Reflection on Metrics

This week I learned about the art of marketing. Seeming how this is my first marketing class, I was unaware that there was a strategy in placed in order to market a product/service online. According to our text, I should match my marketing objecstives to its marketing metrics (Roberts, 2013). One metric included in the text is Google Analytic. Google Analytics is a good way to evaluate internet marketing because it is free, it checks the number of visits a webpage has, how the customer was directed to the page, and bounce rate (number of people who leave from the initial page) (Roberts, 2013). Another metric platform is WebTrends. WebTrends compares the new visitors versus returning visitors and repeat buyers (Roberts, 2013). Panel data is another form of metric platform that displays the “background demographic, lifestyles, and activity data from panel members” (Roberts, 2013, p.399). These metric platforms allow businesses to gather information on how their marketing affects their outcome. Panel data is a good idea if a company wants to know their target audience. Panel data shows exactly the audience they are attracting and can help companies navigate towards a different audience if they wanted to. Google Analytics monitors a company’s website. This form of metric platform is beneficial when a company is looking to expand its audience and also demonstrates what tools to use on the website to keep the attention of the customer. Areas that need improving are social media metrics. Social media is becoming a very big tool in marketing for companies, but there is not an adequate metric of platform. Another problem businesses are running into is that they feel their metrics are not good enough to measure their marketing. Measuring how many times people click on a website and the demographic of that individual is not enough. Companies need to know exactly what will make the customer want to buy their product/service and what deters them. The metric platforms above does not go in detail enough to demonstrate that. Surveys are a good way to evaluate marketing. Some companies should try issuing surveys to customers with questionnaires that focus on marketing.

References

Roberts, M. & Zahay, D.  (2013). Internet marketing: Integrating online and offline strategies (3rd ed.).

            Mason, Ohio: South-Western, Cengage Learning.