Hi There,
Welcome to issue 9 of the buzz building series- all about Analytics and understanding your campaign's impact.
One trick often missed wth online marketing, is the detailed analysis of our results, at regular intervals, and the continual implementation of the lessons learned from it. Here's your starter kit on how to do so...
Rick says...
With so many strands to your buzz building program, it can be difficult to know where to start in tracking your performance:
> Blogging
> SEO
> Social Media
> Email Marketing
The key is to track only a few key metrics that actually MEAN something to you, and that you can act upon. Then use all the other, fine detail, metrics to influence the big ones!
Perhaps your key metrics might include:
> Sign ups to your mailing list
> Enquiries through your website
> And.. wait for it... actual SALES!
These are pretty easy to track, and I'm sure you can put together a simple but effective spreadsheet to log this data (we love Google Docs for this kind of report... you can collaborate on it, and access it from anywhere).
The clever part comes in the regular analysis of a number of finer detail metrics. Here are the tools you'll need:
> Google Analytics: This needs to be connected to your website and blog by adding a simple snippet of code
> Email marketing platform: To track the performance of your email campaigns
> Insights from social media:LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook (and others) all provide some form of reporting.
Detailed Metrics - Website & Blog
Using Google Analytics you can track a number of detailed metrics, all of which can help you learn about how visitors are behaving on your site, what content is most popular, whether your site's navigation is intuitive or not, and much, much more. Here a few examples of metrics you should pay attention to, to get you started:
> Visitors from Google: This is a key measure that tells you how many people are finding your content by searching on Google. The higher this number, the better your content is performing.
> Average time on site: This gives you a time in minutes and seconds of how long visitors are spending on the site. The longer the time, the more engaged they are.
> Names of companies: There is a way, in some cases, to track the names of the companies that have visited your website (mainly only relevant / applicable in a B2B situation). This allows you to build a pipeline of interest, and even create a follow-up strategy for these prospects.
Detailed Metrics - SEO
To keep an eye on your SEO, it's important to keep a list of the top keywords or phrases that you are optimising towards. You can utilise tools like MOZ.com, and Google WebMaster, to track where your site ranks for those terms, and how often your site is clicked compared with how often it appears in search results.
Tools like MOZ.com will also give you information on the areas of your site that need improvement or correction to aid your SEO.
Detailed Metrics - Email Marketing
If you've chosen a decent email marketing platform, then you'll be provided with a range of reporting tools. The most pertinent metrics to track are:
- Open Rates
- Clicks
- Shares
- Unsubscribes
With some platforms, you can also view an overlay of your content and see which parts of the email were most popular. This allows you to trash unpopular items, and create more of the popular ones.
Detailed Metrics - Social Media
With Social Media, it's about tracking and learning what kinds of content create the most engagement:
> Post likes
> Post shares
> Page likes as a result of new content
> Link clicks from posts
Track all the above weekly, and carry out a review each month where you implement the lessons learned into each strand of your buzz building program.
Don't forget to tell your friends...
Owen says...
Ah tracking. Results. Return on Investment. About time you’re probably thinking!
It is all of course about the bottom line but you do need to be realistic. This kind of marketing is about building robust foundations, developing presence, brand awareness and credibility. Investing in this kind of communication is about making sure that every other type of investment you make in selling or promotion or selling is more effective.
It means that when you follow up with a telephone call, people will know who you are and what you do. When you meet people face to face they will recognise the company name and perhaps have some ideas about the products or services you offer and when you do plan to advertise or promote, not only will you have a much clearer view about what, how and where you should be advertising but also what you should say (because you have the analysis to back it up). It also means that when people come across a problem you could solve or have a need for the product or service you provide it is much more likely that you will be the first company they think of and the first that they call.
Rick’s right though of course. Make sure you’re when you’re looking at the results you understand the relative merit and value of each part. It’s important to look at the programme as a whole and then work through those areas you could improve. If something’s not working the beauty of the analytics is that you can usually see which bit’s not working and fix that bit first.
In the final analysis remember; don’t confuse your “M” words:
Magic – An entertaining deception which looks like something you’d wish for.
Marketing – A long term investment in ensuring your sales team is successful.
3 things to do today to help with your Analytics and Optimisation..
Sign up for Google Analytics and connect it to your site and blog
Set up a simple spreadsheet to track your "big" key metrics
Diarise your weekly and monthly reporting and optimisation reviews
Don't forget, still to come in the buzz building series...
> Reporting and building a pipeline of interest
> Audience & content. How to write a buzz building strategy
> Buzz building and the resources required to sustain it
To discuss any aspect of the buzz building series, please call us at your convenience on 0203 1372 844.
Rick & Owen
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