Earlier this year I wrote that the Tiger Woods brand is so strong that when he was out with knee surgery, major PGA golf tournaments had a significant drop in viewers. For example the Buick International was down 57%.  (see  http://tinyurl.com/y9857s2   ) What effect will the accident in Orlando and Tiger’s actions surrounding the accident have on the Tiger Woods brand?

I am sure that in the long term American Express and GM will be just as thrilled to have endorsement contracts in place as Tiger destines to be the greatest golfer if not greatest athlete of all time. However, in the short term, there will be some fallout and consequences. The first being the recent decision not to participate in the Chevron World Challenge. What an opportunity lost for Chevron and other sponsors of this event and the game of golf. The incident in Orlando would have spilled over to this week’s tournament, and imagine how many viewers would have tuned in to see and hear from America’s favorite brand icon. Would he have answered questions from the press? Would he be able to play at his best? Would the other players support him? Would his wife be at his side? The tournament would be great drama and the television ratings would be off the chart.

I am sure Tiger is getting sage advice from his lawyers and agents, but I would have loved to have seen him play and make a record number of birdies and eagles, hold up the trophy, give thanks to the tournament, players, and love to Elin. End of story.

There is an old advertising saying attributed to John Wanamaker that goes “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half”. Today you may still think that half of your advertising may be wasted, but shame on you if you don’t know which half.

With company websites as the cornerstone of today’s marketing, and with the addition of analytic tools to measure traffic, conversions, and sales that flow through your website, not only can you determine which half of your advertising and marketing is working, but you can make informed marketing decisions that prevent you from wasting money on advertising and marketing that does not work.

There is almost no marketing effort that can’t be tracked through analytics. Online advertising such as links from PPC, or purchased links from third party websites like Thomasnet and GlobalSpec, e-mail campaigns, direct mail campaigns, trade show events, and trade publication advertising can all be measured through your company website.

What do we measure?

Consider metrics for quantity, quality, cost, time and satisfaction. The most important metric in our space is Key Performance Indicators (KPI). If you don’t know what that is, call us. For demand generation, focus on cost per inquiry, cost per opportunity and cost per sale. For branding, focus on recognition and recall through surveys.

• How many unique visitors your site receives daily
• Which keywords are responsible for driving sales and leads to the site
• What are the most effective referring sources to drive revenue
• Which marketing campaign generates the most sales at the lowest cost
• Which pages within your site result in the most profit

Understanding which analytics to focus on (KPI) and understanding how to interpret those KPI can help you make improvements in your web design, improvements in your marketing/advertising campaigns, and ultimately increase the quality of your leads.For an example of an analytics report, customized specifically for your company go to:                  FREE ANALYSIS