An Outside Perspective: Better Planning and Problem-Solving in your Digital Marketing

by Andrew Schulkind

Perspective is everything, and the ability to see issues from varied perspectives is a skill not to be underestimated. Put another way, never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

Setting aside the economic motivation a barber might have for always saying you need a haircut, a barber, even if honest, is more likely to notice imperfections in your coif that others will miss just because of his or her training. In other words, no one other than the barber will notice that you could use a haircut.

And that’s why it can be beneficial to add new members to your team as you evaluate changes like a website update, brand refresh, or even changes to a marketing campaign.

Certainly, you should be examining the data you are gathering through your analytics program, and let that information guide you. But you should also be looking at your marketing with a fresh perspective. The questions you should be asking are:

Is there a different approach?
How would I do this if I couldn’t do it this way?
How would _______ do this? (Fill in the blank with someone from a completely different industry.)

Notice that we’re looking for alternative ways to achieve the same goals. We’re not immediately asking, “Is there a better way?” That hinders the process. We can evaluate later whether an approach you hand’t previously considered offered enough advantages – or even the possibility of advantages – to justify the expense of change.

If you adopt a more abstract approach like this, you’ll ask different questions, arrive at different answers, and increase the probability of making larger-than-incremental improvements in your marketing.

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-non-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Non Necessary".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Cookie	Type	Duration	Description
_ga	0	2 years	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, camapign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assigns a randoly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gid	0	1 day	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.
.ASPXANONYMOUS	1	2 months	This cookie is used by sites using the .NET technology platform from Microsoft. It enables the site to maintain an anonymous user-id to track unique users within a session without them logging in or otherwise identifying themselves.
GPS	0	30 minutes	This cookie is set by Youtube and registers a unique ID for tracking users based on their geographical location
uvc	0	1 year	The cookie is set by addthis.com to determine the usage of Addthis.com service.

Cookie	Type	Duration	Description
di2	0	1 year	This cookie is set by addthis.com on sites that allows sharing on social media. The cookie is used to track user behavior anonymously to generate usage trends to improve relevance to their services and advertising.
IDE	1	2 years	Used by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.
loc	0	1 year	This cookie is set by Addthis. This is a geolocation cookie to understand where the users sharing the information are located.
NID	1	6 months	This cookie is used to a profile based on user's interest and display personalized ads to the users.
uid	0	1 year	This cookie is used to measure the number and behavior of the visitors to the website anonymously. The data includes the number of visits, average duration of the visit on the website, pages visited, etc. for the purpose of better understanding user preferences for targeted advertisments.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	1	5 months	This cookie is set by Youtube. Used to track the information of the embedded YouTube videos on a website.

Cookie	Type	Duration	Description
__utma	0	2 years	This cookie is set by Google Analytics and is used to distinguish users and sessions. The cookie is created when the JavaScript library executes and there are no existing __utma cookies. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics.
__utmb	0	30 minutes	The cookie is set by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to determine new sessions/visits. The cookie is created when the JavaScript library executes and there are no existing __utma cookies. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics.
__utmc	0		The cookie is set by Google Analytics and is deleted when the user closes the browser. The cookie is not used by ga.js. The cookie is used to enable interoperability with urchin.js which is an older version of Google analytics and used in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine new sessions/visits.
__utmt	0	10 minutes	The cookie is set by Google Analytics and is used to throttle the request rate.
__utmz	0	6 months	This cookie is set by Google analytics and is used to store the traffic source or campaign through which the visitor reached your site.
YSC	1		This cookies is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos.

Cookie	Duration	Description
__atuvc	1 year	This cookie is set by Addthis to make sure you see the updated count if you share a page and return to it before our share count cache is updated.
__atuvs	30 minutes	This cookie is set by Addthis to make sure you see the updated count if you share a page and return to it before our share count cache is updated.
na_id	1 year	This cookie is set by Addthis.com to enable sharing of links on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter
ouid	1 year	The cookie is set by Addthis which enables the content of the website to be shared across different networking and social sharing websites.
um	1 year	Set by addthis.com.(Purpose not known)
vc	1 year	This cookie is set by addthis.com on sites that allow sharing on social media.

An Outside Perspective: Better Planning and Problem-Solving in your Digital Marketing

Creating Content That Encourages Action, Part I

Do You Really Need a New Website? (Revisited)

How to Make Your Content Marketing Matter More