Thanks
Andy :-)

As a finance guy, we are often asked for information and from early-on are taught to find out why people are asking since it is not the information per se that they want, it is the conclusion / confirmation / disconfirmation it provides. Yet often what they are asking for will not serve their underlying reason for asking it, so through understanding the motivation better you are able to provide better data.

The other thing I caution about (and this is unusual for being a finance guy) is being too focused on metrics. A business organization is a holistic enterprise, and one cannot reduce it to a metric or two, or even a hundred. In my upcoming blog post I note that “one cannot drive a car simply by looking at the instrument panel”.

Thanks for the perspective!

I too feel as though the industry is so entrenched in the wrong types of metrics and wrong types of reporting. One of the issues is that marketing and analytics is ground-level – on the pulse of the industry. Information trickles upward to CEOs and others within organizations who should be relying on real actionable data using Avinash Kaushnik’s principle of asking “so what?”

I think CEOs and managers ultimately catch wind of principles that worked years ago, and inflict those painful educational seminars about bounce rate in meetings, while much of the team is much further ahead in understanding what it all really means in relation to KPIs

I kid. Great post and important to keep in mind.

First you define objectives, then you plan activities, then you execute, and then you measure. The first and the last often get short shrift, unfortunately.

I’m attending a meeting later in the week where an agency we’re working with on a project told us “well, we can just hide all that in the meta tags” and thought themselves clever. It’s a constant uphill battle and we’re usually the pricks for being outspoken and trying to correct the status quo.

If the battle gets any more uphill we’ll have to turn to Adam West for tips on scaling tall buildings with only a Batarang and some rope.

There are quite a few SEOs out there who pick metrics they can change, then set about to change them and “show” the “impact” they’ve made for the client – even though that “impact” may or may not align with the client’s goals.

It’s an uphill battle, but I think we’re on the right track toward changing that type of thinking.

Most of what I do all day involves client education and SEO evangelism. The bigger the client or company one works in, the more important it is to set expectations and ensure the client and SEO team are on the same page.

Inversely, I’ve gone into meetings doing exactly that. Clients have never heard of “non-branded search” vs. just being told their total visits or pageviews.

There is a lot of education that is needed client side, but as long as the data is a tool of the sales cycle, that education is going to be severely lacking. For every Outspoken Media out there, there’s five Reach Local’s who create data sets and PDF decks that only speak to the product they’re trying to sell and not anything relating to data that might add value to a given client.

It’s depressing, and I’m honestly not sure what to do about it.

Scott Stratten said it best, “There are more people selling the dream than there are pursuing it, be careful.”