Looking into Marketing Analytics

In my last post I talked about Learning to Code and what that might mean for my future.  It’s an interesting change of pace as I’d normally consider myself to be more of a “marketing and sales” king of guy.  As a Founder I think that my strength lies in creating a team, establishing procedures, and aligning the company with meeting our customers demands.

But, and this is a big but, those things only matter when you have an established business. If you’re just starting from scratch or working to develop something then none of those big picture things really matter for beans, right?

Established businesses are wonderful because you can focus almost entirely on product development and sales/marketing.  And much more of the latter.  But, the value in creating a business from scratch, and not having to doll out all of that money up front is a very different risk profile than creating something from scratch.

So while I think that investing in existing businesses is a great business model I also think that creating new businesses is also a great compliment in terms of skills and asset building.

The first project I’m going to work on is a simple tool for reporting Google Analytics data to customers.  Most of us find Google Analytics data to be incredibly confusing, and while it’s certainly possible to master this it’s not simple.  Instead I’m going to mock up a tool that emails you weekly with few reports that are most essential to your business.  This will make Google Analytics both actionable, easy to understand, and presented to you regularly (instead of whenever you decide to go look at it).

Now I don’t think this initial project is going to be a life changer by any stretch of the imagination, but what I do think it’ll do is teach me a bit about creating web apps, working with an API, and launching a product.  All good things to know.

If you want to check it out head over to monsoonapp.com.  The initial product should be available in just a few weeks.

So the question for you is what sorts of things do you look for out of your Google (or other types) of analytics?  Wanting to build something that people actually want, so please let me know.