“But the data says so…”
A friend of mine who works as a freelance content marketer sent me this in an email this week:
Neville, I’m in a bit of a bind. One of my biggest clients wants to reduce my output because they get better results when they blog less (huh?). I checked their report and here’s a snapshot of their metrics:
My client’s using this to say that the less I write for them the more subscribers they get. I know that’s not the case how do I convince then they still need to continue paying for regular blogging?
My observations:
I find this to be an interesting case of thinking that correlation = causation. In no world does blogging less cause more subscribers, even though the “data says so”.
Blogging is a long term strategy, you should drill down further into the data (a high level snapshot is only good enough for making sure you’re hitting KPIs). Since blogging has long-term effects I guarantee you’ll see a long-tail, cumulative effect of your previous efforts, with those January/February subscribers first landing on blog posts written in November/December.
This client is clearly looking for excuses to pay you less, so they’re seeing what they want to see. You should show him how he only got yesterday’s subscribers because of your work 3,4,5 months ago. Following that logic, the work you’ll do now — assuming the content is evergreen — will continue generating results.
This is why it’s so important important to educate your clients on reading your reports so they don’t go off jumping to the wrong conclusions based on false positives. It also makes it easier to sell a higher-value “yearly content plan” ie confirmed income.
In this case, you should also have a frank discussion with the client — if they’re trying to find reasons to pay you less there might be other factors at play over which you have little control. Find out what those are, and make sure they see you as their strongest ally, whatever they’re facing.
If you run a small digital marketing agency and want to talk about using Analytics to grow your business, I want to help. I spend a few hours each week helping people like you on: sohelpful.me/nevillebezzina. Give me a call — it’s free and I don’t bite ☺
