Look Back on SMX East
October 15th, 2008 by mkazberukWe just wrapped up another successful show at SMX East in New York.
Increasingly, we see two types of visitors at these show: industry veterans and people who are just beginning to learn about online advertising and analytics. It’s great to see more new people/faces – their interest and enthusiasm continues to fuel the growth of SEM!
The availability of more easily accessible and increasingly free applications for SEM is helping this growth. The easy setup and low cost of AdWords is encouraging more and more businesses to start advertising online, while Google Analytics and now, Yahoo Analytics, is allowing more users to start analyzing their site traffic.
Many attendees asked what the rise and availability of free tools like Google Analytics means for providers like WebTrends. While we don’t serve the same customers, Google Analytics has been a positive force for the industry by serving the mass market. Thanks to Google Analytics, sites with lower traffic or lower budgets are becoming educated about the benefits of SEO and best practices for online marketing.
We’ll see you at AdTech New York next month!
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October 16th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Hi Marta,
Can you describe what size a company should be in order to look seriously at WebTrends over a free tool like Google Analytics? You’re right that more and more companies are jumping into this space, especially linking SEO to analytics, and I just wonder when a business should look beyond the freebies?
Thanks!
October 16th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Janet – Thanks for question (and the well wishes on Barry’s post). Actually, your company size isn’t the key factor when looking for an analytics solution, but your company needs or desires. Because mass-market analytics tend to offer a one-size fits all solution, we usually ask our potential customers a couple of questions about those needs.
Do you need:
– the ability to drill down to visitor level data?
– to slice/dice the data to answer specific questions?
– multiple access points to your data, including exporting?
– to track cross-domain?
– to segment visitors for remarketing or future campaigns?
– to integrate with other business systems? (email, CRM, etc.)
– to create custom reports or dashboards?
If the answer to any of these questions are yes, then you should be looking at a paid solution which allows for customization and configuration. Free tools can be used effectively as a short-term solution for getting summary data on trends or a quick check on traffic levels, but true marketing optimization is all about results – paid solutions can provide those actionable insights. If there are additional specifics I can answer, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
October 17th, 2008 at 7:10 am
I really agree with Michelle. It’s not size, it’s the payback. I hope this turns into its own posting so the discussion will have a higher profile. It’s one of the elephants in WebTrends’ living room.
I would contribute that if you start getting into analytics in an organized way, Google Analytics gets really expensive. Where I work, we were able to persuade an important customer that if they wanted us to continue to deliver the kind of business information they were already getting, and if they wanted to continue to have us use Google Analytics on their behalf, that we would have to charge them far more than what we could charge them if they switched to WebTrends. Getting decent stuff out of Google Analytics is a lot of manual work. It was absolutely killing our staff because the reporting was extensive. GA had the info, but in no way was it organized to be usable by the client.
Michael Helbling ran into the same situation at his company and posted something on his blog (http://www.mymotech.com) about the true-cost-of-operation that came out of an intensive analysis they did of the two products. He wrote it back in February.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Hi Chris,
Absolutely, this does warrant it’s own post and you should see something in-depth soon.