Recently had the pleasure of hearing Avinash Kaushik, the head of Google Analytics, share his views on the need to re-think (web) analytics. His perpsectives added resonance to Peter Nicholson's contentions that we've become data rich and attention poor.
Avinash's mantra for capturing and using analytics is, on reflection, a valuable take on how analytics must evolve to contribute to improved sales productivity:
- focus on outcomes. They're what matter, and today they're buried in a sea of activity measures that don't matter unless they affect outcomes.
- as a core outcome, don't stink. Dig for any stats that might suggest you do stink, then drive the odor away by the actions you take to improve your business.
- conversations are key to marketing and sales outcomes and growing in importance. Look for new measures, including via social media, that gauge how effectively you're participating in conversations.
- learn to be wrong, quickly. Be curious; resist the temptation to let the Highest Paid Person's Opinion persist; test hypotheses; make changes, fast. Mistakes are key to gaining deep insights. Velocity makes the cost of mistakes matter less.
- segment or die. Aggregate metrics rarely reveal anything that can drive learning + improvements. Compare things and, from comparisons, find new performance benchmarks to strive for.
- magnificant successes will come from deep strategic thinking that people engage in with the help of data, not tactical reactions to raw data themselves nor tools that deliver the raw data.
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Based on his presentation to the Internet Marketing Conference in Vancouver, and points made in his forthcoming new book Web Analytics 2.0. The wisdom in these observations is Avinash's. The mistakes, if any, in this summary of his remarks, are mine.
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