Not every story matters.
A web analytics tool is capable of serving up over a million facts, most of them meaningless without context.
Most people you encounter within the organization won’t have the patience to ask ‘so?’ three times to haul something out of you.
What usually happens:
You: “CPC branded traffic is up 44% this month.”
Decision Maker: “Yay! Okay, Good Bye!!”
What a curious decision maker might occasionally do:
You: “CPC branded traffic is up 44% this month.”
Decision Maker: “So?”
You: “We’re paying $23,000 more.”
Decision Maker: “So? I approved the increase in budget.”
You: “The money is wasted.”
Decision Maker: “Why? We’re getting more traffic, 44% more according to you.”
You: “Overall traffic is up 2%. Your media agency didn’t filter for what we usually get for free – organic traffic. We’re paying for traffic that we would have gotten otherwise.”
Decision Maker: “Oh. That’s it’s worth fixing. What a great insight! Thanks.”
While it’s important for a marketing scientist to generate a few quick wins every 90 days, remember that large organizations are expensive to move. They do very few things very well, and typically just well enough to generate a return, and that’s it. The stories you tell have to be important enough to be relevant to the context of your organization.
