Why Visitor Analytics Aren’t Enough for Modern Marketers

Posted by randfish

For the first two decades of the web, the vast majority of those performing web marketing tasks used visitor analytics tools (from log files and hit counters all the way up to today’s full-featured visitors analytics tools) to do their jobs. We’d look at how many visits came in, where they were coming from, and what pages they saw, and that was enough.

But, web marketing has evolved. It’s become far more complex and competitive. And in 2013, visitor analytics alone doesn’t cut it.

The key challenges marketers face usually fall into one of three buckets:

1. Measuring & reporting (and the analysis of those reports)


2. Uncovering problem issues


3. Identifying areas of opportunity

If we visualize these challenges, we can see the missing holes compared to the features of visitor analytics software:

(note: this graphic isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list of metrics or of tools, and there’s plenty of overlap, e.g. Moz Analytics & Raven both track visit data, Mixpanel & Kiss Metrics both measure revenue & usage, etc)

It’s been my experience that most of the great web marketing teams have access to several tools that fill in the gaps on both sides what visitor analytics provide. These marketers analyze how they’re doing in the leading indicator metrics against the competition, and follow that methodology (as far as possible) down to marketing KPIs, and finally business metrics.

Why does this matter so much?

Because a competitive web marketing world means we have less room for failure over a long period of time. If a tactic or channel isn’t succeeding, we have to know whether that’s because it’s a bad channel, or whether we’re just bad at it. Competitive comparisons are critical to getting that analysis right.

If your key competitors are kicking butt on Pinterest, but your CMO doesn’t “believe” in the channel, you need data to make the case. Likewise, if you’re attracting lots of converting visitors through Pinterest, but the lifetime value of those customers is 1/10th that of your email list based on your recitivism and amplification data, you need to know that, too. Google Analytics is great, but it can’t give you the answer to either of those questions, no matter how you customize it.

Obviously, I’m biased. Moz makes marketing software that’s focused on comparing your leading indicator metrics against your competition’s (go read Matt’s Field Guide to Moz Analytics if you’re curious about the details). We have a vested interest in marketers feeling the need for this type of data. But the truth is that we built software to help solve that problem because I/we believe it’s such an important part of the story.

We’re also not the only ones in the field.

Raven Tools provides a lot of this data, too, as do SearchMetrics, WooRank, and others. For individual pieces of this picture, tools like SEMRush, Majestic SEO, Sprout Social, and many more can help. Companies that make analytics software focused on those bottom-of-funnel, lead tracking, and lifetime value/retention-focused metrics are equally essential – KissMetrics, Mixpanel, Intercom.io, Hubspot, etc. There’s a reason so many players are in this field – marketers clearly need the data.

Visitor analytics like Google Analytics, Omniture, and Webtrends aren’t going anywhere. They’re still a huge part of what we need to do in our jobs. But alone, they’re not enough.

We need to see how the competitive landscape is trending, and how our efforts compare. We need to see how channels perform beyond simple conversion and sales tracking. There’s no single piece of software that does all of this in one place, and I strongly doubt there will be. Instead, I believe the future will have marketers on the organic side doing what our brethren in paid channels do – visiting several sources, aggregating information, and making smart decisions based on the nuance their collective brain power can help deduce.

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