Do you REALLY understand the data?

My post this week is based on the industry reading “Digital Marketing & Measurement Model”. As a very macro summary of this article, Avinash Kaushik discusses the importance of establishing well-structured objectives based off a 5 step Digital Marketing & Measurement Model (DMMM) prior to running digital campaigns. The purpose is to help organisations accurately measure success and value of digital activity, rather than simply looking at data and results without understanding the impact on the overall business objectives.

The article for the most part seemed to explain a lot of what should already be well understood by many of us as student/professional/qualified marketers. Of course no marketing activity should be run without a well-structured strategic objective. This doesn’t change for the digital space.

However, a valid and very important point is raised in step 3 of the DMM Model.

I believe that many organisations experience the most difficulty with step 3 of the DMMM. This relates to the identification of key performance indicators (KPI’s) specific to the website analytics. Many businesses may only use the “super lame” metrics for determining the success or failure of a campaign, however these metrics don’t provide a complete picture of how a campaign has impacted on overall business/marketing objectives, and certainly not financial ROI. As an example, I had an agency produce a report on our website performance after $30k re-structure/design. One KPI they reported on was average session duration which had increased from 2 mins 15 seconds, to 2 mins, 57 seconds. The agency claimed this to be a big win, however we were receiving phone calls from visitors saying that they were finding it difficult to find information they needed on the new website. Sounds more like users were getting lost and frustrated with the website, hence the increased session duration!

I’ve seen on many occasions businesses struggling with their digital campaigns and activity, and it hasn’t been through lack of objectives for the campaign. It has often come down to simply misinterpreting the data they are receiving or not drilling down far enough to get the full picture of each data point means for both the user, and the organisation. You can’t just read page 1 of a book to understand the entire story!