• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 2, 2009

Dig into the numbers and go beyond expectations to find the truth and surprises in the data, Brett Crosby, group manager at Google, told OMMA Metrics & Measurement conference attendees Friday in San Francisco.

The solution isn't always apparent, and sometimes marketers need to dig into the numbers and compare results. A recent trip to a conference and after-hour celebrity hunt proved Crosby's hypothesis when he and a friend realized that New Yorkers were looking for Kim Kardashian.

Agencies trying to market to people looking for Kardashian might think they could reach them through EOnline.com or TMZ.com. But through Google tools, Crosby realized it wasn't the usual suspect sites where people searched for information. It turns out the people searching for Kardashian are older male conservatives hanging out reading Time.com and politico.com.

"These people are rich," Crosby says. "These people are buyers. They also read Morningstar and PGA Tour. So if you have merchandise you want to sell them, now you know where to advertise."

Reaching potential buyers where they least expect it can turn someone sitting on the fence into a buyer. And comparable data can tell marketers if they're on the correct track.

So, Crosby says to start with top-level information and tie in organic search traffic and bounce rates as well as external benchmark data that relate to the project.

Marketers may look at stand-alone data and see a spike in traffic, but when viewed against competitive data, that uptick may appear similar to what other companies experience across the industry. "When adding the benchmark data, you might see that everyone else saw the same spike in traffic, and they got it before you did," Crosby says.

And while the data that marketers can mine through Google tools comes free, the effort and the imagination to finding the key trends and insights cost. Crosby suggests for every $1 spent on tools, put $9 dollars into hiring employees to get quality out of the tools and data, because there's "way too much focus" on the tools and not enough on the people.

From San Diego, Calif., where he founded Urchin Software acquired by Google, Crosby shares that he uses metrics and data in his personal life to surf. For example, he wears a watch with a wave counter when surfing, which allows him to keep track and count each wave with a click of a button.

How many waves you get in a session motivates him, but the real benefit comes from timing -- knowing how many waves to expect and the frequency with which they occur at any given time.

While most surfers in the water think about getting into position for the next wave, Crosby has data points to prepare. If the sets come every four minutes, he can mathematically figure out that it's about 20 seconds until the next wave. So, while everyone else is sitting around, Crosby can gain higher conversions by using data.