Numbers mean nothing without context

I have an interesting exchange on Twitter yesterday and it brought up several good points about basic marketing strategy that I thought would make for a good blog.  It all started when Brad Ward posted stats from his website...

Basic point number 1: Know your audience

There is a huge difference between what your POTENTIAL audience is and what your TARGET audience is.  Obviously, anything on the web has the potential (though not very likely) of being viewed by anyone on the Web.  But that's not Brad's target audience.  He works in admission, so his target is prospective students and their families.  I work in development so mine is alumni and anyone else that wants to donate money.  By identifying and focusing on your target audience, you can really hone in on their needs and how to appeal to them. 

Also, I want to make sure that everyone understands what I'm talking about when I ask how many kids are in his funnel.  This is an admissions funnel:  

I think it's pretty self-explanatory, but it is basically an illustration of the admissions process and the fact that you start out with a really big inquiry base but as you move through the cycle, kids drop out along the way.  

The conversation continued...

Basic Point Number 2: The numbers are never too hard to extrapolate and if you don't do it, you have no basis for assessment.

All I was looking for here was a basic context for the original numbers I was seeing, and for that the numbers are extremely easy to look at, which I expound on below.  In fact, they are vital to the assessment process.  What does it tell me that 51,000 people looked at his blogs?  That is just factual information but not an assessment of good or bad.  It is what it is.  You can only assess good or bad when you see it in relation to other numbers.  

Basic Point Number 3: Your competitors numbers aren't an indication of your success.  Do you and your competitor have the EXACT same target audience?  Do you have the EXACT same marketing strategy?  Do you have the EXACT same goals?  I doubt it.  And therefore, they are not a measure for your success or failure.  To me, it's only distantly relative what a competitor does - I'm more interested in if my strategies match up against my goals for success.  Brad even said it himself - Ball State is larger but they have a similar applicant pool, which means that Ball State probably has a higher rate of admission and is therefore targeting a different type of student.  Also, if they have a similar applicant pool then the ultimate size of the school in relation to views of blogs geared at PROSPECTIVE students is irrelevant.  

And it continues...

Now here is where we start to get into some specifics.  I threw a basic example out there that I use as an indicator regarding if an idea is sticking with an audience.  Now I want to be clear, but numbers I asked for do not really give me a valid indication of whether the blog was successful or not - just an indication. I have no idea if Brad's numbers were unique or total views or how many of the views where comprised of return visitors or how many of them where from prospective students/families, current students, alumni or other misc. readers that our outside of Brad's target audience.  So comparing his numbers to his total prospective audience may not be the most valid method that something is working.  I do think, however, that it is a VERY valid way to tell if something is not working.  If Brad had an audience of 500k and only 51k views, he would have a problem.  

But at least now I can make my indicator calculation: With 51K views and 52K in his funnel, and we make the (poor) assumption that all those views came from prospective students, most of them have seen the blogs at least once.  Is this good?  We'll get back to that in a sec...

Basic Point Number 4: If you've got a worthwhile tool, market the hell out of it: Brad also gave me a piece of info I didn't ask for - that there had been a large email blast of 19K marketing the blogs.  My question is, with 52K in his funnel, then why is the largest email blast to less than half of that?  I don't want to get into an email discussion here, but stuff like this just begs to be consistently marketed to a mass audience.  These blogs are not just appropriate for one stage in the funnel - they are relevant to ALL stages.  They are a cultivating tool for younger classes and a decision making tool for accepts.  Email, as a rule, should have one call-to-action per message.  I wonder how many views he could have if there had been more than one large blast of 19K?

Now here's where Debra pops in and brings up some great points as well.  

I think I've already covered the first few twits in this group, so I'm going to skip down.

Basic Point Number 5: Measurements of Success Depend on YOUR BUSINESS GOALS.

If there's any key point to take out of this blog, I think its that one.  Success doesn't depend on what your competitors are doing and the numbers mean nothing if they are not brought back around to help meet the business goals of your institution (I suppose one exception to this is if your business goal is to get more market share than your competitor, but I think any college that strives for that needs a new set of managers.  A better goal is to meet a certain number for enrollment, based on the total operating cost of the institution and the size of the community you want to maintain).  So yes, success metrics would have to differ from school to school because another school does not have your business goals. 

Ok, so lets get back to Brad's blogs for a second.  What was the original goal of the blogs and how did that tie back overall goals of the institution?  Maybe views aren't the right success metric.  What if the goal of the blogs was to ENGAGE prospective students?  You don't get that through views - you can get that through comments.  At that point, the total views of a blog mean nothing, unless you are talking about them in relation to the comments.    

All of this really goes back to a basic framework for building a marketing strategy that I blogged about a while ago: 

• Plan what you'll do
  
• Do It
  
• Evaluate what you just did
  

Planning involves coming up with higher level strategy that aligns with business goals and setting goals for what you want to implement.  Doing it is the execution of the strategy.  Evaluating involves crunching the numbers against the business goals you set in the planning stage.  We all tend to be very good at the execution stages, but not so good at the other two, but it doesn't make them any less important in the whole process.  

Finally, I want to be clear that I'm not picking on Brad in this blog - I'm just using this as an example.  I have no idea how much work Brad has done on this that he didn't Twit about, since its hard to express everything you do in 140 characters.  

Key Takeaways: 

1. Know your Audience
   
2. Without context, numbers mean nothing
   
3. Your competitors strategy is not a measurement for your success
   
4. If you have a worthwhile tool, market the hell out of it
   
5. Measurement of your success depends on the business goals of your institution.