It is curious to see how things have changed in many companies. It is true that the data has always been present, it has always been part of our work. But a curious situation is taking place.

Perhaps this has always happened, but with the greater availability of data, this situation has been accentuated. #Italian Consumer Email Lists

May the trees not prevent you from seeing the forest!
Or, in other words, that the obsession with a fundamental metric for your business does not prevent you from seeing the context.

In companies we can see this situation both at a global strategy level with sales, and at the channel level (for example, traffic, number of followers, CPC …).

Whether globally or in a given channel, we tend to closely follow a specific metric and value the success of our work based on its evolution. We carry out actions in different channels with different objectives, but we only assess their effects in that metric.

This leads us to manage in the short term and forget to look at the context and trends.

Get away from the tree to see the forest and understand the context
Why do we come to this situation? The reasons are very diverse. From the influence that the natural tendency of many companies to focus exclusively on the turnover has in our work, even a bad definition of our scorecards.

Many times the explanation of the behavior of a metric is outside our websites and even outside our companies. We have to learn to assess the situation taking into account all the variables that may affect us.

To explain the behavior of a metric we have to assess:

Market: what is the competition doing? Have you launched a new product or modified the current one? What kind of strategy are you following? Are we competing for the same users on the same channels? Are we able to differentiate ourselves?
Audience: do we have a clear definition of who we are going to? Is our value proposition really relevant to them? Do we have qualitative information about what they think of us and our products?
Company: in what concerns us, everything works correctly from the first to the last step of the sales process? Do we have the right people and resources to do things?
Brand: does our brand transmit the values ​​sought by our audience? Is the positioning the right one?
Strategy: are we developing the right strategy? Is the media mix right for our audience? Are we exerting the necessary pressure to achieve the results we expect? Is our marketing relevant? Does each impact generate a reaction in our audience?
Communication and language: are we using the same language as our audience? Does our communication reach you / impact?
Correct measurement: are we measuring the most relevant metrics? Do we have a global vision of all our activity? Do campaigns work better or worse for the campaign itself or for what happens on our website? Is it a problem of marketing, usability, offer …?
The list of issues to consider is very extensive and could continue to develop. But I think that with the points treated you make a good idea.

How has your vision of short-term analysis changed? What results are explained by many other things besides the metrics at the end of the sales process? (sales, CPL, CPA, medium cart, etc.).

I finish the article with the touch of humor that Tom Fishburne always gives him in one of his last comics. I hope it makes you reflect!