One of the most powerful things about using digital marketing techniques is the fact that almost everything is measurable. It’s a sharp contrast with the old style of marketing which adopted more of a “spray and pray” approach involving exposing as many people as possible to your message in the hope that people would eventually convert into customers.
Taking advantage of metrics and measurements is all about making your sales and marketing more effective. By taking baseline measurements about performance, you can keep an eye on what happens when you launch different initiatives to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t. Then you can adjust your budget accordingly.
It’s important to mention here that we’re not just talking about marketing. Sales teams are also typically ruled by metrics and measurements, even if that’s just in terms of their sales goals. And the metrics and measurements that sales and marketing generate are also important for CEOs and shareholders. They help to steer the company in the right direction.
When measurements become too much
We’ve established that metrics and measurements are super important, so now let’s talk about why they’re also not. What we mean by this is that while measurements are all well and good, they can also be distracting. It can lead to sales and marketing teams focusing so much on the metrics that they don’t listen to customers. It can push people away.
And that’s assuming that you’re measuring the right metrics in the first place. If you’re paying attention to “vanity metrics” like page views or the number of likes that your social media updates receive, you end up focusing on the wrong metrics. And if you’re focusing on the wrong metrics, you’re also optimising for the wrong metrics and potentially even doing more harm than good. If you’re driving your business into the future then focusing on the wrong metrics is like following the wrong directions.
Another problem that marketers and sales teams can come across is the risk of measuring too many metrics and stretching themselves too thin. It’s much better to focus on just the half dozen metrics that are the most important.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the best way to use metrics is to mix your measurements with human analysis and just a little bit of intuition. It all depends on the context, and optimising only for metrics can be a big mistake. For example, if you start a social media marketing campaign and you’re not seeing a return on investment within the first month, you need to remember that it’s an investment in the future. If you’re running paid ads, though, you’ll probably want to pull any ads that aren’t paying for themselves.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.