#034: Live from eMetrics...it's the Digital Analytics Power Hour!

Show Transcript

The following is a straight-up machine translation. It has not been human-reviewed or human-corrected. We apologize on behalf of the machines for any text that winds up being incorrect, nonsensical, or offensive. We have asked the machine to do better, but it simply responds with, “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

[00:00:30] Welcome to the digital analytics power hour. This is Episode 34 you know the concept of a lobby bar started at a conference. Well actually a conference this exact conference and it was a location where all of us data nerds and visualization specialists and storytellers and miscreants and all got together and if the sessions are sort of the bricks the lobby bars the mortar and it kind of gave us a chance to go to our favorite speaker and ask the question what did you mean when you said that or sit next to somebody who just so happened to share the same exact problem that you thought was unique to just you and your company struggles and so the lobby bar became this place and sort of an institution. And along the way three friends met and in seeking to recreate that experience we created the Digital Analytics power our you know and in full awareness of the unus that this is where we are now taking the lobby bar and trying to stick it into an actual session. I want to introduce you to my other two cohosts I’m Michael Hellblazer I lead analytics search discovery and I want to bring to the stage right now and give them a warm welcome because it’s very cold where he comes from.

[00:01:58] It’s Jim Kane. He is the CEO of napkin and Babbit systems. And rounding out our roster is a guy who needs no introduction but you might not recognize him because of his shaggy mane of hair. It’s Tim Wilson senior partner at analytics demystified. So. And I’m excited to announce that we have a special guest on this episode of the podcast you. So thank you so much for being with us today. And we are excited to hang out with you. You know I don’t know if we’ve got some extras so if you have a glass you know just come get some laughter. Come and get it during let’s hang out.

[00:02:47] We’ve been sort of ZAP’s listening to it while you’re running. The last thing you want the bourbon while you’re jogging will start this off.

[00:02:54] We’ve got some questions and I’m going to put to the team but you know bring your questions and or just have a conversation about analytics. Alaw the lobby bar. So let’s do it.

[00:03:05] I feel like this is going to be the mortar that holds the bricks of the whole event together.

[00:03:09] I think somebody right guys.

[00:03:16] All right. We go transitioning successfully to the other microphone now since I’m holding my beverage I can’t open my notebook but it’s ok. My beverage is more important than that. Let me ask let’s do it out to you guys right away. What have you heard this week that was intriguing or what have you not heard this week that would have intrigued you.

[00:03:43] So this is the second or third metrics where I really enjoyed the metric sessions and I wish I was smart enough to go to a predictive analytics.

[00:03:51] Wow.

[00:03:52] No we’re not all dumb I’m dumb because some of those some of the sessions the titles are cool and then I sneak in and it feels like I’m getting an ice cream headache and I come back to the metrics events.

[00:04:03] So it’s not that we’re not doing interesting topics in this one but it’s that I would love to see a little bit more crossover than the standard one person from each goes over because there should be.

[00:04:15] I mean there next door they’re doing a lot of the same things but where we use a hammer they might use a nuclear warhead or our or whatever it is that they do.

[00:04:22] But the guys at the door or I check in like crazy stuff to have trouble getting to my own session to speak. I got like stopped and grilled. It was rough. That was one thematic element. There was much better door security that our security was using. So might have been the. I just look like an unsavory character. Yeah theme that I will get a haircut. Yeah hippie my my hair got longer and Rachele five feet of dynamites hair got shorter.

[00:04:52] I thought there was a theme which I don’t think I don’t think the session wasn’t didn’t have the session this time that was the like three frameworks for doing analytics but different sessions going through and I there were a lot of sort of frameworks of kind of how to approach analytics and I don’t think it was earth shattering. I sort of was and I present sort of a framework in my session so I did sort of a sort of it hit me that nobody has the right framework like any framework will work but it seems like a lot of people who have had success have said this is kind of how I structure and organize what I do. And that seemed like a lab for me a little oh yeah that’s kind of a kind of nice. Everybody has to organize how they’re approaching things.

[00:05:37] I think something that stuck out to me was I was hearing a lot more about data storytelling this week than I think I’ve heard in other metrics and maybe I’m just out of the loop. But many sessions really useful content I learned about where they called Small multiples small multiples out to sessions at least mention that. I’ve seen them before. Never used them. Thanks leah Peka and Ryan slippered yeah he was.

[00:06:05] Yeah you won a visualization prize with a small multiple. That’s pretty awesome. So yeah I thought data storytelling was kind of interesting and it kind of emerged again and again for me.

[00:06:15] So a quick little aside when we actually normally record this has been a challenge to get the audio correct when we’re three guys in remote places. Is Michael fading a little bit because he keeps doing this kind of work in the way they talk with him. I mean I can’t I was you know one thing that I really missed and I was kind of shocked is that nobody actually highlighted that it was the year of mobile unless I just miss that session. So I don’t know I think it’s that was last year that was maybe we were just waiting until it really comes.

[00:06:49] Are there industry challenges you guys have in the industry for a long time. Are there industry challenges that we’re not facing today that we used to face in the past.

[00:07:01] I think we have a lot more executive by and I mean this is like a recurring theme on the show. Right. But we have legacy customers where we would fight and fight and fight to get something whether it’s technology stack or dashboard or people buying into analysis. And we would fight to kind of get it to trickle up. And we’re seeing even in some of those customers now the CEO who is going oh shit we were doing that already. Great. Now I care. Now you’re out in the boardroom. So I find it much easier to get executive sponsorship with this kind of work right now. I agree with that.

[00:07:33] I think there’s also we’re having to do a whole lot less hacking with the platforms because the maturity of the different platforms both for capturing the data. So think your google analytics or your Adobe analytics your storage of the data is also gotten more sophisticated we’ve got big query and Hadoop and these other things and then even accessing the data you know Tablo wasn’t around.

[00:07:56] I don’t know when one must have low audience participation Ryan must have low founded let’s just say you came here on the mike he gave the correct answer and you listening at home can Google.

[00:08:12] So I think the toolset is there’s now more tools as opposed to we used to say how can we how can we hack calls going to Adobe or to to Google Analytics how can we manage this data. You know how can we work with our team I.T. team to develop a data warehouse that is an oracle with a schema that we can access. I think there’s a lot less of that because there’s been advances and kind of handling the volume and complexity of data as well as accessing it. I

[00:08:41] haven’t had to log into web trends in about a year. FRANK LUNTZ That’s a one of.

[00:08:47] Only a year. You know it’s been a long time since I had a vendor panel. At any metrics Yeah. Yeah. You know what else is interesting and I think it’s it’s been a change it’s been ongoing.

[00:08:58] But maybe we can do like a little thing.

[00:09:01] How many people here practitioners working for a company inspired by Audi by a show of hands shorthands are you fucking kidding me. Do you do analytics. Shall I show a feat. Please show. All right go got we do an applause meter. Yeah applause meter we’ll add that and then post what. So how many of you that raised your hands would raise your hands again to say I’m the only one at my company who does this.

[00:09:34] All right. Well actually that was more than I thought so.

[00:09:37] OK for everybody who raised their hand the first question which was are do analytics how can you applied. OK.

[00:09:46] Oh wow.

[00:09:47] OK listen the vibe live recorded show podcast shows before for everybody who you’re the only person doing analytics can you applied.

[00:09:58] So it’s fewer if you think in a power trip and he just likes making you do stuff.

[00:10:02] Yeah. Feel free to raise your hands Anna Bligh Biden there they go.

[00:10:07] No but one of the things is there’s back in the good old days most of us were as individuals trying to get analytics up and running by ourselves at whatever company we were at. No matter how big it was and you see more and more teams of people groups of people coming in and being part of that. So there’s more like I think it goes back to what you said Jim there’s more investment in the industry but there’s there’s more people now in the industry. Not nearly enough people just make that clear. But I think that’s one thing I’ve seen.

[00:10:45] I mean I think I was an individual you were an individual. We do have a double CEO I think he was always kind of a split personality.

[00:10:51] You might have been I’m a multiple you’re multiple. He was a small waterfall. Now he’s brought it back. All right.

[00:10:58] So we’ve talked about challenges that we don’t face anymore have we created new ones.

[00:11:06] I mean are there new challenges that we weren’t running into with the easy ones that we used to we just analyzed the website.

[00:11:11] Right now no one is talking about.

[00:11:14] No one is accepting or saying that we can just analyze the website because the buzzword bingo the consumer experience has become much more fragmented across multiple channels and devices.

[00:11:27] And it was like if Rand Fishkin was on this very stage saying engagement was yeah that was actually interesting and Rand’s session that he did all of a sudden he was saying it’s all about engagement then I feel like social media kind of ferment from a different perspective like he was like I can point he’s got evidence that says if you want to drive your CEO like engagement and here’s why. Because the machine is saying if you take an action. This stuff is relevant and appropriate and I feel like social media for a while it went from you know number of fans to reach and impressions to engagement. And now it’s kind of you know who the hell knows for social media. So it was kind of. I’m so used to seeing engagement with a big old acts like the social media guy saying it’s not it’s not engagement. So it was kind of refreshing to say ah there’s a place where like very specific it’s not I’m using engagement as a soft and fluffy thing to try to value all I’m doing something value why I’m doing something. Rand was saying engagement literally is kind of where it where it’s at for getting organic traffic anything new problems new problems.

[00:12:43] I just think it’s the inverse of the old problems. You know I was saying now that there’s executive buy in. So when we when we were drinking in the lobby bar like the first time was the metrics New York like five years ago who knows us.

[00:12:56] Yeah I blacked out because we were intoxicated I can’t recall but like the standard complaint at the bar was no one listens to me like I did all this work on this awesome thing.

[00:13:05] No one’s less careful what you wish for. And now people are listening so you know you get that response where it’s like really like we’re going here. But you added it up Ron. You know you didn’t catch something snap like before it was. How do I get someone to listen and now it’s how do I get someone to keep away what I just did because you’re listening and I don’t want to get pinned to the wall if I’m wrong.

[00:13:26] Right. And back in my day. Get away with analysis and excel. Now you have to learn cool new tools like Tablo and stuff like that. Get our mind and our Yeah.

[00:13:39] And make sure we build it in excel.

[00:13:44] All right well we’ve gone to the Twitter sphere because we want to be good listeners and we’ve got some questions that came in. So this one’s from Justin Goodman and Lokes prose da rising star finalist Justin Goodman. So electric mice and electric mice Justin Goodman. So yeah give it up. All right. So this question this is for Jim Kane. No I say this for all of you but how do you differentiate reports dashboards and analysis to clients.

[00:14:12] I use the subject line of the e-mail to say report or dashboard or analysis.

[00:14:19] That’s an answer maybe not what he’s looking for. You want to swing the other.

[00:14:24] I mean Hollywood Squares the mean to go to the recession right before us a lot of it is in the design of what people are expecting to see. Right. So the way that we would send out a report to a stakeholder is a little bit different than the way that we would design and provision a dashboard and it’s a little bit different than we would design and deliver analysis right.

[00:14:48] So an analysis could be in the body of the email a dashboard better not be you know I think it’s more design cues than quality or content.

[00:15:00] I think I will coach them a little bit definitional that to me. And I think that’s the sort of this is like total lobby bar type the heated debate about what’s a report versus what’s analysis.

[00:15:11] And I definitely think we’ve come to blows on this before. There was that’s where Jim’s a nimble little and he’s very scrappy very scrappy.

[00:15:21] But to me a dashboard I tend to even label them when I’m delivering them as performance measurement like this is your one page ish snapshot view clearly understandable well designed the data may change but the layout doesn’t. This is aligning with your business. That’s all it is.

[00:15:43] It’s not inside it’s not recommendations it is a low latency it is you need to have a pulse on what’s going on with the business reports to me are recurring and there is some operational need for you know I manage our internal search site.

[00:15:59] I need to get a list of all the terms with these metrics and I need to be able to interact with it a little bit but it also needs to be automated and recurring but tied to a very specific task or need. And to me analysis is definitional Lee ad hoc when somebody says can we redo that analysis. I’m like why.

[00:16:19] Like if we did the analysis right we validated a hypothesis and we’re moving onto the next thing.

[00:16:26] So that’s how I will speak to clients about it but I also sort of try to avoid it avoid the discussion because you know that people will talk about like Will your report doesn’t include any analysis.

[00:16:38] So it’s like a it’s one of those where you can wind up in this semantic discussion it’s just kind of frustrating and annoying so so analysis has the most words in it.

[00:16:49] Reports have less words and there shouldn’t be a whole lot of words in a dashboard like if we do that.

[00:16:55] Possibly. I mean I think lots of things get labeled as analysis that aren’t grounded in hypothesis.

[00:17:03] I think you present analysis as part of either research or insight generation whereas the other two or something probably happening on a more consistent basis for consensus or a cadence you get caught. Jim

[00:17:17] Stern came up and Gabe got himself some bourbon right. Quick buy a round of applause. How many people drink bourbon OK. All you got to do is find a receptacle. We’re not going to call you out when we give away one and take. I’m taking a red eye tonight. No not at all. We’re about to we have one more twitter question yet. Thank you. Oh yes you can. You can actually just pass it around pass.

[00:17:42] It’s weird for people to have to come up and get it. So it’s better that way. Great. So this one’s for you Tim because it’s super hard. It’s from Mike hermanos. He says What’s the most effective way you’ve explained multivariable analysis to someone preferably at someone’s not like a five year old.

[00:18:01] I actually see if I made any connections with somebody. Predictive Analytics World. And then defer the question to them. I don’t know. I mean I said to me I assume the question is kind of how do you explain something like interaction effects. And I think it’s not so much an explain as a as a show.

[00:18:23] Yeah I mean that because that’s it. Analysis is fundamentally right. Figuring out the difference between two things you know what we do is we kind of boil it down like that and when it’s multivariable then yeah it’s how do those things all in Iraq to explain the difference between those two things.

[00:18:41] So yeah I guess my answer is I show up in a lot of time on.

[00:18:45] There are lots of things that need to be done a show on this with someone who’s an expert in one armed bandits.

[00:18:52] If only if only we could recite Matt Kershaw from conductor X was on a fantastic show.

[00:18:58] All right well we’ve got some more questions but I feel like we’re all using this awesome crowd. Let’s ask you guys what’s going on. The metrics for you what have you heard. What do you have questions about. Tim Wilson is actually very smart.

[00:19:14] Jim Kane and this year of pressure from any stage any bank will have an opinion.

[00:19:22] First two questions get a data driven business cup of some kind.

[00:19:27] Chocolate chocolate in a day you can put liquor in. Also you can claim to have been a guest on The Digital Analytics Power Hour. The only explicit analytics podcast on iTunes. Put it in your linked in profile. Come on.

[00:19:42] There we go. Somebody had a break do you see how many people have listened to a podcast in the last week by round of applause.

[00:19:51] Curie’s Yeah.

[00:19:53] So I did actually have a question until I got the mike but I’m going to make up a question on the spot.

[00:19:59] Just know this is the kind of person to come up and get the bottle of bourbon those sitting on the front of the stage. And maybe it goes to her head really quick.

[00:20:08] OK so if you’re hiring for an analyst what is the key thing you’re looking for today.

[00:20:19] You’re the H.R. guy I don’t have to hire an analyst so I guess is the person who is the most always hiring person on the stage right now. I’ll go to Cirque’s discovery dot com slash careers. It’s a great place. I love it pray for his career and it is hands on. I think it depends a lot of things and you probably know this too.

[00:20:40] Obviously if you’re looking at what level of experience you’re looking for you probably are looking for certain things but fundamentally beneath any analytic skill set there’s three things that I’m trying to figure out about a person when I’m interviewing them for a role as an analyst or someone in digital analytics. The first is problem solving competency. So what are they. How do they approach solving a problem. So usually in the interview process it’s giving them sort of some hypothetical things like you know how many whiskies could Tim Wilson drink before he passed out you know like.

[00:21:15] And then how they break that problem down. Do you have a standard set of those questions. I mean I’m not going to ask you to share it because I mean just on a few of them are related to you personally. Yeah I think there’s the old how many pennies would fit. How many things can you fit into seven 747. Yeah. So those kinds of problems help you understand not somebody is smart enough to know the answer to that stuff but how they attack the problem.

[00:21:41] Because that’s so much of what we do is having a tenaciousness to go after the problem. The second thing is sort of just the innate intellectual curiosity. Right. Well that some of it comes to personality type or whatever or Ord’s learned but like they can show and demonstrate they really kind of thought through things. And then lastly probably critical thinking skills are lateral thinking skills how can I apply experience and knowledge from one area to another. So what some of the personality type 2 years do like a personality profile as a part of not as a part of this hiring process internally. Wow.

[00:22:15] When someone’s partner search discovery we use a book called strength’s finders which is asking you to plug that book. I knew you well I know you love it though. Where’s Leah Pickett here does she.

[00:22:26] Does she already know what her strengths are. The one of the newest hires she does not know her mind. My strengths are on my Linked In profile see. So we get along. We just went from being five feet dynamite to four and a half feet Dunham.

[00:22:42] No I don’t think so. What about you. Well real quick. Michael I want to follow up on your question. You know when you when you ask a question try to gauge someone’s problem solving ability like that’s all well and good and you hear a lot of interviewers do that.

[00:23:00] But I don’t know how to effectively evaluate that. Like if someone is giving you any answer and you know you see them go through that thought process you see the wheels turn in their head. But then like how do you really evaluate what you like or what you don’t like with those kinds of responses.

[00:23:20] And I’ll give up the microphone now because I’ve had it too but honestly it has something to do with whether or not they themselves feel satisfied with it like they if they just end it they’re like I’ve worked it out it’s this and I don’t think that they’ve kind of wrestled with it enough and that tells me they’re not going to pursue a problem as far as they need to pursue it sometimes.

[00:23:45] Are you asking like behavioral questions about tell me about a time that you have seen obviously lots of other stuff you asked you’re trying to figure out culture attitudinal fit all these different I know what I’m saying but I’m saying behavioral quite like when you’re evaluating so one of the problem solving ways is we give them a problem.

[00:24:02] Here’s a dataset if you do that with anal with certain roles or not not as much with analytics problems specifically like I don’t I used to do that. I used to give people a logfile and tell them to tear it apart but that so many years ago like nobody. Now you just grow them on what the different servers response codes are and be like Yeah exactly. What does a 2 or 6 return code.

[00:24:26] I think that’s Detroit.

[00:24:32] As everyone else here knows that’s a partial success return code. Yeah that’s right. Very important to set that up as a filter and web trends so that you didn’t get your PDAF downloads. Yeah that’s right. Exactly. That’s old school right there guys.

[00:24:50] All right. I have a couple of anecdotes HRO and go the first one is that we’re not doing enough when we’re hiring again because we build a lot of our analysts so we’re not looking for a whole lot of do this use case we look for a lot of lateral thinking because I find that there’s a lot of tools that are designed to do one thing but if you spin them a little bit you can do some. So we’ve used like paid search intelligence tools to actually help predict someone else’s inventory so that we their competitors can keep their product mix up so we look for a lot of lateral thinking.

[00:25:24] How do you actually evaluate that in an interview process. Well make them work for free. It’s called an internship. OK.

[00:25:34] So we ask a lot of high level questions about digital. Will we do a lot e-commerce will pop an e-commerce site and say What do you think the primary and secondary goals are of this site. What are the kinds of things that you’d like. We kind of like to work someone through a problem to see how they respond and why they respond. But I I had a couple of client meetings this week in town and one of them is with the CTO for a large publishing company and they’re trying to build their own analytics practice internally and he said what are the criteria for my one analyst that I should hire. And I said you’re a billion dollar companies hire three people because there is no criteria for one analyst. Because they’ll hate their life and quit. And there are more recruiters than there are analysts.

[00:26:16] I don’t know if you guys have noticed that. So yeah this is also related to hiring which came up a lot at the conference.

[00:26:27] So the need for data scientists is high and a lot of people have said you know analyst junior analyst can’t fit that role or can’t become that role. Is that true. And if so where are the data scientists supposed to come from.

[00:26:43] And what is a data scientist. I mean historically we’ve had a hard time defining the term data science.

[00:26:50] If you recollect that like episode two or three I think I called them the Y2K programmers of 2015 last year.

[00:26:58] Well I mean so it’s a really good question and one we’re we’re going to go all around and not answer and no you have. That’s probably correct because you know how I define Data Scientist probably not how anyone else does but my personal definition is pretty specific to a certain skill set with a high degree of programming capability statistical methods and those kinds of things and experience with sort of platforms and things like that the kind of help with dealing with large data sets in kind of meaningful ways are in python and those kinds of things those are kind of walls that I build around data scientists and then go back to the same thing with what the other answer was. How do you fit. How do you solve problems and how do you critically think.

[00:27:51] So I think that definition which I like I think is the future of this entire profession. It’s actually an I’ll I’ll try to work it out in a coherent way guy who’s been tinkering with our Lelay web and the metrics Chicago in June like I have committed to trying to actually explain and articulate that in fun little metrics social media when on the way here I was at the BART station at the airport and I got a little notification that that one of my sort of light bulbs going on is a guy named Michael Healy who works for Michael Healthlink and that can’t get confusing ever. But he was onestop up on the train and heading my way. And so I got to actually ride from Bart all the way here and to to downtown with with Michael and I he’s one of the guys that I’ve realized that skill set is coming. I think that the traditional the simpler world of we’re doing the line graphs and we’re showing trends and we’re just building a dashboard. I think all of that is going to shift to be much more technical in five to 10 years. I think the people who get really excited about that feeling what you disagree please continue. How can you watch my numbers that can they shut that off. So I mean I may be dead wrong but I feel like he’s dead. It’s the analysts. I think our last episode they’re talking all over each other. Now we just screwed up the editing but this time we’re talking over each other.

[00:29:24] So I think they’ll have to and I kind of I’m old enough that I could probably coast it out doing simple correlations and vine charts and cluster cluster and or not cluster analysis scatter pods. If I could do a cluster analysis then I ran away to management. I was salt content. So you disagree.

[00:29:43] Yeah I think that. You know the whole history of web analytics like log files that marketing find out I’m not going to do the routine again but I think now if you take there was an episode with Jim Stern where we went through the history of web analytics and a whole bottle of whiskey whiskey that can. Have a beer here. So I’ve been awake for three days so here’s a clearly bounded problem and I’m a liberal liberal arts level analyst. Like I’m a me analyst I’m someone who wants to talk people through defining why there’s a problem and then get enough to explain how to fix it. I’m going to approach that problem in a very very specific way. It’ll be a tablet way it’ll be interviewing stakeholders way and let’s say I’m an engineer. I’m going to try and hammer that nail with a completely different approach and I get to try and engineer my way through it. I get to use our and I’m going to use redshift I’m so you know this whole discipline that we’re in that had a relatively straightforward track and a lot of people came from a more technical background and had to learn more of the storytelling and the visualization.

[00:30:48] We now have two different disciplines but I think we’re trying to solve a lot of the same problems but like humanities versus engineering you know but I think we had we had traditionally metrics Jim gets Stern gets some people from very large companies dealing with very large datasets. I to say eBay and now I’m blanking on Twitter right. We had various people and there have been times in the past where it’s like you look around the room you’re like how many people have the luxury of dealing with Oh yeah should just do a 1 percent test. You know everybody does a 1 percent test and you get a gazillion things to work with. And that was kind of like yeah you needed these data scientists to deal with this large. These large datasets I think were shifting and the tools are shifting Google Analytics is shifting this way that now a more modest set of traffic you can start to get a lot more data because you can get a lot more granular and you can say I can roll up this atomic level data into your performance measurement dashboard and I can have a tool that helps me do that. But now I’ve got a broader set. I’ve got a more detailed larger set of data with less traffic because I’m not just dealing with the aggregated data that Google Analytics was providing or web trends right Web friends was all aggregation. I mean that’s how they stored it. That’s how what they what they put it in.

[00:32:05] So I think I may be dead wrong I think 10 years from now we’ll be looking back and saying remember the days when you can log in to Google Analytics that com and Google to accomplish analytics and. And you could recharge types and you could screen capture that and drop in please never screen capture from any Web analytics tool. But so I don’t know if that answers there but I think it’s it’s people seem to shift that way or they’re going to have limited careers.

[00:32:33] So I think there was one more question over there and then we got to wait and see how far we’re just going to let that up because what advice would you give us the most important things a researcher should be doing to assert their value to their clients.

[00:32:52] Always be right and always have a dollar sign in the last sentence. Yeah.

[00:32:57] Yeah. I mean you know and you know walk around with those things that show like the research that shows the eye of an analyst as you know 300 bucks to or 3800 bucks the one that were great material not a salary not come. You know it’s true. It’s about tying your work to value that drives the business right.

[00:33:17] So how you connect with whatever business you’re doing how and and honestly for digital analytics. It’s a bridge we all have to learn to cross. Unless you’re a pure play web company you have to translate the digital metrics into metrics that correlate with business outcomes. So that translation process is really what drives that value because you know when you go and report to the CMO you know while they may be interested in bounce rate momentarily I’m pretty sure bonus bonuses not based on that you will die on the sword.

[00:33:49] Interesting.

[00:33:51] So I think that’s I mean me and the always tied to dollars.

[00:33:56] It’s true it’s its true and awesome but the fact when we were talking Adam Greco was talking about. Hes like you know if you’re basically saying if you’re if you’re site you’re on a brochure ware site because the nature of your business which to me I heard is if you have a consumer package goods site. But I think there’s there is a more practical that anyone can do which is figure out what’s keeping them up at night or if they’re not that passionate about their job just figure out having that conversation getting inside their head and trying to figure out what’s the question you can answer that they would say this is useful to me because there are plenty of people who are at a level below the macro I have to tie all this stuff to revenue. I

[00:34:41] didn’t say and I said value. Okay

[00:34:44] so I agree with you and as usual disagree with Jim. Yeah. But Jill is a is a guy who came from a sales background. I think there’s there’s a lot that he says when it comes to like the act of listening what are you I mean you are trying to Kushayb you like what’s keeping you up at night. But that’s the thing to what is what can the data provide that that person says. Great. I now have that information and I can move forward and that’s figuring out what they’re being incentivized on. What they’re grappling with and it’s not always tied to a dollar yet is how do you see yourself and how do you do social media. I mean there is a legitimate reason to be on social that is for companies. Otherwise you’d have all you’d be saying is my social media analytics says you need to just tweet direct tweet direct response. Calls to action and turn it into a direct response channel. And I think there’s a way to approach marketing that says no need to think a little broader than that in most.

[00:35:47] I mean you went with the most pure brand marketing for example and that’s fine and we can chip away at it. That’s because you’re wrong because I’m wrong.

[00:35:54] I don’t know how I died but an example is a customer service portal for a company that does sell things online. So you know you log in and you enter your question or you chat with live help. Most people don’t measure those as a successful session. They measure did did the site go down or like a generic technical metrics right. There is a clearly defined cost for a telephone interaction with the customer and if you say if someone does this list of five things after they log in they successfully completed something that meant they didn’t call us. I have a dollar right. If you have a company that does a lot of consumer packaged goods you do those people in the store and they like you know tastes disgusting cake or whatever. I mean you know you’re out there talking to people if you can monetize what it costs to have someone in the particular community you can subset Twitter traffic by community and be able to say instead of putting people in stores. We did this and save this much money.

[00:36:57] I’m glad it has dropped the mike sound effect was not caught on the mine it’s not my mike. All right.

[00:37:02] YouTube quit fighting long enough and maybe it will. Jim let us take one more question. I feel like maybe you’re right back there. There was one right there was like the the second had to go up by a millisecond. Poor guy hasn’t got that. Well that’s because I don’t have any alcohol. So it’s over there. So that’s it.

[00:37:22] So my question was based on what you guys were just talking about around social media and analytics and trying to show value of that and so I was just curious what your thoughts about social media analytics in the industry. Betty did you see that doing it. Well things like that because I have the same issue going on within my organization around you know what’s the value of engaging some of these consumers via Twitter or via other platforms. What are we getting from that.

[00:38:00] Yeah so I’m going to go ahead and plug a book by this guy named John Lovett called Social Media Measurement secrets because I think that was the first place I saw somebody talk about social media in terms of what you are hoping the social media channel or platform was going to achieve for your business. And then measuring outcomes based on that. And I think that’s the that’s the most common sense way I’ve seen and I’m a little familiar with John.

[00:38:28] I work with him. I was a fanboy but specifically Chapters 4 and 5. Part of what using this is the idea of causal modeling of saying you know we’re on Instagram or on Twitter and ultimately we want to have a business value we want to have a dollar outcome. We need to get in a room with smart marketers.

[00:38:49] With with the analysts and say what is the map. Wait. There probably is value in being on Instagram but we should figure out what the map is from somebody engaging with Instagram. How do we logically link that to business value and let’s draw that out. And now let’s go as far downstream as we can with what we measured. And we’re still leaving Leape because you can’t get the RAII of a tweet but having that kind of alignment discussion of saying yeah. I mean we were doing brand marketing out-of-home in the 1950s and it wasn’t a waste of money. There was there was value there and in a lot of ways a lot of social media is brand marketing you know akin to billboards in my mind that’s part of.

[00:39:40] Now you can have it as well or customer service or engagement or outreach or whatever it may be airlines like say or driving product innovation. Yes because I mean if you’re a brand and you’re on snap chat like you’re not looking for a direct far away from that it all disappears in 8 seconds right. So that’s a whole different thing that you’re doing but you’re building brand awareness so that’s a brand and you should use brand measures to then measure it serve as a social media work that you do lead to clicks to the Web site or is it purely purely like look at me I’m Sandra Dee I’m on the web.

[00:40:13] Both clicks the Web site and are there online conversions you can type dollar values to.

[00:40:19] Yep yep so damn it.

[00:40:23] So now you get to look at social as people. It’s almost like display people that saw it which I don’t think is worth very much. I think social has some value just and it’s not touching that. So someone interacted with us in social and there is a very finite value to that in a very big value to the agency that sold it in the first place.

[00:40:43] Yeah we were doing and that’s actually a plus they were able to tie that back in. But then there’s this other piece which is the organic piece that is really important to the CMO. From a brand perspective about what this what our engagements are bringing back to us from from from a value standpoint.

[00:41:06] So I’m going to throw one other quick one in there. If you go and say you’re a CMO do you want to get our brand in front of Arkansas of are potential buyers. And the answer is yes. Do you think we should do that. Where are potential buyers are spending their time. And the answer is yes. So you can say I mean to me that’s like a that is a no brainer that there is a ton of industry research that says people are spending their time more on these social channels that doesn’t fully answer the question but it’s almost there was the borders.

[00:41:42] Imagine the spoon botch my matrix reference.

[00:41:46] There is there is a certain age matrix that should be able to get credibility destroyed strong tall pour of of ideas. The first time Tim tried for a pop culture after reading it would never happen again.

[00:41:59] Man But do you want to not be on Twitter like that that just makes no sense. So there’s kind of this basis of if we can do it cost effectively at a bare minimum we need to be there because that’s where our consumers are. I mean maybe they’re not but in many many brands cases that they are there on Linked In because it’s B2B.

[00:42:19] I also like rolling up Bollier social social channels people tend to go we’re killing it on Twitter and this is Facebook to some extent social is social. And if you can kind of roll up your active listening community an emphasis on active right into one group. It’s interesting if you can trend on a weekly basis in a report that people care about and again you saw some great examples earlier on on news reports if you can consistently show that certain activities lead to a larger or smaller active listening community than you then you’re starting to show value especially when you can connect it to convergence in the site. Awesome. Good question.

[00:43:00] Ladies and gentlemen. All right this has been the digital analytics power our live brought to you by metrics something please warm thank you to Tim Wilson and Jim Kane Michael hoteling digital analytics power hours.

[00:43:21] And don’t forget to join the conversation on Facebook Twitter. We welcome your comments and questions. Dot com to out on Twitter.

[00:43:35] Smart guys want to fit in. I made up a term call and I. Don’t. Work.

[00:43:44] All. It’s a pun on.

[00:43:55] ROC flag any metrics.

 

Podcast: Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS