Rear views, engine gauges, and marketing analytics

Imagine for a moment that you had a car without a rear window. Would it be harder to drive that car? Perhaps, depending on how cautious you are. Some drivers would be perfectly fine, the Mario Andrettis of the world. Other drivers would be nervous wrecks. How about a car with no engine temperature gauge? Would that be a problem? Perhaps – in the right conditions, you could seriously damage your car if you didn’t know what was going on.

That said, neither a rear view nor an engine temperature gauge are essential pieces to driving a car. The bare minimum you need are navigational controls, an engine that works, fuel to burn, wheels and the parts that connect the navigation to the wheels, and brakes. You don’t even technically need a windshield (though it certainly helps).

Once upon a time, this was all a car had to be.

Much like the car, many of the metrics and analytics we have access to as marketers are nonessential. For example, a Klout score is an indicator. It’s not without value entirely; much like a temperature gauge, it can tell you a little bit of information about your social popularity and reach. Having it is slightly better than not having it, but it’s not going to help the car get from point A to point B. Web analytics are much like the rear view – it’s often helpful to see where you’ve been and to see if something’s coming up behind you, but there’s nothing in past recorded data that is going to make navigating the road ahead necessarily any easier. Plus, if you spend all your time focused on the rear view, there’s a good chance you’ll drive into something because you didn’t see where the road was going.

Take a look at all of the marketing metrics and tools you have. Which ones are essential for seeing where you are going, for knowing what’s ahead, for getting you to point B from point A? Which ones are nice to have but not essential? Which ones contribute very little? When you’re faced with tight resources, from personnel to budget, prioritizing what you’ll measure is absolutely essential to keeping your sanity and delivering maximum impact.