Markers: did what I published change anything?

A bump on a curve means little three weeks later, unless you know what happened that day. A marker is a short note on a day: “Newsletter about the workshop”, “Instagram post”, “Start of the ad”. It shows on your visitors curve as a small dashed line, and Bearing compares the days before and after it.

Add a marker

1. Open your site's Markers tab.
2. Choose the day, say in a few words what happened, add a link if you like.
3. Click Add. The marker appears on the curve of your Statistics page.

If your AI is connected to Bearing, just tell it: “Note that I sent the newsletter today.”

Markers from your feeds

Your blog, your newsletter, a video channel or a podcast almost always have an RSS feed: an address that lists what you publish. Paste it under Markers from your feeds and each new publication becomes a marker by itself, read once a day. Those published since Bearing measures your site are added at once.

• A blog made with WordPress: your address followed by /feed/.
• A Substack newsletter: your address followed by /feed.
• Elsewhere: look for a link named RSS or Feed on your site.

A marker you remove does not come back. Removing a feed keeps its markers: they are things that happened.

Markers from your campaigns

When the links of an ad or a newsletter carry a campaign name (tagged links), Bearing notices the campaign. Once it has brought 5 visits, it waits under Campaigns to sort in the Markers tab, and a small number appears on the tab.

Better still, make the link in Bearing before you share it: under Make a campaign link, name the campaign in your words, say where the link will be placed, and copy the link. The campaign is then known under your name for it and becomes a marker at its first visit, with nothing to sort. Your AI can make the link too: “Make me a link for Thursday's newsletter.”

A campaign whose link was made elsewhere waits to be sorted:

• Show on the curve: give it a name you will recognise, “Facebook ad, Paris workshop” rather than 120213_fb_conv_fr. It becomes one marker, on the day of its first visit.
• Ignore: it never shows and Bearing does not propose it again. Ignored campaigns stay listed below, in case you change your mind.

Nothing shows on your curve without your say: a campaign's name is written in a link, and anyone can write a link. There is one marker per campaign, at its start; what the campaign brought is in your goals and your revenue, by campaign. Bearing looks for new campaigns once a day.

What a campaign brought, and what it cost

Under a campaign's marker, See what it brought shows, since the campaign's first visit: the visits that came through its links, how many reached each of your goals, and the revenue tied to it.

Say what the campaign costs you and Bearing adds the cost per visit, the cost of each conversion, and the result: revenue minus cost. Your AI can do it: “My Paris workshop ad costs 2 € a day, what did it bring?”

• In all: the total spent to date, as your ad account shows it, or what you paid for a sponsored post, a printed flyer, a sponsorship. Update it while the campaign runs.
• Per day, per month or per year: an ad's daily budget, a monthly fee, a yearly sponsorship. Bearing counts it from the campaign's first visit to today and shows an estimated cost that keeps itself up to date. When the campaign stops, give the day it stopped.

• Bearing does not know what an ad costs: the cost is the one you give, nothing is read from Facebook or Google. A budget per day is a ceiling: the platform may have spent a little less, which is why that cost is called estimated. When you know the real total, type it “in all”.
• What counts is what happened during a visit that came through the campaign's links. Someone who sees the ad, comes back three days later on their own and buys is not in it: the campaign may have brought more than the result says.
• No result without a payment: with no payment tied to the campaign in the cost's currency, Bearing shows no result rather than a loss it cannot be sure of.
• Few visits: under 30 visits, the numbers do not allow a conclusion yet.

Read the comparison

Under each marker, See the comparison sets side by side the seven days before it and the seven days from that day on: visitors, visits, pageviews, each of your goals and your revenue.

• Provisional: while the week after is not over, Bearing compares the days that are over with as many days before. The numbers will still move.
• Not a proof: the comparison shows what happened around that day, not why. If two things happened the same week, Bearing cannot tell which one counted.
• Small numbers: going from 1 sale to 3 is “+200%” and may be chance. Look at the numbers, not only at the percentage.
• Not measured yet: a marker placed before Bearing was installed has nothing to be compared with.

This also catches what the source of a sale cannot: someone who sees your post on Monday and buys on Thursday counts as a direct visit, but the rise in sales that week still shows here.