Advertorial: een interview met Avinash Kaushik over het Webanalytics Congres 2012

“Just implement the standard tag. Don’t customize anything. Start using the data. Take action!”

Op 14 en 15 maart a.s. vindt in Houten het zesde Webanalytics Congres plaats. Op 14 maart worden workshops gegeven, op 15 maart vindt het congres plaats. Eén van de grote namen die present zullen zijn, is Avinash Kaushik. Hij is o.a. Digital Marketing Evangelist bij Google en schrijver van de boeken Web Analytics 2.0 en Web Analytics: An Hour A Day. Hij geeft een keynote én een 2 uur durende Q&A-sessie waarvoor je je vragen kunt insturen.

Ter voorbereiding van het event hadden wij een kort interview met Avinash.

Marketingfacts: What will be the focus of your talk at the Web Analytics Congres?

Avinash Kaushik: I'm passionate about digital marketing and digital analytics. So my talk will focus on new and interesting possibilities to find users, influence them and deliver outcomes for the business. The role that data plays in each of those three cases, and how to be magnificent (and scalable) at doing data informed marketing.

Marketingfacts: In earlier talks you mentioned “revenue is good, economic value is God!” How does that relate to the ROI vs social media discussions that seem to be very much money and revenue-based?

Avinash Kaushik: The essence of that statement is that you can't just care about revenue as that is such a tiny part of the outcome delivered to your business. You have to care about all the outcomes that your digital existence delivers (for you and for your customers).

Social is no different. You have to show some revenue impact from your social efforts, but that is not the be all and end all from participation in social channels. You'll also measure the impact of social media in improving your company's customer service efforts (and reducing some cost), its impact on your marketing efforts (reducing acquisition cost), its impact on building an audience that you can own (improving loyalty) and so many more things.

We need to bring more creativity to social measurement strategy, and not forget to show that there is some revenue (I am confident there will be some of it!).

Marketingfacts: One of the biggest opportunities of social media for analytics and online marketing seems to be combining social profiles, interactions, behaviour and communications with actual behavior within your own domains; in short integrating Social CRM and analytics? To what extent do you see this happening already? And which companies are leading the way in this regard?

Avinash Kaushik: There is little doubt that there is a lot of data that consumers are willing to share about them publicly. There is an opportunity here for companies who have explicit permission from these users to see their data to use it to improve the consumer experience.

One part of it might be to integrate behavior of the company's audience from social media with the behavior of that audience with the company's digital presence (mobile, web, etc.).

There is also a lot of activity in this space (along with a lot of unwarranted hype). I'm optimistic there will be a lot of evolution going forward.

I do caution companies to ensure that they keep investing in channels that work today (emailmarketing is still absolutely critical and sexy!), while experimenting in new channels.

Marketingfacts: You are at the very front -or bleeding edge, if you like- of the analytics field. If we look around us, we see a lot of companies that are still struggling with basic analytics: implementing GA, figuring out what to do with the numbers, etc. What would be your advise to these companies?

Avinash Kaushik: First, everyone who is reading this article, or breathing the lovely air in Netherlands, should come to this conference! I'm impressed at the agenda that Jeroen Tjepkema and the Congres leaderships has put together. It is going to be a great conference!

OK, now to your question… I'm amongst a minority that believes that we have waaaayyy too much focus on the technical business of analytics. Tagging and Javascript hacking and implementation and all that other stuff that ensures that companies spend 18 months just trying to get going. It is a fantastic disservice to our industry that so many companies spend so much of their life just implementing WebTrends or SiteCatalyst of Google Analytics.

Just implement the standard tag. Don't customize anything. Start using the data. Take action!

Sure you won't be able to fly to the moon right away. But hey, you're barely in state go fly from Eindhoven to Rotterdam. The moon can wait.

The first part of my keynote will focus on how to use metrics that help drive action. Great metrics, ones that really show the deep underlying problems, hidden opportunities. I feel that if we can get businesses to use those metrics (most available with the standard javascript tag!), we can really get them engaged with data, engaged with action, engaged with happiness.

So I guess I'm saying come to the Congres, learn the secrets. 🙂 Thanks for the opportunity to do the interview. I'm very excited about being a part of the event and to visit Holland again.

Meer informatie over en tickets voor het Webanalytics Congres zijn beschikbaar op de website en meer informatie over Avinash Kaushik is te vinden op zijn persoonlijke weblog Occam's Razor.