By Dhiren Shingadia, Mindshare UK
I had a conversation with a fellow industry insider last week about the tools market and the number of tools that are set to reach us soon.
One in particular is Looking Glass by Microsoft: a marvel of information design. Looking Glass seems to have reignited rumours about a rival Google offering and free tools for all.
Whilst all of this is great, I cannot help but backtrack to a few years ago when Google gave everybody free onsite Analytics. Adoption rates were high, but effective utilisation of the tool and its data is still low.
With everyone taking a greater interest in buzz monitoring and social media metrics, are marketers exposing themselves to yet another layer of information that doesn’t get fully utilised?
The need for analysts is now key in every agency and marketing team. Data from buzz monitoring tools, onsite analytics, CRM and business intelligence needs to be analysed holistically so key actions and outputs can be derived. Our tool sets, free or paid for, will continue to grow and as this occurs our expertise in making the most out of them needs to grow simultaneously.
