My friend emailed me the other day raving about this book he just read called, “Your Marketing Sucks”, by Mark Stevens. I haven’t had time to actually read it but had it summarized to me over the phone.

So I went to the Your Marketing Sucks site and the first sentence that popped out at me read, “The marketing that sucks would be defined as anything that doesn’t lead to a sale, while the marketing that works delivers a powerful return on investment (ROI).” Without having read the book, I must thank Mr. Stevens in advance for taking the time to write about this topic.

It’s evident that the industry is finding itself at a crossroads, as ad agencies are becoming more accountable for measuring campaign results for their clients. Marketing managers are increasingly compelled to justify budgets with measurable results and the ad agencies or divisions that manage marketing budgets with an eye towards ROI will come out on top.

As it relates to Internet marketing, having good web analytics in place is a crucial component of overall ROI tracking. At Blueliner, we utilize and recommend the following web analytics tools:

Webtrends
ClickTracks
Omniture
Clickpath

The cool thing about ClickTracks (Pro Hosted version) is the type of user behavior data that they provide, including how visitors interact with your website, length of time visitors are on your site and so forth. It’s a pretty robust system, so you may want to get with the support team for assistance. Good support, either from the vendors or an analytics consultant, is a must and these guys are pretty patient (especially with me, thanks Giddian!).

Clickpath is really unique too, in the sense that it’s one of the few web analytics tools available that bridge the gap between online and offline conversions. It provides information on internet-generated calls and the location of the caller, as well as on the search process that drove each call. In this way, advertisers know which calls are qualified, and which ad campaigns influenced them. Sounds like a great solution for companies running traditional and interactive campaigns! Advertisers can also minimize costs associated with publishing a phone number, paying for a call center, and yada yada yada.