What Analytics is not

There seems to be a lot of confusion when agencies and consultants talk about Analytics. Have you noticed? Many seem to think Analytics is about what happened. 

But Analytics isn't about a lot of things people think it's about.

To me, Analytics is not:

• What happened.
• A dashboard with beautiful graphics.
• Open rates / click-through rates / time on site.
• A PowerPoint with a graphic on each slide exported from Google Analytics.
• The top tweets / tweeters / Twitter volumes / Twitter hashtags / Twitter followers.
• Which posts were positive and which posts were negative. 
• Domo.
• Copying and pasting what the media vendors sent.
• How much you spent toward your total. 
• Tableau.
• Every data point collected during a marketing campaign.
• Your search rankings this week vs. your search rankings last week.

In fact, NONE of these things I listed above are Analytics. They're reporting.

Reporting is like the "news" section of a newspaper. It tells the facts about what happened. 

Analytics is like the "opinion" section of a newspaper.

It attempts to explain why the facts are what they are.

It considers which facts might be missing or unreliable.

It suggests what the facts mean for its readers. 

Here's how you can tell if what you're doing is Analytics:

1- Your client now understands why marketing programs are working or not working 

2- Your client now knows what they can do, specifically, to improve business results

3- Your client can now draw conclusions that are relevant to the business

4- Your client can ask better questions than before

Here are some examples of "Analytics" provided by real marketing companies. These were listed as key takeaways in actual Analytics reports provided to (and, I'm assuming, paid for by) clients. See if they meet the 4 criteria I'm proposing above:

Example A:

• Onsite display and eMail display generated the bulk of paid media impressions and clicks to the site
• 5% of sessions driven by display media consisted of at least 2 page views resulting in the highest 2+ page view conversion rate

Example B: 

• In January, the display media campaign delivered 614,422 impressions which resulted in 2,179 clicks
• We saw the overall CPC decrease by 58%. This was largely due to a spike in the overall CTR, which more than doubled
• In total, the campaign delivered 31 highly engaged visits in January, an increase of 39% over last year's monthly average

Example C: 

• When users open the app more than 6 times, the avg. session lasts well over 8 minutes and they view over 5 pages / session
• Those who only open the app once still spend an average of 3.5 minutes and view 3-4 pages / session
• Banner ads have driven nearly 200 app views since they began in July

The truth is, the majority of agency and consultant "Analytics" presentations are reporting on news. They are technical, dry, and divorced from the business. Clients don't want to read them, because they rarely tell clients anything of importance. Like:

• Why do frequent app users spend so much time using the app? How can we get more users who behave like them?
• Do highly engaged visitors earn the brand more money than typical visitors? How much more?
• Should we keep using banner ads and display? Why or why not?
• What data don't we have that would help us make better decisions?

As marketing decisions become increasingly driven by customer data, it's going to dawn on marketers that a lot of their "Analytics" is just reporting.

And increasingly, marketers are going to be heard saying: "So what?"

Jeff Greene (@Jeff_Greene) is a strategist, writer, speaker, and agency intrapreneur who has spent more than 19 years guiding clients into the digital age. As partner, multichannel strategy lead at New Solutions Factory, Jeff inspires marketers to evolve their multichannel capabilities by thinking critically about the impact of digital culture. He’s the author of Speaking on the Side, now available on Kindle.

Image credit: Elegant Themes