Analytics Need To Count

Andrew Wetzler - July 26, 2010

I am one of the last people at MoreVisibility who should be posting to our Analytics blog, but that’s exactly why I think I need to. If you are a regular reader of this blog, I apologize in advance, as the strategy I’m about to encourage is absolutely embarrassingly evident to you. Apologies also to Joe Teixeira, our most prominent Google Analytics expert for cluttering his blog with such low-level concepts.

That said, paying attention to Analytics is not for everybody, but it’s a skill set that someone related to your e-marketing efforts needs to possess if a program is going to be profitably managed in-house.

The options and triggers available today within Google AdWords and Microsoft AdCenter (soon to be powering SEM for both Yahoo and Bing) to incrementally nudge ahead the performance of your paid efforts are too significant to ignore.

Several steps need to occur:

• Properly coding your website and campaigns for Analytics
• Getting familiar with the data that populates
• Customizing the data to suit your program objectives
• Assessing Analytics data and making modifications to the campaigns based on past performance

The SEM industry has evolved to the point where there are typically a handful of companies in any industry / vertical that are adept at SEM and are effectively utilizing Analytics. Those are the firms to keep an eye on and learn from, but that will not realistically happen without an appropriate understanding and commitment to Analytics.