By Matt Buchenau

Learning Spanish would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t had to understand what the words meant. To me, Spanish was a string of easy-to-pronounce, phonetically obvious words. Aside from an accent, a tilde or an extra alphabetical character or two, saying or reading the words on the page was cake. But much to the detriment of my high-school grade point average, understanding those words and interpreting the nuances of the language was where things got a tad murky…pea soup murky, in fact!

I see a strong parallel between my misadventures with learning Spanish and how many companies use their Internet marketing analytics. Assuming they pay attention to the available data at all (many don’t) most can only say or read the words on the page. Sure, most can look at traffic and know when it’s rising or falling. Most can tie a traffic peak or valley to an outside event: a new advertising campaign, a press release, an e-blast or something like that, but when it comes to a more granular understanding of the abundant data, what it truly says about your web marketing initiative, how your company stacks up against your competition and, above all, what it can reveal about your audience, a gaping chasm exists between website key performance indicator (KPI) data and making meaningful, actionable sense of it all. At the bottom of this chasm lies a gnarled heap of wasted dollars, missed opportunities and failed marketing plans, that, with a commitment to experienced data evaluation, interpretation and Internet marketing guidance, didn’t need to wind up there.

The Importance of an Interpreter

Taking the analogy a step further; if you plan to visit a foreign country and don’t know or plan to learn the language, it is ideal to have an interpreter at your side. You would expect such an interpreter to be fluent in both your language and that of the host country. He or she would be able to discern the subtle differences in linguistics, inflection and body language and would often need to adapt what you want to say and mean to how the receiver needs to hear and understand it and vice versa. Without one, a visit to a foreign land is marked by confusion, meaningless babble, blank stares and lots of wrong turns.

Let’s face it, for most small business owners, the Web is such a foreign country. They got into the entrepreneurial game because of their know-how, their passions, their interest in leaving their mark on the world, or a desire to deliver a basic and highly valued human necessity, not because they had interest in marketing, website development, search engine optimization, social networking or website performance analytics.

Given economic conditions and the rapidity with which the marketing world is changing, a thoroughly experienced Internet marketing expert who knows the language of the internet marketing industry is critical to the survival of your business. And, though some feathers might get ruffled with this statement, don’t assume your Marketing, IT department or advertising agency is the answer. Most, if they are being completely honest, would admit that Internet marketing and the associated analytical performance evaluation falls outside of their area of experience and expertise. In fact, the good ones would invite such an addition to your marketing team. We have enjoyed several such instances in which the combination of expertise among various marketing disciplines has produced a much better result for our clients.

Avoid Being Penny-wise and Dollar Stupid

When trying to save dollars in a challenging economy, the tendency for small business owners is to put this critical component of your business in the hands of your nephew who just graduated and “knows a lot about computers and the internet.” This is still being done despite that it fails nearly 100% of the time.

Remember, the expert you bring on must be fluent in your language as well as their own. Your nephew may be a Facebook and Twitter guru. He may know how to build and launch websites, he may even know a thing or two about the your company but, in the long run, the move will cost you a great deal more than you had hoped to save. In fact, an experienced Internet marketing expert should save you more in direct and indirect expenditures than he or she costs.

Internet marketing is a foreign land with a language all its own. If we want our businesses to succeed, we all have to venture there frequently. If you don’t know your way, better to go with an experienced interpreter and guide. Or, go it alone at your peril.

Published author, business owner, leading small business consultant, internet analytics expert and professional internet entrepreneur, Matt Buchenau is the owner of 5Weight Internet Marketing, LLC, a company that provides sound internet marketing guidance, website project development management and detailed internet analytical evaluation for its clients.

As the purveyor of the Reach Your Dream Life websites, articles, blogs and vlogs, Matt Buchenau also provides valuable self-help information as well as inspiration for small business owners and employees alike. Matt has published numerous articles on the subject of internet marketing best practices. He also wrote and published the inspiring Christian self-help book, Your Dream: God’s Plan. Matt is passionate about inspiring people to pursue the life of their dreams and about helping them do so as well. He is also an avid fly-fisherman, golfer and skier.

Matt Buchenau’s blog can be found and followed at http://www.ReachYourDreamLife.info
The associated Reach Your Dream Life business website can be found at http://www.ReachYourDreamLife.com

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