Posts Tagged ‘analytics’

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The right keywords for your brand and company are the foundation of a successful search engine optimisation strategy. If you’re just starting SEO at your business, or if it is time to revamp your current strategy and reassess the way you do things, choosing keywords is a vital step in the process.

Brainstorm Keywords that are Relevant to Your Brand

Start by brainstorming a list of keywords that are associated with your brand. Your list could be quite long, since it will include very general words as well as more specific words that reflect your business, what you do, your products and your services. Remember that the point of brainstorming is to come up with as many ideas as possible, so don’t hesitate when building this list.

Put Yourself in Your Markets’ Shoes

Now, consider your markets and think about what kinds of words they may use when they conduct searches. Think about words people would use if they were specifically looking for your business and words they might use if they are looking for the kinds of products and services you offer. This part of the process requires you to think differently, since you are likely very used to thinking about your business from an insider’s point of view.

Check Your Analytics

If you already have a website or blog with analytics, check to see what kinds of search terms are bringing people to your website. As you look at this list, add keywords you haven’t already thought of to your list of potential keywords.

Narrow Down Your List

At this point you likely have a nice long list of potential keywords. You probably have more than you need or that you can realistically target. Go back down your list and cross off the keywords that are extremely general and highlight the ones that you think will bring the best results. You may want to keep the words your audience is already using to find your website and words that are more unique to your specific business.

Add Long Tail Keywords

Examine the remaining keywords and add long tail keywords wherever possible. Long tail keywords are key phrases that make a more general keyword more specific. For example, a general keyword would be “printing services” long tail keywords would be “London printing services,” “affordable banner printing services,” or “sign printing services in London.”

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Research Search Volume and Competition

Use a tool like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to decide which keywords you should target. Search for the keywords you have on your narrowed-down list and look at how many people search for the term and how competitive it is, or how hard it is to rank for the keyword. Google’s tool allows you to see related search terms, which can help you add more targeted keywords to your list.

When you finalize your keywords, keep in mind that you may have a few different categories of keywords to target. You may want to try to rank your product page for one keyword, and your home page for another keyword. You may also decide to use different keywords for different link-building and SEO techniques.

Many businesses want to know how many keywords they should target, but the answer to this question will be unique to each business and its goals and industry. Every business and every campaign will require a different amount of keywords. Also keep in mind that as your campaign develops and you begin ranking for certain words, or as your business changes, your list of keywords will also likely need to change.

Measuring social media can be difficult. How do you know how all those posts, shares, tweets and “likes” are impacting your bottom line? While there are lots of ways you can estimate the affect your social media marketing has on your business, one recent study claims to have found the dollar value of each Facebook “like”: $174.17.

The Study

The study, by Syncapse, researched how 2,000 Facebook users’ “likes” impacted 20 major brands. It took into account brand loyalty, page recommendations, product spending, media value, brand affinity and acquisition cost. Interestingly, the $174.17 value is a 28 percent increase from the value reported from the same study in 2010.

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Syncapse also found that people who “liked” a business on Facebook spent $116 more, per year, on the brand than those who did not “like” it. People who “like” a company on Facebook spent 43 percent more in that company’s industry than those who do not “like” the company. The research also revealed that when a Facebook user believes his or her opinion shapes a brand he or she is more likely to react positively on social media.

How You can get the Most Value for Your “Likes”

So what does this research mean for your company? How can you get the most out of your Facebook “likes?” Perhaps most obviously, the study means your business could see more sales if it is able to attract more Facebook “likes.” Of course, this isn’t the only factor that will help boost your sales, but the research shows that people who “like” your business on Facebook are likely to spend more money on your brand than those who don’t. You could also benefit from “likes” at other companies in your industry.

One of the most important factors in Facebook marketing success is finding the right market. If you are able to find your potential customers and encourage them to “like” your page, this study suggests you will see a change in your sales.

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Getting more Facebook fans can sound easier than it is. To successfully build an audience, your business needs to post interesting and useful information. Social media users are already overwhelmed by posts, pictures and marketing noise, and if you don’t have a good reason for people to follow your brand, they probably won’t.

As the study suggests, showing your social media followers that you value their opinions is extremely important. This strategy can help you gain a loyal following and build a positive reputation. Listening to your market can involve reaching out to potential customers, responding to posts on your social media accounts and asking for your followers’ opinions. Remember, if you do ask for your fans’ opinions, be ready to show your market how you are listening. Even if you aren’t able to implement every suggestion, find other ways to let your audience know you are listing and take their comments seriously.

Facebook, with its huge audience and long list of features, can be a very powerful marketing tool. When you know how to reach your market and make them feel valued, your Facebook marketing can have a direct impact on your business’ bottom line.

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For many businesses, Facebook ads have proven to be very successful. The social media site attracts a huge audience with people in many demographics. If a portion of your market uses Facebook, advertising on the site could be very beneficial to your business.

Setting up a Facebook ad isn’t as complicated as you may think. In fact, you can do it in just five steps.

Prepare Your Facebook Page

If you don’t have a Facebook account, you will need one. If you do, make sure your business page is up to par with posts, updated contact information and recent activity. Establishing your presence on Facebook will help your reputation and marketing efforts.

Set a Budget

The Facebook advertising process includes a unique pay system. Basically, when you run ads the amount you pay will depend on how many clicks your ads get. This is good news for you, because in essence, you’ll only be charged for how much your ads are actually used.

However, you’ll also need to set up a daily or lifetime budget, which is where things can get confusing. According to Facebook, the higher your budget the bigger the audience will be that sees your ad. You will never be required to pay more than the budget you set.

When you start a campaign, it’s important to decide what your budget will be so that you can determine what kind of reach your ads will have and so that you can keep your other business expenses and goals in tact.

Create an Ad and Choose a Target Market

Create an ad that will help you reach your goals and that is in line with your brand image. You should already have a target market in mind when you decide to set up an ad, so now you’ll need to choose that same market on your ad settings. On Facebook, you can choose to display your ad to people depending on their gender, age, location, interests, likes, workplace, education and relationship status.

Create a Destination Page

Your Facebook ad will need to link to another page that users will see when they click on it. Facebook ads can direct people to one of your own, or somebody else’s Facebook pages, apps or events or to an external website. The destination page will depend on the purpose of your ad campaign.

As you decide where to send potential customers when they click on your ad, consider your call to action and make sure it is very easy for them to follow through with it.

Test and Track Your Ads

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When you run Facebook ads, you can test different styles and messaging. Facebook’s administration area can walk you through this process. Doing this can help you determine what kinds of ads work well with your market so you can use the channel more effectively. You should also track your ads to find out how many clicks they are receiving.

As you run your ad campaign you can experiment with timing, messages, ad design and markets to find the exact combination that helps you reach your goals.

With all the talk about how important website and blog analytic are, trying to figure out what all the numbers and terms mean can be overwhelming. Most statistics relating to the success of your website are important, but there a few basic measurements that are fundamental to understand how your site performs and how you can improve upon it.

Traffic Numbers

The most basic website statistic is traffic amounts. This refers to the number of visitors that come to your website. It can be very useful to track traffic numbers over time to see how well your site does as it grows and attracts a larger audience.

Things like new marketing campaigns, social media efforts and successful blog posts can influence your traffic numbers. If you take note of which efforts seem to boost your traffic, you can market your site more successfully by focusing on the tactics that move the numbers.

Bounce Rates

Bounce rate refers to the number of people who visit a page on your site and then immediately leave it, without exploring the other pages on your site. A high bounce rate on a specific page can mean that visitors aren’t able to find what they are looking for on your site or that the page lacks a clear call to action.

High bounce rates are not uncommon on blog post pages. Often readers visit your site or blog to read a specific article, and once they have done that, they leave your website.

Exit Rate

The exit rate is very similar to the bounce rate. The exit rate is a measurement of how many visitors leave your website from a specific page, even though they may have already explored other pages on your site. This statistic is important because it can tell you where readers lose interest or where they successfully find the information they need. It can be hard to understand why people leave your site, but analyzing pages with a high exit rate can give you some insight into why they leave.

Time Spent on Site

Knowing how much time your readers spend on your site can give you an idea of how compelling your content is and how effective your site is. The time people spend on your site will depend on which pages they are viewing and why they are there. It will also depend on what your want your readers to do on your website. Sometimes, increasing the amount of time someone spends on your site will increase the likelihood that he or she will respond to a call to action.

Traffic Referrers

Traffic referrers, or the websites that send people to your website are very important to marketing campaigns. Traffic referrers can be other websites, blogs, forums, social media accounts, press releases or any other website that includes a link to your website. Knowing which sites tend to send more traffic to your website or blog can help you increase your overall traffic numbers.

These statistics can help you better understand how your site is improving and what you can do to help it grow even more. There are analytic software packages available that can give you even more detailed information about you site’s performance, but free options, like Google Analytics, can also help you track your site’s numbers. As you develop your site and blog, watch these numbers and find ways you can improve your marketing strategy.

On Monday, Yelp announced that it is now offering, in conjunction with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a free Revenue Estimate tool for businesses. If you have a business account with Yelp, you will now be able to log in and see the number of leads you have received from the site and the estimated revenue you have earned from those leads.

According to Yelp, the tool is able to provide estimates by multiplying the number of leads your business receives by the average revenue you receive per lead. Of course, the amounts are only estimates, but they can prove helpful to businesses.

Another addition you’ll see when you login to Yelp is a section that shows you the average amount a customer spends in each business category. This information is based on research by BCG.

Businesses can use this tool to better understand how Yelp benefits their bottom line. If you already use Yelp for marketing purposes, you’ll get a better idea of how the social site contributes to your campaign and how successful your tactics are.

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How to Use Yelp For Digital Marketing Purposes

Create a Strong Presence

When you start using Yelp, make sure all the information you include about your business is complete and accurate. Things like your address and business hours are vital, and adding categories and a price range will help you attract more customers. You can also include a link to your website to assist with branding and traffic efforts. Yelp is a visual social network, so don’t forget to post lots of pictures!

Benefit from Word of Mouth

Word of mouth and recommendations from peers can be extremely powerful. With Yelp, you can encourage your customers to leave a review about your business, spreading the word and telling others why they should visit your location. Some users connect their Yelp account with their other social media accounts, which broadens the reach of their reviews.

Advertise Events

Does your business host events? If it does, Yelp is a great place to advertise them. The event info will be just a few clicks away from the glowing reviews your customers leave and has the potential to pick up some social media traction, making your event even more successful.

Share Discounts

If you use discounts as part of your marketing plan, you can post and advertise them on Yelp. If your customers know you post discounts to the site, they’ll check back regularly and may be more likely to leave a review about your business.

Respond to Both Positive and Negative Reviews

The Yelp review system makes it possible for you, as a business owner, to respond to reviews your customers leave. Taking advantage of this feature can help you engage with your customers and create a strong brand image and reputation. Thanking customers for their positive reviews is good practice, but so is responding to negative reviews. You likely have a company policy on how to work with unhappy customers, and that policy can cover online reviews. Whether you offer unhappy customers a discount or simply apologize for a bad experience, you will be branding yourself as a business that cares about its customers and works hard to make sure they have a good experience.

Yelp’s new Revenue Estimate tool is an excellent, and free, resource for business owners. It can help your company learn how the site is contributing to its success and can even help you better understand which tactics can help you get the most out of Yelp.

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Before you launch that new website, there are a few things you should do. In fact, failing to check off these important factors could bring negative consequences. When you launch a new site or blog, you only have one chance to get it right. Many of your new customers or readers will visit your site at launch, and if they don’t like what they see, they likely won’t come back.

But, don’t let this idea scare you. It’s entirely possible to make sure everything is in its place and working properly so you’ll have a successful site launch and start your business or blog campaign off the right way.

1. Perfect Your Design

Make sure your design is exactly the way it needs to be before launch day. Make sure things flow well and that there is enough white space so your readers aren’t overwhelmed. Now is the time to make sure everything looks sharp.

2. Proofread Everything

When the design is done, you can proofread all your site content. Double check that all the details your audience needs are included. Edit for the usual things like spelling and grammar, but also check for things like style, tone and flow.

3. Set Up and Link to Social Media Accounts

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If you don’t already have some business or brand social media accounts set up, now is the perfect time to do it. You can use your new site’s design to personalize your account pages and add the URL of your new site in your biographical information. Then, link the social media buttons on your website to the accounts. There’s nothing like a broken social media button to make you lose a crowd of followers.

4. Make Sure All the Links Work

Go through your entire site to make sure every link, including buttons and tabs, work. The ones that interlink the pages on your site and the ones that link to outside pages are both important for optimal search engine optimisation and ease of use. Depending on the platform you use, you may be able install a plugin or program that will detect broken links for you.

5. Have Some Blog Posts Live and a Plan Ready

You can’t launch a website, especially a blog, without any posts. Have a handful of posts already live when you launch your site. It’s also good practice to have a blog posting plan for the next month or so ready. Even better, write several posts ahead of time and schedule them to go live over a period of time.

6. Create a Means of Contact

Your readers need to be able to contact you. Whether it’s to buy your services, ask a question or to report a problem, a contact form or readily available contact information is absolutely vital. If it’s not easy to contact you, your audience will lose faith in your customer service and may turn to blog comments or forums for their answers, giving you less control over how you serve your market.

7. Apply SEO Tactics to Pages

Before you launch, have a basic SEO plan in place. Part of this plan should include some on-site optimisation strategies, which should be done before you launch your site. Including keywords and meta descriptions before launching will help you influence your rankings from the day your site goes live.

8. Advertise Early and Decide How to Hook Readers

Build hype in your market before launch by using traditional marketing methods, social media and other sites you own, if applicable. You may also want to implement a way to entice new readers to visit your site, subscribe to your blog or follow you on social media. Some ways to do this might be through a contest or giveaway or by offering early followers a discount.

9. Set Up Analytics Software

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If you don’t set up analytics software for your site before you launch it, you won’t get a clear idea of how well your site is doing. You should see a surge in traffic at launch, followed by a steady stream of visitors. If you have no idea how well your site has done over time you won’t be able to measure your success.

10. Back Up Your Site

Backing up your site is extremely important. Having a backup ready can save you from disasters like a site hack, server failure or a mistake on your part. If something happens to your site during launch, postponing your launch to fix your site could ruin your campaign. Play it safe and back your site up often.

This checklist will help you launch a working, professional site and help you prepare for a successful launch. Your market will be met with a beautiful site and everything they need to respond to your calls to action and become customers or brand advocates.

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Now social media managers and marketers can go straight to Pinterest, rather than third-party tools, to find out how their market is using Pinterest with their website. On March 12, the fast-growing, visually based social media site unveiled its own analytics tool.

Measuring things like retweets, likes and plus ones has been relatively easy and is often used in gauging the success of social media plans. Setting measurable goals can help you understand if your marketing plan is working and can help you prove the worth of your strategies to the management at your company.

What You Can Learn With the New Feature

Pinterest is making it easier to measure how well your brand is doing on Pinterest by making a few statistics more readily available. You can even look at statistics for a certain time period and download the results.

How Many People Came to Your Site From Pinterest

Using Pinterest to drive traffic to your website is probably not a new idea. However, this piece of information can tell you just how much traffic you are getting which could help you modify your strategies to find out what kinds of content bring the most traffic.

How Many People have Pinned Images from Your Site

This statistic can help you understand how your readers are interacting with your content. If one of your goals is to add more content from your site to Pinterest, this is a great way to see how you’re doing.

How Many People Have Seen the Pins from Your Site

This could be a very powerful number. After all, if you spend lots of time pinning, or encouraging your users to pin, content from your site but no one sees it, how successful is your campaign? By keeping an eye on your pins’ visibility, you’ll be able to better assess what you are getting out of your Pinterest efforts.

Most Popular Pins

Knowing which ones of your pins are repined, clicked on and most recently pinned can help you create the best content possible. When you know what your audience is responding to you can more easily meet its needs and improve your social media campaigns.

How to Start Using Pinterest Analytics

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Before you can use any of the new analytics features you’ll need to verify your site with Pinterest. Doing this will add your site’s URL to your profile, may help generate some traffic to your site and will allow Pinterest to access the details listed above. Next, you’ll need to use Pinterest’s updated feed. When you login, you should be prompted to switch to the new view. Once everything is set up you can access your analytics from the menu in the right-hand corner of your account page.

Using Pinterest’s analytics feature can help you use the site more effectively. Knowing how your users are using Pinterest in conjunction with your site’s content can help you understand how to provide content that will resonate with your market.

Technorati has published its 2013 Digital Influence Report with some very interesting findings. The report covers information about consumer behavior, how brands can create influence and what kinds of media channels are most successful in achieving different goals.

The entire report is 34 pages long and is packed with very useful research digital marketers can use. Some of the significant findings include why consumers follow brands, where content is most likely to be shared and which sites are most trusted by consumers.

Why Consumers Follow Brands

Technorati studied Facbeook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram users to find out why they follow brands. The results were interesting and can help brands better understand how to leverage their social media accounts.

The number one reason consumers follow brands on:

- Facebook is to learn about products and services.
- Twitter is to keep up with activities.
- Pinterest is to learn about products and services.
- YouTube is to learn about products and services.
- Instagram is to keep up with activities.

The most popular reasons for following brands are to learn about products and services and to keep up with activities. By understanding why your target market is likely to follow your brand on different channels, you can use your accounts to fill that need and use each channel more effectively.

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The results of this study also serve as a reminder that consumers view different social media sites differently. For example, your market may see your Facebook page as a great place to learn about your products but not the best place to find out about your company’s recent activities. When you understand this concept, you can use each channel to fill those expectations and provide the type of content your market is looking for on each channel, more effectively sending your message.

Facebook is Most Shared From Website

Technorati’s report also found that Facebook is the most shared from website. It beat out blogs, news sites, retail sites, other social media sites, and several other types of websites. Interestingly, brand sites are the least shared from type of website. What does this mean for your business? It means that if you want your users to share content you need to focus on Facebook. Posting interesting and shareable content to your Facebook page may be one of the best ways to leverage online word of mouth and encouraging your customers to act as influencers over their friends.

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Facebook Second Most Trusted Behind News Sites

A related finding revealed in the report is that Facebook is the second most trusted site, second only to news sites. This statistic is an amazing finding, considering all the sources that were also studied: retail sites, online magazines, brand sites, blogs and other social media sites.

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If your market trusts Facebook more or just as much as news sites your brand has an excellent opportunity to reach its customers. Building trust is essential to a successful digital marketing and social media marketing strategy and this statistic shows that it is very possible to build trust through your brand’s Facebook page.

Knowing and understanding these statistics, and the many others included in the report, can help your brand use social media more effectively.

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Your company’s website acts as your online face. The presence you have on your site can help you connect with your audience, maintain your brand and meet your overall business goals. In order to use your site to its fullest potential, you need visitors that stay on your site, responding to your calls to action.

What is a Bounce Rate?

A site’s bounce rate is the percentage of its visitors who land on one page, then leave the site without visiting any of its other pages. Bounce rates may be higher for things like blog posts or contact pages, since a reader may view this page, get the information he or she needs, and then leave your site.

However, a high bounce rate on your site’s main pages or the majority of the pages is usually a bad thing. When readers fail to explore your site, they may miss your calls to action, and more importantly, fail to become customers.

How to Lower a High Bounce Rate

Decreasing your site’s bounce rate may take some trial and error, but there are some things you can implement to encourage your visitors to spend more time visiting the pages on your site.

Create a User-Friendly Site

If your site loads slowly or if it’s hard to navigate, your readers won’t know how to visit other pages. They will get frustrated, or miss the information they are looking for altogether. Use very clear menus and make sure your site is running smoothly.

Share Your Message Loud and Clear

Make sure your main message is featured prominently on your site. Also include a call to action on every page, so it’s very clear what your reader needs to do and what steps are necessary for them to get the information they need.

Use Design Elements to Your Advantage

Design elements like contrast, color and the rule of thirds can help you draw attention to calls to action. Use these things to encourage readers to click through to other pages on your site. An attractive site design can also help build your brand image and trust with your audience.

Strategically Limit Your Audience’s Choices

If your readers are overwhelmed with options, they may not know which to choose, which could cause them to leave your site. Instead of giving your readers a lengthy list of things to click on, strategically narrow their options. One way to do this is to use a few different calls to action, making each an option or a link, and leaving other links deeper in your site.

Track User Patterns

Use tools like heat maps to find out how your readers use your site. Then, make changes that follow these same patterns. For example, if your readers tend to gravitate toward product descriptions, make those some of your strategically offered choices. If your audience engages more on your blog and its resources, you may want to try drawing readers in through posts and then using very clear calls to action to take them to other parts of your site. You can also perform some tests that will show you which layouts and calls to action work better than others.

Heat maps can help you see how your readers use your site. Image source

By carefully designing your site and watching how your uses interact with it, you can decrease your bounce rates, making it more likely that your readers will respond to your calls to action.

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Business is full of statistics. In fact, you could argue that business is built on the results of studies, surveys, marketing research and focus groups. Without knowing what your public wants, you can hardly meet their needs and stay in business. Just like your business needs to do market research, it needs to analyze the results of its digital marketing strategies in order to be successful.

What Kind of Analytics?

In digital marketing, there are all kinds of strategies you can measure: social media comments, video views, website traffic, retweets, plus ones, and the list goes on and on. The trick is to decide which strategies and measurements can help you be the most successful.

If your plan is centered on a new video campaign, video views and shares will probably be a helpful statistic. On the other hand, if you are trying to build your Twitter following, statistics like followers and retweets will be important. Page views and traffic reports are important to most businesses.

Why You Need to Take Measurements

Understand What is Working

Without measuring your results and tracking the successes and failures of your strategy, how will you know what resonates with your audience? Without numbers to show you what your market responds to, you could end up continuing with your strategy, experiencing lucky successes, rather than reaching the highest potential possible.

Change What Isn’t Working

In the same way analytics can tell you what is working, they can also tell you what isn’t working. If you notice that certain media channels or certain messages just don’t get a response from your market, you can change the strategy or stop using certain tactics.

Learn About Your Market

Listening to your public and watching analytics can tell you more about your market. For example, maybe you believe the people that are most interested in your brand are in a certain age group, but by doing surveys and analyzing social media engagement, you find out that your brand actually appeals to a bigger group, or even an entirely different group. Discovering these things can help you add to or change your digital marketing strategy.

Provide Results for Management

Measurements and analytics can also help you prove the digital marketing plan and its team members’ worth to the management at your business. Most managers like to see figures and direct evidence that programs and initiatives are helping the company reach its goals. The right measurements and analytics can prove to your manager that what you and your team are doing are well worth the resources.

In general, digital marketing analytics and measurements can help you make your strategies more effective. You can learn what is and what isn’t working, discover more about your market and provide statistical proof that your marketing strategy is worth your company’s resources.