This spring we will try to do a fair share of posts around web analytics. Why? Someone has to, since it’s so painfully overlooked in so many digital initiatives.

Let’s start with this PSFK article on the recent Newbalance365.com campaign. In the article they talk a bit about metrics:

New Balance will judge the campaign’s effectiveness by measuring unique visitors per month, video views, and time spent on NewBalance365.com. They will look for consumers to talk about the campaign and spread it virally, by seeding video clips on YouTube, Facebook and DailyMotion.

First of all, kudos to New Balance for actually speaking publicly about metrics at all. However. The site is made by Mother (advertising agency). It’s commissioned by the “Integrated Marketing Manager” (marketing department). Which is pretty evident in the metrics.

Metrics such as page views, unique visitors and time spent are all advertising metrics. Looking for reach and impact. Not market expansion or business development. Some call them Vanity metrics, you could also just call them useless metrics.

If we take a look at another recent marketing effort. This time by FedEx.

At 10.2 million customers, FedEx’s small-business segment grew 13 percent year over year, more than its usual 9 percent growth rate. The company cannot tie the increase to “1-2-3 Succeed!” but it will add more definitive metrics to track conversion rates from the videos to website business(…)Since the spots began running, searches for “FedEx” are up 6 percent year over year while searches for “FedEx small business” are have risen 10 percent.

Ignoring the silly name and the quality of it at all they have at least gone beyond useless metrics. Instead they look at business driven data points. Such as growth of target segment (Small business) and behavior change (number of searches).

Why is this a better way?

• The effort has a clearly stated objective – grow the small business segment
• That objective is not measured by number of art directors and copywriters that watch the video but in customer growth.
• Instead of Reach measure how it changed behavior.

So start your next digital initiative by stating a clear objective that ties to your business goals and measure the impact in sales and growth.