What To Do With Contradictory Statistics

Benjamin Disreali once said “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics“. Very often major initiatives are undertaken that are based solely on statistics. What happens when statistics contradict each other or seem to point you in contradictory directions?

I was reading a recent article from MediaPost about the effectiveness of blogs for lead generation and read two interesting facts:

A study by HubSpot showed that 3/4 of corporate executives and business owners claim that blogs are “important” and “critical” to generating leads.

A Forrester Research study showed that consumers consider corporate blogs to be the least reliable source of information, with only 16% of those surveyed claiming to trust corporate blogs.

While the article say these as contradictory statistics for the purposes of their article, I find that rather than being contradictory, they tell a different story all together. Are corporate blogs untrusted by 84% of the public? Yes. Do 75% corporate stakeholders see corporate blogs as critical lead generation tools? Yes. What I get from this is that there is a huge disconnect between consumer perception of blogs and corporate perception of them. It says to me that corporate blogs generate leads from only 16% of consumers, meaning that there is another, untapped, 84% that need to be reached in other ways. The article does say that corporate blogs only account for 8% of leads while other online tactics such as SEO and email marketing accounts for almost half.

Many people form theories, then look for the numbers to back them up. There is nothing wrong with this, at least it gets you started. However, when the numbers don’t sync up or point in another direction, don’t be afraid to follow them to their conclusion and don’t be afraid to look at them from a different angle.

Image by Kay.