Man hours versus metrics

The good news is that the internet provides ample data for measuring entertainment marketing success.  The bad news is the same.  Data – scads of it, can drown a marketer (and even an experienced researcher) as they make infinite dives into metrics that can end up alternately with game changing discoveries, minor improvements or just an inactionable dead end.  Therein is arguably one the biggest challenges facing today’s marketers –that of achieving the fine balance of man-hours to metrics.

Enter the next stage of making analytics simple and functional.  An emerging industry of simplified analytics is personified by  Splunk named appropriately for the phonetics cousin “spelunking” or cave diving.  Only now it’s data mining!   Splunk’s success is glaringly evident by the reported $3 Billion IPO achieved this month.  They are a poster child for the natural progression of simplification that we have seen repeated over and over again on the web.

As exciting as this trend may be, it still is not a feasible fix for the smaller companies that struggle even with the free helpful hand of Google Analytics and/or easy graphic nature of Facebook Insights.   The reality is that in a small to medium size company the successful use of this data is more than likely driven by the self discipline of the marketer crunching the analytics.  So for now, until a Splunk like option is affordable, marketers need to set realistic metric analysis goals that are actionable.  Page views, bounce rates, in page content analysis are simple metric checks that can provide ample direction.  When man hours are tight, a good disciplined metric analysis strategy is critical.

Room for discussion:

Choose a local entertainment company.  Discuss and identify the essential analytics to be followed for an average  1) website  2) facebook page.   What actionable information will be created?  How often should this be reviewed?  How many hours per week/month should/would this take?