Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.
-John Wanamaker, early 1900s
While very often used to explain the imperfections with marketing, it is a quote that has, in my opinion, become obsolete. It is said that this quote was uttered by John Wanamaker, a very successful department store owner, in the early 1900s, a time when computers were mere science fiction. During that time, mass marketing was the weapon of choice. Marketers couldn’t target their message to a specific market segment. Instead, they had to send their message to the masses and hope that their target market brought in more revenue than the cost of acquiring them.
Today, it’s a whole different story. Thanks to the capabilities of computers and analytics programs, marketers can now test various messages to see which ones will be most effective. Today, data promotes accountability. Marketing is now more of a science than an art. There are certain rules that you have to follow. First, you have to find which values will resonate with the target market. Then, you have to create a campaign that uses those values in the messaging. Next, you analyze the interactions of the users to optimize the message and the UX. This analysis is done through the comparison of various metrics such as the click-through rates, the conversion rates, the average duration on a site and the number of returned visitors. Marketers learn by analyzing which features and messages resonate best with their consumers.
While data and analytics software has allowed for optimizations, it will never be perfect. In the end, it’s all just conjecture. Nonetheless, data gives insights into the target market and allows for marketers to make intelligent decisions in order to increase their ROI. What do you think might be the next step in improving marketing analytics?