing this sort of work then for a small fee we'll do it for you.  Either way, it is time or money well spent because the information should improve your marketing focus and maybe cut some unnecessary spend.


2 comments:

willson said...

Analytic and marketing is a part of management studies.It's a very famous field at this time because every company is doing marketing of their product and for that they has to research first and then deduce some analytical results which is a mathematical and statistical report.inverse laplace of s

Anonymous said...

analytics is a great tool, thanks for the reminder to actually go and check it!
Sally