One of my favorite shows is Mad Men on AMC. Not only am I living vicariously through Don Draper – the lead character – but they’re brilliant ad-men. I also love comparing the technology from the 50′s to everything we have now. We’re so spoiled…I’m pretty sure most of us wouldn’t get much done.

In a recent episode, the team needed to promote telegrams over phone calls, which were the main communication tool of the time. After several stiff “Old Fashioneds” and some clever zingers, a light-bulb goes on. The gist…you can’t touch or save a phone call but a telegram is tangible.

It got me thinking about the myriad of tools we have access to and if they can provide tangible results.

For years, companies depended on ROI that wasn’t the easiest to aggregate. Calculating increases in revenue, increase in new consumers, or overall reputation from massive amounts of market research (done by hand).

Now social media is becoming the most used tool for measuring just about any statistic for any industry. Of course, some web presence is necessary.

New analytic programs can compare stats with the competition, whittling data into categories (gender, location, and even what spots on a website are clicked the most). Some great tools are:

Compete – Features include: Site traffic and engagement analytics, Site ranking, and Keyword and SEO analytics.

Alexa – Features include: Web traffic metrics, Top sites lists, Site demographics, and Popular trends.

Crazy Egg – Features include: Heatmaps (a picture of where people clicked on your site), Overlays of website elements, Lists of hard analytic data, and Reports of the compiled data that can be shared.

Take a look and asses your work.