Rand Fishkin brought some interesting data (US) to #SMX Munich - Google is still sending the majority of traffic - but social networks are where people spend time and discover what to search for. It has become impossible to realistically assign attribution. Look for direct traffic that does not enter your homepage, and you get an idea of dark social traffic. What about MMM and ML? It works, if every brand touch is included. However, it cannot include word of mouth, heard you in a podcast, saw your content, … So what is Rands message? "The best marketing opportunities are often the least measurable." Your options: "Throw money at the big tech providers." -> If you do this, test incrementality "Build a hard-to-measure dashboard." → Lots of work Measure the big stuff: traffic, conversions, revenue. Invest in creative. Rand rejects not only attribution, but most measurement, too. Instead, build a marketing flywheel. Find your audience, create value, look at vanity metrics and the big picture. Inspiring keynote! It supports my gut feeling that we should focus on our creative output and visibility and don't spend much time on over-reporting. On the other hand, we are still data-driven marketers and should test our hypotheses as good as we can. What is your take on this?
Ismail Reimchen
4mo
Sometimes it’s nice knowing that not everything can be measured and the human element (creativity, thinking outside the box, etc.) has still value in a world where everything looks to be trackable and traceable :)
Raymond Bilodeau
4mo
Quick question, where is TikTok?
Pascal Fantou 💬
4mo
Traffic is not „big stuff“. Revenue is more. Profit really is. Besides that I totally support Rand‘s message on thinking more and measuring less. My only issue with this graph is that it shows a web2web world in an app/messaging world.
Felix Duerler
4mo
Thank you Oliver Zenglein for your post Rand Fishkin for the presentations. There are some good points, but this general assumption is too negative…let’s rather focus on what clients see and want and the positive side… clients want answers! Yes, there is some paid search traffic that you might get anyway. Yes, there are some social dollars wasted. At the end you still need to figure out what channel is important to you to what extend and how to prioritize your ad spend. And, a good part of the traffic can still be measured. Remind you at Henry Ford marketing claims… “50% of marketing spend is always wasted, you just don’t know which half.” So, let’s have a positive impact on clients decisions!
Josh Stone
4mo
This is great! The more we lean into that realistically assigning attribution was always impossible, the better. Instead - What content is being produced? How much is being spent to distribute it? Where is it being distributed? How is the quantity and quality of website and social media traffic trending? What is revenue and profitability? That's about it.
Wolfgang Müller
4mo
Danke fürs Teilen! Dieser Mensch hat seit so vielen Jahren spannende Ansätze, Daten, Ideen. Und „Suchmaschinen liefern mehr Traffic, aber auf Social Media entstehen die Ideen, wonach man sucht“ ist eine schöne Erkenntnis. „Dark Social Traffic“ merke ich mir.
Andrew Claremont
4mo
Feels like we’re going back to the old school methods of correlating ad buys and PR against customer behaviour.
Diane Burley
4mo
Logical. Unfortunately most executive management, particularly in B2b, is old school. Do we need to wait for the youth to takeover the c suite to right the measurement ship? What is the most effective ways to teach old dogs new attitudes about measurement?
Cofounder of SparkToro & Snackbar Studio. Author of Lost & Founder. Feminist. I love underdogs, cooking, & helping people do better marketing
4moThanks for sharing this Olivier! Interesting times we're living through, but I completely agree with your conclusion: "my gut feeling is that we should focus on our creative output and visibility and don't spend much time on over-reporting." 💯