Get best of the week

Digital: how numbers and terms deceive us

We now live in a digital world, and the Internet has taught us to measure everything. I myself talked a lot about the fact that everything can be counted on the Internet.

There is even such a digital type of psychotype, along with visuals, kinesthetics and audials. If simplified, for them in the first place are symbols - words and numbers. This type of perception is aimed at the rationale for everything that happens around. It is among these people that many mathematicians, chess players, programmers, lawyers are found.

However, numbers and concepts are easy to manipulate if you do not think about their true meaning. Examples include the senseless race for megapixels and megahertz at the dawn of digital technology.

The goal of this post is to show how numbers and terms can be easily deceived, and how to counter this.

Success, Leads, Clicks, and Conversions


Sites, advertising, social networks and more - every day a bunch of successful cases with millions of income are poured on us. And a bunch of unsuccessful ones with billions of losses is hiding. In the end, customers are waiting for something like a magic pill. Even experienced people are being deceived or overstating expectations from the Internet, instant messengers and other things, which is just a new technology. The technology is easy to copy and duplicate. As a result, for many, the first steps are disappointing.



When a customer comes to a promoter, a conversation often comes about guarantees. Or the alleged conversion (even if the site is not) or how many leads / money will bring online advertising. Let's talk about the difference in the sense of lead between the customer and the contractor.

Leeds


Lead is a potential customer. Call, letter, order or any other contact option.

Imagine that we have a company for the construction of houses from glued beams. The company received 100 leads (calls and letters) in a month. Good or bad? Think about what a wooden house is for you? The images in the heads are completely different. Even if the price on the site is indicated, everyone will have their own understanding of the “home”. One has a country house, like this:



And the other has a cottage with a huge territory.



As we recall, texts on websites are not read, but viewed (and not very carefully).

So with the leads. In the understanding of the client, the lead is precisely his client, already carrying money. And the one who provides the advertisement has a stream or a stream in which there are golden grains of sand. They are just the client and must get and process. Himself or with the help of managers.

When the process of working with applications is built up, then there is almost never any talk about the economic result on the part of the contractor. Because the client usually knows how the stream works, what percentage of garbage is in it, and what kind of mechanics the company has in measuring its quality.

If the business is not built, then its owner tries to shift as much of his work and responsibility to contractors as possible. So that they themselves figured out how to make his business better, then they gave a stream from their channel. Because of this, misunderstanding and resentment arise.



But ... The contractor has its own business. The client has his own. It is very strange to shift managerial functions to the contractor.

Let's go back to the term. Previously, it was used by companies that receive customers on a stream (for me, a stream is something that is already difficult to manually process, for example, from 1,000 applications per day).

The value of each such lead decreases with an increase in their number. Managers are doing well and no need to strain. Advertising is on, leads are dripping. As a result, companies treat their customers not as people, but as wallets. And by and large it doesn’t matter if a particular lead becomes a client. That is, they can afford to work with quantitative indicators.

I work with b2b clients and manufacturing companies. Those who work on the stream, almost none. These enterprises practically do not use the term “lead”. They say "applications." The number of such applications from them rarely reaches several hundred per month.

Here, the approach to studying statistics is different. More important is not the number of applications, but their meaning, content. Listening to calls, reading letters by marketers to understand what is missing, so that lead becomes a client, how to change a site, an advertising campaign, what to write about on social networks. By the way, a missed call and an unanswered letter in “spam” is also a lead;).



The general conclusion: if you work not with leads, but with applications, read letters, listen to call records, in the end, do yourself a couple of weeks a workplace in the sales office or store to figure out who your customers are. And you will be surprised how little you know about your customers.

Following leads, they usually talk about conversion.

Conversion


Many experts advise working to increase conversions, right? What is conversion? Percentage of visitors to the site who performed an action: made an order, wrote a letter, called.

In RuNet, there are many recipes and tips for increasing conversion, cases on how simplifying the registration form or changing the color of the button increased sales on the site. Many marketers use someone else’s or their past experience without any doubt that this will work. Change the color of the button, or something else.



But most often, the hypotheses that are put forward and tested are a waste of time and money. Increasing conversion is a process, not a set of clear rules, design elements, and scripts. You need to understand one simple thing - there are no magic templates, designs, wonderful buttons that will increase the conversion on the site. For each case, which describes how the introduction of a video on a landing page increased conversion by 20%, there is a case on how a video lowered conversion.

Here is an example of what in many cases an increase in conversion means.

There is a company whose website brings in 30 applications per month. We decided to work on increasing the conversion (we’ve done analytics, cleaned up advertising channels, checked the site’s work) and achieved growth of 20% compared to the start of work. Those. 1.2 times. Having spent 3 months and 500,000 rubles on this.

For sites with a large flow of hundreds and thousands of customers, this is noticeable and can be beneficial depending on the quality of leads. And in our example, this means that in absolute terms we get only 6 applications per month more. How many of them get to the deal is a big question.

I lead to the fact that it is necessary to correctly determine the goal and objectives. And to agree on how each participant in the process understands this or that term and task. Which awaits the result.

In my opinion, for small volumes it is better to work with absolute numbers and to begin with, analyze which advertising channels give a greater flow of high-quality leads and money with minimal investment of time and money.

Where are clicks lost?


I will give a simple example of where the clicks in J. Direct are “lost”. Those. why in the data, Metrics and Directs are different.

The fact is that the statistics of Y. Direkt registers clicks on the ad that were not filtered by the protection system. Only by these clicks taken into account in Yandex.Direct statistics are the viewing depth, conversion and target price calculated.

Y. Metrika, unlike Y. Direct, does not register clicks, but visits, and all reports are built on them. (Visits - the number of sessions of visitors interacting with the site, including one or more page views. The session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity, that is, if within half an hour after the next page view the user did not view another page, the visit is considered completed.)

The number of clicks recorded in the Yandex.Direct and the number of visits displayed in the reports of Y. Metrika may differ, because a single visit may include several clicks on an ad or a click may not be registered at all by Y. Metrika as a visit if the Metrica counter was not loaded while viewing the site. As a result, the picture breaks up ...



There are also a number of other reasons why a click or view may sometimes not be counted out by Y. Metrica:

  • incorrect installation of the counter code;
  • the presence in the browser / OS of the user or on the corporate proxy server of an ad blocker, which may contain rules for blocking counters;

For other examples of traffic sources and statistics distortion. A few years ago, an excellent article appeared on Habré “What traffic actually comes to Direct, even if you are an honest person”: https://habr.com/en/company/surfingbird/blog/302528/

Summary


Why did I give all these examples? You do not need to be deeply versed in online advertising in order not to be confused. It is important to ask questions (even if they seem silly), if in doubt, and keep in mind a few things:

  1. The same words evoke a different image in different people. Make sure you and your contractor have the same understanding of the terms. And better draw pictures and prototypes.
  2. Tools are made by people, and computers and programs sometimes break down. Therefore, pay attention to obvious distortions in the data obtained. And look for a reason, write in support.
  3. Use multiple data sources and statistics. If the problem is on your side, there should be signals from different channels. If there is no problem, perhaps the trouble is in the service itself.
  4. All sources (Wordstat, competitor keyword tracking services, webmaster) use a limited set of data, and show even less. Processing algorithms are also different. And what you end up with can be completely biased.
  5. The statistics and forecasts in the first stages are best perceived as a guideline, is it worth it to get in touch with the Internet (advertising)? You can ask the contractor to estimate 3 options: positive, optimal and negative. And calculate the costs and the likely profit based on your data on conversion, average bill, and more.

I understand that the article is somewhat controversial. I will be glad to receive comments and new examples.

More articles:


All Articles