A funny thing happened on the way to the CMO's office.
Between the realization of an eye-opening, game-changing insight gleaned from advertising test results and Web behavior data,
the report you're gleefully ferrying to the C-Suite wilted, turns brown at the edges and starts to dribble a slimy substance with a conspicuous stench.
The CMO immediately
develops a nose-squint. The VP of Corporate Communications has that "Oooo, you're in for it!" look in her eye and the VP of Advertising nudges the Director of Direct Marketing and says
sotto-voce, "The golden boy is about to find out his day in the sun has turned him to toast."
The CMO points to (but does not touch)
a traffic report from comScore
a traffic report from Hitwise
a chart from Compete.com
an ad banner report from Atlas
a traffic report from Omniture and
another from Google Analytics
"It's like the old joke," she said with no humor at all. "If you take all the economists in the world and line them up end-to-end, they all point different directions.
What the hell is going on with these numbers? Are we getting thirty two and a half million people on our Web site or forty-four million?"
The first time you ran into this nest
of nettles, you hopped over to the white board and cheerfully explained all about
cookie deletion
cookie blocking
multiple machine browsing
multiple browser browsing
multiple people on the same cookie
non-human traffic
dynamic IP addressing
page caching
javascript loading
called pixel placement
You didn't even get to the good stuff about comparing miles to gallons and how
different tools using
different date cut-off routines and
different methods to capture
different types of data to store in
different kinds of databases with a
different method of data cleansing and
different slicing and dicing segmentation to produce
different kinds of reports that
ended up in
different feed for integration into
different datawarehouses
...before you were thanked for your help and shown the door -- permanently.
You don't fall for it this time.
This time you explain that the world
of online marketing has been suffering from an delusion of precision and an expectation of exactitude.
You tell them that we live in a world of statistics and probabilities. We
can't count all the stars in the sky, so we don't try. We don't try to get an actual count of
television watchers
radio listeners
magazine readers
billboard readers
bus poster readers
floor sticker readers
airline ticket jacket readers
sandwich board readers
Instead, we count some and estimate the rest.
You share the good news that we can do
this better than any of the above -- and we've got some astonishing tools and techniques for dynamically targeting the audience and optimizing each one's experience.
You say,
"We get 36.3 million people coming to our Web site."
The CMO lowers her half-glasses and gives you the look you last saw when caught using the office copy machine for party
invitations. So you add, "With a 4% margin of error and it's a benchmark we can compare month over month from now on."
"So somewhere between 34 and a half and 38
million," she says.
"Pretty much right between them, in fact."
Disparagingly, she asks, "You really can't give me a more accurate number of
how many people saw this digital marketing masterpiece that costs me tens of millions a year?"
"I can tell you whether our digital visitors are more engaged with our brand,
come back more often, buy from us and discuss our products with their friends. How many people buy our products who saw our ads on CNN and 'Oprah' that cost you hundreds of millions a
year?"
The VP of Advertising makes himself visibly smaller.
"I came here to show you a way that could save four million dollars of search marketing while
boosting online sales by 6 to 8%," you say.
The scowl leaves the CMO's face. The odor of dubious data dissipates. Her eyes narrow as she leans forward and says, "Show
me."
The numbers don't have to be precise -- just compelling.