It’s online marketing perfect?

Posted on | October 2, 2006 | Comments Off

Well, here I’m writing some words again, this time it’s about information quality. I’ve been working in marketing for more than 10 years, and had the chance to do it both offline and online, actually as the most of my generation marketers started with offline marketing and some of us like me switch to online.

This situation gave me the chance (good or bad) to understand the constant information constraints. I mean, having recent and on topic information was almost impossible (offline)indeed companies use to say, “I don’t care how much does it cost, I want it, and I wanted as soon is possible. As soon is possible in offline marketing, if we talk about primary information, could be 3 months.

There is another important fact, and managers with experience in Latin-America will understands what I mean, finding out secondary information in Latin-America is almost impossible, and if so, you should at least doubt about its quality.

Sampling

Online marketing is so different, mainly because two important things, first you can what track every single person does (it’s technically possible and affordable), and second, you can have that information in real time. So, it’s online marketing perfect? Well actually it is not, far from that it has lot of problems, and one of the biggest ones is the non-controlled information volume. SMB’s, big companies, professionals or just someone with internet access can generate information (which is great) but this information is normally taken as a truth. So if I write a post saying that is proved that goggle analytics under measure your site metrics or that internet traffic has increase 30% last year or that the Latinos in USA enjoy social networks more than the rest of the US inhabitants (with a very convincing explanation included) then the false information will flow as water through the online world, and a bunch of people will be taking about it, even when I haven’t mentioned the source of my information and how was it obtained (research methodology).

Everyday I received bunchs of “information” and the first thing what I do is try to finds out how was it obtained; if this is not mentioned then the information has, at least for me, no value. It doesn’t matter if it does or doent’s make any sense, if there is no source and methodology, the information is just trash and that’s exactly where it goes. I invite you to be an active “web information cleaner” mainly for two reasons:

- Internet allows free or low cost information and that’s the way is has to be.

- Second: We all need to take decisions based on trustfully information.

Juan Manuel Damia

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