Clear Signal Insights
Practical, jargon-free articles about data, analytics, marketing, and clear thinking — for people who want to understand how things actually work.
Turn a channel off for three days, see nothing change, and turn it back on — and you haven't learned anything. Test length is the detail most businesses get wrong first. Here's how to pick one that actually means something.
A 10x return on ad spend sounds like your best channel. For retargeting, it's often just math: you're only shown to people who were already close to buying. Here's how to tell real lift from a favorable audience.
Branded search converts beautifully, costs almost nothing per click, and wins every attribution report. It might also be buying you clicks you'd get for free. Here's how to find out which.
Most agencies aren't inventing numbers. But a monthly report can be built to flatter without a single fabricated figure. Here's how to pressure-test the PDF you get every month.
Facebook says the campaign drove 50 sales. Google Analytics says 32. Neither one is broken, and neither one is lying. They're just counting with different rules. Here's what each is actually measuring.
Attribution tells you who touched a sale last. Incrementality tells you whether your marketing caused the sale at all. Here's the difference, and how to test for it without a data science team.
Every marketer wants to know which channel drove the sale. The honest answer is: you can't always know, and that's okay ... if you understand why.
Organic growth feels great until it plateaus and that's when most owners realize they never built the baseline they now desperately need. Here's how to protect yourself before you're forced into it.
Every marketer wants to know which channel drove the sale. The honest answer is: you can't always know, and that's okay ... if you understand why.
Take away the fancy marketing terms and SEO is surprisingly logical. Here's how search engines decide what to show and what that actually means for your content.
Charts are everywhere, and most of them mislead, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose. Here's a mental checklist for reading any chart clearly.
Everyone talks about metrics, but most people never stop to define what a metric actually is — or why picking the wrong one will steer you wrong every time.