One of my favorite aphorisms is about the difference between doing the right thing, and doing things right. Sometimes doing the right thing is all the matters because there are huge benefits even if the quality of execution is (initially) low. Learning to swim, buying your spouse a birthday present, and starting a company to deliver a cool new software or service are three examples that come to mind.

But in other cases, if you don’t do things right you might as well not do them at all. In Chapter 13 in Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, we’re shown that this can be the case when collecting and analyzing marketing data.

The simplest cases are where data is mis-read, mis-interpreted, or selectively applied. Even data-driven marketing is a mixture of science and art, and getting the mix wrong can result in some nasty concoctions.

What appears to be marketing data abounds. There is demographic data, psychographic data, and behavioral data. We get it from surveys, research, focus groups, anecdotes, and experience. The problem is there are lots of ways to let the data fool you, especially when trying to use the past to predict the future.

The Chapter gives interesting examples of various types of mis-applied data, and offers suggestions on how to blend, or perhaps more accurately build, data types into “predictive models of scenarios that people will engage in.”

There’s a lot of power in that quote, let's parse it:

• Predictive models – We need to know what’s going to happen in advance, because the web isn’t interactive in real time. A sales-person can change the pitch as they gather clues in a real conversation, but a web site can’t. But a web site can be enhanced and expanded to deliver the near-perfect experience if we know in advance (or figure out over time) exactly what is required.

• Scenarios – Plural. Many. Obviously Different. Clearly the #1 mistake of most sites is the assumption that everyone can move through one set of pages and somehow all be motivated (despite their vast personal and situational differences) to complete the same action.

• People – Unique Individuals. I don’t generally get into the consumer vs customer vs whatever debates, but those terms do make them sound monolithic. As the Eisenbergs’ and others have pointed out selling to the ‘average consumer’ doesn’t work.

• Engage in – Remember that they’re in control. Per earlier chapters, they can and will leave quickly. We need to not only deliver the right path for the needs and motivations we’re addressing, but do so in a way they find compelling. It’s a tall order but the rewards for success are dramatic.

In just shy of 100 pages so far, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark has taken us on a journey through the marketing environment of mid-2006. The old ways of conditioned response don’t work. Customer experiences drive brand perceptions. Their options are plentiful and they know it. The marketers’ perspective is warped, and customer empathy becomes the new imperative. Their buying process used to have to find its way through our sales methods, but not any more. Marketers must anticipate and provide information and support in the ways shoppers want, in the places shoppers want, at the times shoppers want. And we can’t understand them based on isolated data points, but must instead develop a multi-dimensional view in order to meet their individual requirements for not only the goods or services we’re selling but also for the process they apply to the buying decision.

The list above also describes why most web sites have such abysmal conversion rates. Technology aside, most sites still communicate as if it were 1950 or even 1850. What we need is a way to take these changes into account in order to develop a website and communications plan that will be effective in this environment. The Eisenbrothers (my favorite nickname thus far) say they have one, and will introduce us to it over the next 100 pages or so. I hope you’re as eager for it as I am.

:: This is part of a chapter-by-chapter review and commentary on Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg with Lisa Davis. Read the full book review and/or all of the Chapter reviews.