3 Content Questions for Your Next Web Design Project

For any business owner, the company website is one of the most valuable marketing materials. It is often one of the first points of contact for prospects, and as they say, first impressions are everything. A website’s content, when managed effectively, ultimately contributes to higher conversion rates, increased revenue, and better customer service across the entire business. But before the content creation process begins, there’s a few questions to ask yourself that will save you time and aggravation.

Do I Have All The Materials I Need?

I don’t mean cutting down the amount of work you do by reusing the content of your brochures and data sheets. Instead, gathering and utilizing the context, message, or tone from these established materials can give your brand a kind of “time-honored” consistency. In addition, users and potential customers will often respond and more easily relate to content they feel is familiar. That’s the trick—making sure your content is updated and “fresh,” but reinforcing the same message / values that you’ve established your business around.

Do I Know Who I'm Writing For?

The point above, as you might expect, leads to the issue of your audience. To attract, engage, and ultimately convert customers with a website, it’s important to have a firm grasp on who makes up that audience and what they want to see. Choosing your desired segmentation, identifying their interests, needs, and expectations, and finally aligning your content with those attributes makes for a smoother process and a better, more impactful end result.

What About The Future?

When all is said and done, what happens next? Where do you take your content after your project is complete? The good part about pondering this is that there is a wealth of options for your new web content. For example, you can create an optimization plan to ensure it stays fresh and relevant. You can also use your renewed branding efforts to update your marketing materials, brochures, pamphlets, social media pages, etc. The goal here is to form a solid information architecture with a steady stream of relevant content. No matter how you end up using it, understanding the applications of new content is a big step on the path to better marketing.

Now more than ever, great content is at the heart of all marketing, and taking your efforts online doesn’t change that. Investing the time and work into new web content is something that will have a host of benefits in the long run. Overall, thinking about your company’s history, your target audience, and what lies ahead will greatly contribute to that success.

5 Lessons for Successful Internet Marketing

Recently, I was reading an article in Advertising Age that highlighted the lessons from their CMO Strategy Summit.  I would have to agree with the eight things that the article mentions, but I’ve created a modified list of 5 lessons that applied to internet marketing or digital advertising.  Below are my 5 lessons that should be applied to internet marketing: 

1. Challenging Internal Think 
We need to challenge the “internal think” within our organization and marketing departments.  In the world of internet marketing, the old ways of thinking need to be modified and must include collaboration.  In order to be successful, many departments can no longer work in solos; otherwise campaigns are destined to fail.  We must work together to identify the best solutions that help to achieve strategic goals & objectives. This shouldn’t just apply to agency clients but advertising agencies as well. Be sure to limit risk and identify opportunities to control them with challenging internal think. 

2. Building Relations with PR, Finance and IT (be inclusive)
Don’t just get to know your CIO but also the heads of Public Relations, Communications, and Finance.  Understand what they think about your approach challenge, and obtain feedback from them.  Include your department heads into strategic discussions because everyone has a role to play with the marketing campaign.  Be prepared to justify cost, forecast, and predict outcomes with Finance, and reinforce the role of IT within the scope of every campaign.

3. Experiment with Failure (Wisely) – A/B & MV Testing
Experiment with failures through A/B & Multivariate testing of all things digital.  Create controlled experiments, develop hypotheses, identify sample sizes for statistical significance, run the test, and don’t stop testing.  It’s not as expensive as it was in the past with the functionality of Content Management Systems (CMS), Google AdWords, Google Analytics, KISSmetrics, and other usability testing sites.  Start gathering information and spend less time talking about it in meetings that don’t generate outcomes to reduce cost and improve marketing.

4. Local, Regional, and then National
It seem like every business thinks they’re a national brand, but they have challenges spending the national budgets. Grow locally, regionally, and then nationally to save money, measure your effectiveness, and apply your finds to new markets. If done effectively, you just might identify competitive advantages and target national markets that grow your business.

5. Measure & Value
Measure the effectiveness of your marketing tactics and provide a value for leads or sales.  This should lead to better marketing, reductions in cost, and the ability to forecast and predict.  Now, you’re speaking the language of the finance department and gaining credibility.  It should also help to reinforce the value of the IT department. 

These lessons should help to position your organization and team for successful internet marketing campaigns.  I would highly recommend that marketing professionals take a look the CMO Strategic Summit’s 8 lessons.  Let us know if you have any lessons that you’d like to share.  Good Luck! 

3 Common Pitfalls in Content Marketing

By now, you’ve probably heard about the benefits that come with incorporating a Content Marketing strategy. The ways content can enhance your business’s marketing mix, how it builds a sense of community with customers, the ways it shows off your expertise—the list goes on and on. Unfortunately, many businesses aren’t utilizing their content to its full potential. Below are the most common of these mistakes and tips on how you can avoid them.

1) It’s All About Me

Sometimes when a business decides it wants to jump on the content bandwagon, there is the mindset that the bulk of their content should be directly tied to their products / services, or that they should always try to sell something when they communicate with their audience. Unfortunately, this strategy often turns users away from your content rather than sharing it and coming back for more. The problem is that businesses often fail to step into their target audience’s shoes and think about what they like, care about, and expect from web content. People want to be informed, entertained, and assisted in solving a problem, not bogged down by constant self-promotion.

The Tip: Do your research & be customer-centric—think about who your audience is, use their feedback, and create content based on what’s important to them.

2) Nothing But The Facts

You may have heard the phrase “facts tell, but stories sell” before when it comes to Content Marketing. This point builds off the pitfall above in that users don’t want dry, isolated, or negative content; rather, they want stories. Stories have themes, compelling elements, room for engagement and interaction, and connections between them. The success of other marketing tactics, such as SEO and Social Media Marketing, rely on building content that users can relate to, find what they need, and pass on to others. This not only affects the way content is made, but also the way it is distributed.

The Tip: Have a theme & make connections—use stories to entertain, persuade, and engage with your audience.

3) Publish & Pray

In any new marketing endeavor, having a plan is essential. Not only can your business keep its efforts (and budget) organized, but it also projects a sense of reliability to customers. With your content, this step is even more important. Many businesses take a heavy-handed approach to their content, letting regular communications fall by the wayside. Customers don’t want to keep checking your site for new content only to find the same thing they saw the week before. In most cases like this, they’ll eventually stop returning. Applying an optimization plan (set a goal, plan, implement, measure, refine, & repeat) is a great way to look at the content creation process.

The Tip: Make a plan & stick to it—create a calendar for content to show that your business can maintain a high standard while enhancing your reputation to your audience.

What do you think of the pitfalls above? If you have any suggestions or questions about this list, leave us a comment below!

Picture This—An Infographic’s Role in Content Marketing

What are Infographics?

In short, an infographic is any visual representation of information. These large, creative images (see below for an example) can be found in a variety of places around the web, like on blogs, through some social networks like Pinterest, and on bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon. For the purposes of Internet Marketing, an infographic is normally used to present a large amount or complicated data in an appealing and engaging way. And that’s the key to your business getting the most out of this kind of content—engagement with your target audience. The assumption always seems to be that web users are impatient—they won’t bother with a site if it doesn’t load after a few seconds, and they won’t take the time to read every word on a text-rich web page. To market in this environment, where users want information in (faster than) an instant, visual content like infographics just might be a way to slow people down and get your message across effectively.

How can I use Infographics for Marketing?

Just like any other visual-based piece of content, the marketing value of infographics lies in their portability, opportunities for sharing via social networks, and linking back to your business’s web site.

Portability: Once designed and completed, an infographic can be easily uploaded to an aggregator, repurposed in a presentation, highlighted in an email promotion, or discussed in an article, blog post, press release, or social media post.

Sharing: Your business’s online presence, reach, and credibility can all receive a substantial boost when users share your visual content. Because of their relatively small size and wide range of applications, infographics make for an inexpensive chance for your business’s content to “go viral.”

Backlinking: Just because any text content within an infographic can’t be crawled or indexed by a search engine doesn’t mean that these images don’t have distinct SEO advantages. Anyone that shares and/or publishes an infographic somewhere else typically links back to your business’s website; this link bait results in greater traffic and a higher search ranking.

Conclusion

It’s easy to see the benefits that can come not only from infographics, but from the integration of any visual content into your business’s digital marketing plan. The key is that the content has to be well designed. The best images are appealing and easy to understand, as well as informative and engaging. They can show your business’s expertise on a particular subject as well as increase your reach and web traffic. Finally, infographics are easily repurposed, shared by users, and serve as effective link bait for SEO purposes. For a business owner, it seems a picture can be worth much more than a thousand words.

A/B Testing (Split Testing) to Convert More Online Customers

What is A/B testing (split testing)?

A/B testing, or split testing, is a marketing testing method by which one baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples in order to improve response or conversion rates. An example would be to test two different subject lines of an email campaign. A/B testing has been implemented for direct mail and within the interactive space to test tactics such as banner ads, emails, landing pages, or even entire websites to improve performance. You can also extend A/B testing to PPC advertising copy, alternative keywords, or PPC keyword match types.

How can my business or marketing department apply A/B testing?

You should always be testing ways to improve the sales process to reduce your cost per acquisition and to improve your customers’ experiences. I would recommend that you start with the “low hanging fruit” that could have the greatest impact on revenue or the customer experience. For example, an A/B test could be a simple as testing the color of the calls-to-action to improve the click-through-rate.

A/B testing can be applied to marketing tactics to improve sales or lead generation at a lower cost. In general, it’s easier to implement A/B testing with digital advertising because of the ability to make changes quickly and optimize the process. The findings from digital advertising can also be carried over to traditional advertising.

A/B Testing Best Practices

If you’re new to A/B/ split testing, here are a few best practices:

Define your goals. Clearly state what you hope to accomplish.

Determine how you plan to accomplish your goals. Keep it Simple!

What are you testing & why?

What is the variation you are testing (color, position, ad copy, etc.)?

Define the control and your variation for testing.

What are your expected results & reasoning?

Measure & Analyze the results through the sales or conversion process.

How do you apply A/B Testing to Internet Marketing Strategy?

You can leverage A/B testing based on geography, psychographics, customer lifecycles, etc. You want to develop realistic goals based on your target audiences. At first, I would recommend being targeted with your approach and limiting the test to a single market. It’s important to identify the greatest impact on the conversion process or sales process by modifying the internet marketing strategy slightly. Be sure to focus on all the results from the beginning of the process to completion and to communicate the results. Think about the effect the testing will have on saving time, money, and creating efficiencies.

Conclusion

If you haven’t started A/B testing, you’re wasting time, money, and missing opportunities. As marketers, we should always be testing to maximize performance and to reduce costs. Testing goes beyond just a subject line or ad copy. It requires focus, consistency, and planning. In addition, you must think about usability, branding, layouts, the purchase process, etc. There are numerous tools such as Web Optimizer, Visual Website Optimizer, or Test &Target to get started.

Claim Your Place

According to Google, 97% of consumers search for local business online, therefore having a local business listing with Google Places is a must. Google Places allows businesses to connect with local customers by providing a simple free web page containing relevant company information on Google.

The first step to getting your business listed on Google Places is to verify your business. After verifying your business, you may begin building your page.

It is important to claim your business’ page, otherwise the information Google accumulates may be inaccurate. Additionally, it is advantageous to add details about your company. For example, many businesses customize their pages by including “photos, videos, coupons, and even real-time updates like weekly specials” (Google “Getting Started”).

Regardless of whether you claim your business’ Place page, customers may post reviews about your business and their experience. However, once you claim your Place page, you possess the ability to monitor and respond to customer reviews.

Not only may your Google Place page show up in the search engine result pages but also be accessed and visible on Google maps. This can be helpful to customers trying to physically locate your company.

Google Places-- a great free, easy way to create more visibility for your company online.

3 Tips to Track Conversions More Effectively

As analysts, we are taught and bred to have an insatiable desire to track as many aspects of our websites and marketing strategies as possible. We often go out of our way to tag everything with codes and scripts so we can sniff out trends and insights. This hard work usually pays off in the form of content performance and traffic source reports.

More often than not, we like to pay close attention to the conversion report. How many newsletter subscribers did we get last quarter? Did online sales increase or decrease from last year? How many visitors from my target market downloaded an application? Conversion tracking is clearly an important element of marketing as a whole, but how do you do it effectively? Here are 3 tips to help you get the most out of your Google Analytics conversion reports:

1. Assign a Conversion Value: Conversions are usually actions visitors can take that result in some sort of revenue, be it directly or indirectly. Whether the conversion is for a completed transaction or for downloading more information, an average value should be assigned. This is paramount to demonstrating ROI for any digital marketing initiative.


2. Identify & Use Funnels: It’s great to know how many online sales transactions there were or how many new member registrations took place over the past month, but there is a great deal more that can be studied about these conversions. Conversions like these often feature several steps (a checkout process for instance: Add to Cart, Checkout, Billing Information, etc.). Specifying a conversion funnel within Google Analytics for these processes can shine a great deal of light on problem areas where visitors and leads are dropping off and leaving the conversion process.


3. Pay Attention to 2nd and 3rd Degree Touch Points: The conversion process can often pan out beyond just the first visit. In the case of an online purchase, the sales process usually spans across several sessions, as the modern consumer researches your product or service, looks for reviews, and reassurance that this will be a wise purchase. With that being said, do not ignore the first touch point that the converting visitor made with the website! If they initially discovered your site via your company’s Facebook page but completed the sale after returning to the site directly three sessions later, your social media efforts might be paying off more than you think. In the case of paid campaigns on Google AdWords or Microsoft adCenter, the destination URLs can be tagged with “utm_nooverride=1” to ensure the first touch point gets credit for the conversion. A nice, quick explanation of how the nooverride tag works can be found here. The latest version of Google Analytics also makes analysis of multiple conversion touch points easier with its new Multi-Channel Funnel reports.

Knowing how many conversions were triggered on your website is one thing. Having a deep understanding of how much revenue was generated from those conversions, where improvements can be made in the conversion process, and which of your marketing campaigns helped drive them can save your company time and money. Most of all, however, it can help you market more effectively and efficiently to ultimately increase conversions and ROI.

PPC Experts? - Prove It!

Recently I read an article talking about how there are many "PPC Experts" due to the low barrier of entry. With that said, if you or your company is looking for online adverting assistance, it is crucial to find an agency/person with the right certifications and a proven track record.

The must have as far as certifications are Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter. Google requires an individual to pass 2 different tests to be certified. A general PPC test and a more specific test focused on the Display Advertising, Search Network, or PPC Reporting. Once the individual certification is earned, it must be maintained by retaking at least 1 of the more specific tests annually and the general test bi-annually. Microsoft adCenter, on the other hand, only requires you to pass 1 general PPC test annually to earn and maintain certification.

In addition to being certified, ask to see what the "PPC Experts" have accomplished for other clients, preferably within your industry. Case studies, white papers, and/or a portfolio of their work and accomplishments should be available and easily accessible. I would think that a "PPC Expert" would want you, as potential future client, to know and see their previous success stories.

I hope that this will help you avoid, as the first mentioned article describes, PPC scams. If you have any questions or comments about PPC, AdWords, adCenter, or online advertising in general, please leave a comment or contact us.

Selecting a Sensible Web Analytical Platform For Your Organization

There’s countless blogs, articles, and studies out there that preach about how web analytics is the greatest thing since sliced bread and how it can tie together virtually any marketing effort for an organization and measure their effectiveness side-by-side and against each other. All the features, reports, visuals, metrics, and alerts are great…but only if your organization can dedicate the time, talent, and funds to properly implement and support the platforms.

There’s been more than one instance where we’ve seen a large organization invest in a big and flashy analytical platform like Omniture and WebTrends, and not dedicate the necessary resources to properly implement, support, maintain, or even use it properly. It almost seems like some organizations view these platforms as set-and-forget endeavors, when in reality they are no different than the machinery that is used to make their products or the buildings in which those products are sold. Just because it isn’t tangible does not mean it won’t need ongoing support.

One of the driving reasons these platforms and strategies are improperly executed is because of a lack of budget. Most of the larger analytical platforms use a pay-per-pageview approach to their billing, which for well-traveled websites can add up quickly. After figuring in servers and databases, the total cost for the year can easily stretch into the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year. This usually swallows up the majority of an analytics budget and doesn’t leave much more room for bringing on talent for proper implementation and usage. So this brings us to the driving point of this blog: Choosing a web analytical platform that your organization can actually afford to support (via either internal talent or external agencies) is a critical step that should not be overlooked.

For some of the aforementioned organizations, selecting a cheaper (or even free) platform like Yahoo! Web Analytics or Google Analytics would have yielded much better insights. We even saw this with one client, as they had both WebTrends and Google Analytics, and the latter platform offered exponentially deeper and more insightful reports.

So whether you are the individual or an agency pitching to the higher-ups of an organization why they should go with analytics, make sure you ask the right questions: What do we really need, and what can we actually afford to support moving forward?

Keep your eye on DaBrian Marketing Group’s website for a more in-depth article on this. Also be sure to follow DaBrian Marketing Group’s new Google+ Page!

Impact of Google Analytics Premium on Web Analytics & Consultants

Web Analytics solutions such as Google Analytics, WebTrends, and Omniture have continued to evolve with increased functionality for social media and mobile analysis. Unfortunately the gap between free web analytical solutions and enterprise solutions was significant until now. The introduction of Google Analytics Premium not only impacts the web analytics enterprise solutions market but also analysis service providers, business intelligence solutions, and consultants. Before Google Analytics Premium, small and mid-size businesses were forced to use free tools such as Yahoo Analytics or pay an “arm and a leg” for enterprise web analytics solutions such as WebTrends and Omniture. Realistically, there wasn’t much of a middle ground in this space.

With the addition of Google Analytics Premium and several improvements to the free Google Analytics solution, the gap between enterprise solutions just got a little smaller and puts more pressure on the industry to continue demonstrating value for web analytics/business intelligence dollars. It will be interesting to see the industry’s response in the future to Google Analytics Premium as well as how Analytics Consultants will modify their service offering to avoid direct competition with Google.

Alternative PPC Platforms

Check out DaBrian Marketing Group's latest YouTube video, where our Search Engine Marketing Consultant Justin Miller discusses the importance of pursuing alternative Pay-Per-Click platforms.

For more information on our Pay Per Click and Banner advertising services, please check out the SEM Services section of our website! Also, be sure to subscribe to both our blog and our YouTube channel to always get the latest news and tips for SEM, SEO, Internet Marketing, & more!

SEO & Social Media to Capture ZMOT

We continuously receive questions about the position of SEO within the internet marketing space.  It is true that the waters between SEO and Social media have been merged to some degree, but the result is still relevant results within the search engines.  Also, the mentality of users is still roughly the same: a stimulus-like an email campaign and search for more information.  The recent eBook “Winning the Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT) by Jim Lecinski provides further insight into the new mental model. 

Shifting the focus to the mentality of the user has come full circle.  The ability to align SEO and Social Media within your marketing plan will help you attract customers at the ZMOT, but doing so takes a solid strategy and communication from your SEO & Social Media teams.  It’s not enough to implement SEO & Social Media into the plan; what’s more important is that these elements align to attract customers.

Capabilities of Multichannel Analytics

One of the greatest challenges in the past has been effectively tracking traditional marketing methods like billboards, direct mail pieces, and print advertisements alongside internet marketing efforts.  This is much more attainable nowadays via Multichannel Analytics.  DMG's Web Analyst Brandon Wensing describes some of the benefits of using this method to yield imperative insights into your high level marketing efforts:

Effectiveness of Email Marketing

If you’re looking for an increased return on investment regarding your marketing efforts look no further. When it boils down to it, the most effective marketing channel is still Email Marketing, as indicated in the chart below. The best thing about email marketing is that it gets better as you use it. Once you have the basics, consistent branding, list building, message crafting, and email delivery, you’ll be able to increase the effectiveness. According to a JupiterResearch report, using Web analytics to target email campaigns can produce nine times the revenues and eighteen times the profits of broadcast mailings. With all that being said, implementing sophisticated analytics and tactics such as segmentation, targeting, multichannel integration, A/B testing and social sharing is the best place to start. Nonetheless, it’s almost a no brainer when it comes to using email marketing. Whether you are doing it in-house, just using the basics, or whether you outsource it to an internet marketing agency, for sophisticated analytics and tactics, Email Marketing is an opportunity you can’t pass up.

Five Reasons to Monitor Your Internet Marketing Efforts

Over the past several years, the greatest challenge facing internet marketers and web analysts has been convincing superiors and clients of the value of monitoring all of their web-based efforts. All-too-often, they will fire back with something along the lines of “Oh, we know how many visits we’re getting to the site.” This statement usually comes from an organization that has their overworked IT department “monitoring” their site’s activity. Little do these organizations know that the visits metric means little-to-nothing in the grand scheme of things, especially if you are not using it in unison with the countless other metrics that are available.

So perhaps you’ll be making a pitch to the higher-ups in your company about implementing a web analytics strategy, or maybe you are one of the higher-ups and are curious to see whether or not it’s worth it. Well, here are 5 great reasons to use web analytics to track your website and internet marketing efforts:

1. Visits Don’t Mean Anything! As mentioned before, simply knowing how many visits your website received in a month does not mean you know how your website is performing. There are so many more metrics that should be considered that can be combined to yield more detailed and useful statistics about the website. You can have all the visits in the world, but if they’re not converting, then they’re practically worthless.


2. Discover Where Marketing Efforts Should Be Focused. Not only can Web Analytics solutions uncover where your visitors are coming from, but it can also shine light on where your organization should be focusing its marketing and internet efforts.


3. Know What Your Visitors Are and Are NOT Looking For. Paying attention to what pages and content your visitors are viewing most often can uncover what your consumers are actually looking for. Just the same, it can also show what visitors are less interested in, so you can save your company’s time and efforts in pushing the wrong products, services, or information.


4. Monitor Traditional Marketing Effectiveness. Web Analytics isn’t just limited to seeing how well your website is doing or where your visitors are coming from. When implemented by web analytics ninjas, you can also see how effective your more traditional marketing methods are at driving traffic, and more importantly, conversions, to your website.


5. Hone in on Your Target Market. Using methods like advanced segmentation and conversion tracking, you can identify who is spending the most quality time on your site and who is most likely to spend money. In doing this, a much clearer picture is painted of who your organization should be reaching out to the most.

There you have it- Five great reasons to seriously consider Web Analytics for your organization. In an economic climate like today’s, your organization cannot afford to turn its nose up to this, as monitoring your internet marketing strategies and efforts yields crucial insights into increasing conversions and sales.

Mix Online Marketing Strategies for Optimal Results

To reach the greatest number of customers, it is important to utilize a mix of online marketing strategies. These strategies include: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC), Local Listings, Social Media Marketing (SMM), and Email Marketing. A brief description of each of these strategies follows.

The goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to improve the ranking of a website’s position in search engine results pages. This strategy enables your website to be seen by your target audience before the competitions’ websites.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) provides more control over placement of your ads and website on search engine results pages. Businesses may control when, where, and how often their ads show up when related searches occur on search engines.

Local Listings are especially useful for companies providing a product or service in a specific location. They are displayed in search results and may include information such as a phone number, address, map, hours of operation, and specials. This is a great way to connect with the local community.

With the rapid rise in the use of social media, the importance of Social Media Marketing (SMM) has never been more important. SMM offers a way to keep in constant touch and get feedback from your target audience.

Email Marketing is best used to encourage current customers to return to your business. This may be achieved by promoting specials, informing of upcoming events, and thanking customers for their business.

Each company should take the opportunity to customize their online marketing mix to best suit their needs.

The Latest and Greatest in SEO

Here is some of the latest and greatest we’ve found going on in the Search Engine Optimization world:

1.     Google introduced new and improved site links which means visibility to sub-navigation pages, link selection changes from query to query, and delivery of relevant links. 

2.     Yahoo's new image presentation also allows for easy searching of galleries, a connection to your friends' Facebook images, and easy navigation of full-sized images.

3.     Content is still king.  Don’t use redundant articles, duplicate content, limit the automatically generated content, and reduce the high ad-to-content ratio on your web pages.

4.     Google + and other social media metrics will be part of the evolution of search engine optimization and link building.

5.     Link Building isn’t going away but it may not weigh as heavily as it once did in the overall search algorithm. 

Monitor Phone Lines, Billboards, Direct Mail Pieces, and More Using Multichannel Analytics

Most people involved with the marketing facet of a company would agree that there are countless avenues to market with. Websites, banner advertising, e-mail marketing, direct mail marketing, cold calling…the list goes on and on. Over the past decade, it’s become increasingly important to monitor marketing effectiveness. Web analytics tools have been improving as quickly as the rest of the internet has, allowing for more dynamic, in-depth analysis with every new update. With these new updates and improvements, it has now become possible to monitor much more than just a website.

When implemented properly and in the hands of a web analytics ninja, platforms like Google Analytics can be used to monitor and track the effectiveness of more than just websites. Using advanced integration methods such as event tracking, virtual pageviews, and cross-domain tracking, these tools can be used to track everything from your organization’s social media efforts to phone calls. That’s right: phone calls. Call tracking is the latest trick in the analytical magic bag, using a hidden, blank web page bound to a specific phone number to track calls via “pageviews”. Call tracking isn’t the only trackable avenue of marketing that isn’t limited by the internet. Using things like custom phone numbers and vanity URLs, it is also possible to use web analytics platforms to effectively track direct mail and even billboard advertising.

As human beings, we can’t help but think in silos. In today’s marketing world, it is crucial that we break away from this old way of thinking and see how all of these facets and avenues of advertising are tied together. When data from all of these areas of marketing is combined, it can generate crucial business intelligence and reveal insights that could give your organization the edge it needs.

Internal Site Search Usage: Gateway into the Visitor’s Mind

The main goal of virtually every single marketing strategy is to understand what the target market wants. Whether your particular strategy involves generating more leads or increasing sales, it is common marketing knowledge that you must know what your customer is looking for. In the wide world of web design, internet marketing, and web analytics, there are many avenues of data and insights that can lead to more targeted marketing.

In particular, internal site search is a very important aspect of your website that should be tracked and analyzed carefully. If your website supports this functionality, visitors can use it to find specific products, services, or other pages on your site quickly and easily. Just as monitoring the top-performing keywords and phrases visitors used to find your website organically on search engines is very important, paying close attention to how your visitors search your internal site is also crucial. It can raise the following questions:

What are visitors searching for the most?

Are they able to find what they’re looking for? If not, is it a product or service you can carry or offer in the future?

Are visitors searching for pages more than using the actual navigation menu?

Paying attention to the internal site search report for your website can yield some interesting results you may not have anticipated before. It may indicate that people are looking for products or services you don’t currently offer. It could also point out detrimental holes into the structure, navigation, and optimization of your website that could negatively affect conversion rates. Monitoring this aspect of your website can help streamline your overall web presence and internet marketing approach, as well as provide a look into the minds of your visitors.

PPC Advertising > Keywords + Ad Copy; Don’t Forget about the Landing Pages

Testing is a crucial part of improving your PPC advertising efforts. You test Keywords to enhance targeting and increase relevant traffic to your site. You test Negative Keywords to prevent irrelevant clicks and lower cost. Testing Ad Copy is to find out what appeals best to your clientele. However, testing should not stop there. Your Landing Page is a critical component of obtaining conversions, and not just clicks.

If you have tested and found great Keywords and have excellent Ad Copy, then there is no doubt that, you are getting clicks and driving relevant traffic to your site. However, what is happening after that still has a huge impact on the success of your PPC efforts. Your Landing Page is the first experience a potential customer has with your website. It needs to aesthetically pleasing, easy to navigate, and a good starting point for your conversion funnel.

In order to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of your Landing Pages, you will need to integrate your Analytical Solution with you PPC Platform. Once you have the Analytics in place, you can begin testing your Landing Pages with tools, like Web Optimizer. Test various wording, layouts, pictures and more to discover what works best for you and your clientele, and watch your ROI increase.