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12.21.07
Too Much What, Not Enough Why
 By Gord Hotchkiss
In the last couple of sessions I've done, I've urged marketers in general, and search marketers in particular, to step away from the spreadsheet a little more often and start looking at why their customers do what they do.
In Park City last week, at the Search Insider Summit, I urged those collected in the room to "spend less time thinking like marketers, and more time thinking like your customer".
Do Unto Customers as You Would Have Done Unto You
There was a moment that crystallized the issue for me. The session was talking about mobile search, and one person in the room asked the presenter when the mobile carriers would make subscriber information available to marketers for better targeting. For me, this sent off all types of alarms, but in looking around the room, I could see marketing heads nodding in agreement. "Yes," they nodded, "that information would make our jobs so much easier. We could zero in on exactly the right segment, so we could deliver ads targeted right to them."
I couldn't hold back anymore. Commandeering the mic, I asked how many in the room thought this would be a good marketing idea. Many hands went up. Then I asked them, as mobile users, who thought this would be a good idea. You could feel the paradigm shift sweep across the room. They chuckled uncomfortably as they realized they would be inundanted with more disruptive, annoying advertising. Suddenly, the shoe was on the other foot, and it didn't fit very well.
Too Much What, Not Enough Why
As marketers, we spend long hours puzzling over the what questions:
- What channels reach my customers most effectively
- What messages will convert the best
- What will give me the highest return on advertising spend?
- What landing pages will yield the highest conversion rates
We crunch truckloads of data, because it's available. You've heard it over and over. One of the blessings of search is that it's so measurable. Yes, it is measurable, if you're looking for the answers to what. What link, what click through rate, what traffic source, what conversion action? It's all laid out for us in a statistical smorgasbord, and search marketers love to dive in. We feast on KPI's and Metrics, finally pushing away from the table like some over-sated visitor to an all you can eat Vegas buffet, stuffed beyond the point of comfort.
But in pouring through this data, we tend to become fixated on it and think the truth lies hidden in there somewhere. We don't step back and wonder "why" all those "whats" are happening. I had a great chance to chat with James Lamberti from ComScore at the show, and we talked about this. There's few sources of sheer quantitative data richer than the ComScore panel. And James and I have had the chance to talk about how Enquiro's qualitative approach often dovetails nicely with ComScores "quant" perspective of the world. As James said, "the thing I love about your research is that it tells me why much of the stuff we see in our data is happening." Amen.
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About the Author:
Gord Hotchkiss is the President and CEO of Enquiro, whose goal is to push the search engine optimization industry forward both in terms of measurable results and client satisfaction.
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