Your analysis provides clear data that the campaign was a (glorious) failure. It could not be clearer. The KPI you chose for your brand campaign was Trust, it had a pre-set target of +5. The post-campaign analysis that compares performance across Test & Control cells shows that Trust did not move at all. (Suspiciously, there are indications that in a handful of Test DMAs it might have gone down!) Every so often, the story is just as simple as that. You do the best you can with a marketing campaign (creative, audience, targeting, channels, media plan elements like duration, reach, frequency ..read more

If there is one thing the universe agrees on, it is that you should just provide data… You should provide INSIGHTS!!! In the 807,150 (!) words I’ve written on this blog thus far, at least 400,000 have been dedicated to helping you find insights. In posts about advanced segmentation, in posts about how to build strategic dashboards that don’t suck, in encouraging you to reimagine how you pick metrics to obsess about using the magnificent Impact Matrix, and on and on and on. Go for insights! The Problem. In time, I've come to hate the word insights. In our world – marketing research and analytic ..read more

Since you're reading a blog on advanced analytics, I'm going to assume that you have been exposed to the magical and amazing awesomeness of experimentation and testing. It truly is the bee's knees. You are likely aware that there are entire sub-cultures (and their attendant Substacks) dedicated to the most granular ideas around experimentation (usually of the landing page optimization variety).  There are fat books to teach you how to experiment (or die!). People have become Gurus hawking it. The magnificent cherry on this delicious cake: It is super easy to get started. There are really ..read more

I was reading a paper by a respected industry body that started by flagging head fake KPIs. I love that moniker, head fake. Likes. Sentiment/Comments. Shares. Yada, yada, yada. This is great. We can all use head fake metrics to calling out useless activity metrics. [I would add other head fake KPIs to the list: Impressions. Reach. CPM. Cost Per View. Others of the same ilk. None of them are KPIs, most barely qualify to be a metric because of the profoundly questionable measurement behind them.] The respected industry body quickly pivoted to lamenting their findings that demonstrate eight of th ..read more

Almost all metrics you currently use have one common thread: They are almost all backward-looking. If you want to deepen the influence of data in your organization – and your personal influence – 30% of your analytics efforts should be centered around the use of forward-looking metrics. Predictive metrics! But first, let's take a small step back. What is a metric? Here’s the definition of a metric from my first book: A metric is a number. Simple enough. Conversion Rate. Number of Users. Bounce Rate. All metrics. [Note: Bounce Rate has been banished from Google Analytics 4 and replaced with a ..read more

One of the business side effects of the pandemic is that it has put a very sharp light on Marketing budgets. This is a very good thing under all circumstances, but particularly beneficial in times when most companies are not doing so well financially. There is a sharper focus on Revenue/Profit. From there, it is a hop, skip, and a jump to, hey, am I getting all the credit I should for the Conversions being driven by my marketing tactics? AKA: Attribution! Right then and there, your VP of Finance steps in with a, hey, how many of these conversions that you are claiming are ones that we would no ..read more

There has been a lot of heartbreak around the world with the CV-19 pandemic. This chart, from NPR, illustrates some cause for optimism. It shows the 7-day average new cases per day across the world. It is crucial to acknowledge what’s hidden in the aggregated trend above: The impact on individual countries is variable. A large percentage of humans on the planet remain under threat. We don’t nearly have enough vaccines finding arms. We have to remain vigilant, and commit to getting the entire planet vaccinated. Recent worries about Covid were increased by the proliferation of virus variants ar ..read more

Analytics teams are named for the silos and limitations within which they trap themselves. Paid Media. Owned Media. SEO. BI. Customer Service. Data Warehousing. Email. And, a thousand other silos (depending on your company size). One outcome of this reality is that while every team works hard to do their very best work, it is rare that they earn strategic influence from their work. That’s not really surprising, if your view of your scope is narrow… Your impact will be narrow as well. The other dimension to consider is most Analtyics teams kick into gear after the campaign is concluded, after t ..read more

Like many of you, I am both an employee and a people leader. At different points of the day, sometimes from one minute to the next, I have to switch gears so that I can be fully present as both a good employee and a good people leader. This constant quest for excellence, from one email to the next, from one meeting to the next as context changes is… taxing. From observing behavior closely, and from my own experimentation and failure, I've noticed consistent patterns in what great employees do and great bosses do. In my long professional career, I’ve tried to emulate these patterns and to build ..read more

Like you, I consume a whole lot of reports every day – company data, public data. Many are acceptable, some are very good and all the rest leave me extremely frustrated with both the ink and the think. People make so many obvious mistakes. Sometimes repeatedly. Just yesterday I was quietly seething because none of visuals included in the report contained any context to understand if the performance I was looking at was good or bad. Rookie mistake. The graph could be going up, down, all around and I as a consumer had the job of figuring if something was good, bad or worth ignoring. ​The heartbr ..read more