[_] SEO Companies/Consultants
Sam Mignano - Analyst
sam at beyondmetrix.com
Fri Oct 20 18:49:51 BST 2006
<snip>I was merely riffing on the "beyond metrics"</snip>
cool - its hard to tell sometimes from an email :)
<snips>It would seem to me to be a lot harder to manage a
real statistical test. How you'd go about measuring the difference a
particular
marketing strategy makes. So: what do you measure? How do you gauge the
success of a particular piece of marketing? What, to come full circle,
are the metrics?</snips>
Marketing has been used to describe many things of late, from brand
creation and branding to newspaper/magazine adverts, press releases, PR,
market research, online viral campaigns, SEO and much more. It is
impossible to give a one-size-fits-all answer to your questions or a
single statistical test that would define success.
I only deal with online marketing and SEO - but as far as my work goes,
I would ensure there are clear success criteria defined and agreed at
the beginning of the project.
As a *very* basic example, for an SEO project the success criteria might
be top ten positions on the main three search engines for a given set of
phrases within 6 months of project start. This is easily quantifiable
and success or failure is clear cut.
What I meant when I said things have changed in the last ten years - is
that, at least in my experience, customers are starting to realise that
they need to put much more thought in to online marketing - and that to
succeed they need to define proper goals, quantify results against
success criteria and put plans in place to keep the marketing and ROI in
check/on track.
We advise our customers to look at the whole picture with regard to
their website and online marketing campaigns - to include usability,
accessibility, best practice, W3C validation, organic SEO, competitor
analysis, market analysis etc. All of these elements can cause some
element of failure in a marketing campaign - so need addressing to
ensure maximum potential.
There is that saying that 50% of all marketing fails - and that most
people don't know which 50% is which. I do however think that slowly
people are realising they need to be a bit more savvy about how they
spend their budget as without that insight the vast numbers of "snakeoil
salesmen" will take advantage of that lack of awareness - particularly
in relation to online marketing and SEO, promise the earth and deliver
nothing useful.
Anyway - I am more than happy to continue this discussion off list if
anyone wants to - as I wouldn't want to be accused of clogging up the
list ;-)
Sam
-----Original Message-----
From: underscore-bounces at under-score.org.uk
[mailto:underscore-bounces at under-score.org.uk] On Behalf Of Jan Grant
Sent: 20 October 2006 14:33
To: underscore at under-score.org.uk
Subject: RE: [_] SEO Companies/Consultants
--
underscore_ list info/archive -> http://www.under-score.org.uk
cool - its hard to tell sometimes from an email :)
<snips>It would seem to me to be a lot harder to manage a
real statistical test. How you'd go about measuring the difference a
particular
marketing strategy makes. So: what do you measure? How do you gauge the
success of a particular piece of marketing? What, to come full circle,
are the metrics?</snips>
Marketing has been used to describe many things of late, from brand
creation and branding to newspaper/magazine adverts, press releases, PR,
market research, online viral campaigns, SEO and much more. It is
impossible to give a one-size-fits-all answer to your questions or a
single statistical test that would define success.
I only deal with online marketing and SEO - but as far as my work goes,
I would ensure there are clear success criteria defined and agreed at
the beginning of the project.
As a *very* basic example, for an SEO project the success criteria might
be top ten positions on the main three search engines for a given set of
phrases within 6 months of project start. This is easily quantifiable
and success or failure is clear cut.
What I meant when I said things have changed in the last ten years - is
that, at least in my experience, customers are starting to realise that
they need to put much more thought in to online marketing - and that to
succeed they need to define proper goals, quantify results against
success criteria and put plans in place to keep the marketing and ROI in
check/on track.
We advise our customers to look at the whole picture with regard to
their website and online marketing campaigns - to include usability,
accessibility, best practice, W3C validation, organic SEO, competitor
analysis, market analysis etc. All of these elements can cause some
element of failure in a marketing campaign - so need addressing to
ensure maximum potential.
There is that saying that 50% of all marketing fails - and that most
people don't know which 50% is which. I do however think that slowly
people are realising they need to be a bit more savvy about how they
spend their budget as without that insight the vast numbers of "snakeoil
salesmen" will take advantage of that lack of awareness - particularly
in relation to online marketing and SEO, promise the earth and deliver
nothing useful.
Anyway - I am more than happy to continue this discussion off list if
anyone wants to - as I wouldn't want to be accused of clogging up the
list ;-)
Sam
-----Original Message-----
From: underscore-bounces at under-score.org.uk
[mailto:underscore-bounces at under-score.org.uk] On Behalf Of Jan Grant
Sent: 20 October 2006 14:33
To: underscore at under-score.org.uk
Subject: RE: [_] SEO Companies/Consultants
--
underscore_ list info/archive -> http://www.under-score.org.uk