You’re paying for enormous amounts of research you’re not using. I can make this bold statement because I’m guilty of it, too. I’ve paid large sums of my own money for research I didn’t use as well as I could have. What is this research? I’m speaking of paid advertising. Right now, I’m in the…
There’s obvious professional benefit to mastering your marketing analytics tools, from data visualization to complex statistics. You can improve your marketing programs, grow your business, and make more money. However, often we just do the same rote things in our marketing analytics. What can we do to improve our skills? How can we get better…
In a tacit acknowledgement that (not provided) basically killed keyword-based optimization, Google Analytics over the weekend relocated organic keyword tracking, burying it inside the campaigns menu. Why the change? For years now, fewer and fewer keywords were being picked up by web analytics software. Encrypted search and mobile are the two reasons they’ve vanished from…
There’s a phenomenon in the field of marketing analytics that is vitally important for you to understand because it showcases why people make the choices they do about metrics. I’ve no doubt you’ve read stories of people using or misusing a particular metric in ways that would seem almost comical if they weren’t so sad.…
After a shower recently, I noticed a logistical problem: all of the normal bath towels weren’t available. So I used a hand towel, which was sufficient to get the job done. Even though it was optimal, it achieved the desired effect. That got me thinking about a concept I first read in a pharmacology book…
As the year winds down, let’s rewind the clock and look back at what you really liked in 2014. These are the top 10 pages of 2014 on my blog by page views. A reminder, if you’d like to construct your own top 10 lists, there’s a quick tutorial here. #10: Benchmarking your site in…
When you give it some thought, you realize that basic advertising and marketing demographics are largely unhelpful. There are some statistically relevant associations, but just because someone is 25-34 years old, male, in a household income $75,000 and up doesn’t automatically mean they’ll buy your product or service. Demographics data is useful for telling you…
Here’s a fun exercise to try that might save you some time this holiday season and for every holiday going forward. Should you blog, post social media updates, or be active online during holidays like Christmas, New Year’s, Hanukkah, etc.? There’s an easy, simple way to discern an answer. First, why are you active? Is…
It’s that time of year again, time to make wild guesses about what’s to come in the year ahead. There are two general approaches folks use to predict the future. The first is the blatantly obvious; it’s been the year of mobile for about 3 years now. Content marketing is still pitched as a new…
The long tail is something of a legend when it comes to content marketing. Lots of people talk about it, but few people ever really go looking for it. How real is the long tail? How relevant is it to your business? Luckily, our stalwart friend Google Analytics can help us to understand that. If…
