Archive for the ‘Metrics/ROI’ Category
What Is Your Most Important Metric?
19 Feb 2010
by Jonathan Thomas
It’s a question any organization should be able to answer, but often it’s one of the hardest questions to answer.
Some organizations spend marketing dollars without a clear metric they’d like to measure. They just want marketing.
But you can’t measure success unless you know what that success is.
So, when it comes to your online marketing efforts, what are you trying to achieve, and what’s the most important metric to measure?
Every situation is different, so here are some examples of metrics that are important to our clients.
Generally, clients care about pageviews, visits and traffic sources. However, the most important conversion metric for one of our clients is how often a video is viewed – how often the play button is pressed. For that one metric, we use Google Analytics to examine traffic sources, search keywords, etc. That metric is the center of our reporting and it is how the client measures the success of their marketing efforts.
Another client wants Facebook fans. Pageviews, time on site, etc. are less important to them. They just want a large audience, all of whom have opted-in for marketing promotions.
Some small businesses that I’ve worked with want their websites to work as a lead generation tool. They are less concerned with raw traffic and more concerned with completed contact forms and how many of those inquiries turn into new business for them.
For many organizations, though, it comes down to one metric: Unique Visitors. This number drives advertising sales, brand awareness and authority. But it’s not the be-all end-all. You can have a website with 2 million visits a month but if your visitors aren’t doing what you want them to do – if they’re not converting – then what’s the value in 2 million visits?
For successful online marketing in any organization of any size, ask: What is the most important metric? Build from there.
Choosing Between Woopra Analytics and Google Analytics
10 Feb 2010
by Jonathan Thomas
Why choose one over the other?
Let me explain.
I’ve been using Google Analytics for years now and I love it – so much that I’ve had some pretty high level training in its use and implementation. It’s an awesome analytics package and I prefer it over Omniture. We recommend using Google Analytics to all our clients and have become industry leaders in implementation.
However, I’ve been personally using Woopra Analtyics for about six months now and I love it too. I use both of them to measure traffic on one of my bigger blogs and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve even turned into a paying Woopra customer and as someone who is usually pretty cheap, that’s saying a lot.
They both have strengths and weaknesses that compliment each other. Google Analytics is free. Woopra is not. Google Analytics has more advanced features than Woopra. Woopra cannot do flash event tracking (yet). It’s easier and more straightforward to pull historical reports in Google Analytics versus Woopra.
Google Analytics biggest weakness is that it does not give you live statistics, results are delayed by a day. You can check your traffic during the day, but the numbers have a huge lag and aren’t very useful.
Woopra, however, provides you a live picture of what is happening on your website RIGHT NOW. At any given time you can see how many people are on your site and what they’re doing. Their desktop app is very powerful and useful – I keep it running at all times in the background so I can keep an eye on things. GA doesn’t have it’s own dedicated app.
Google Analytics also doesn’t provide many details on user behavior – mostly for privacy reasons. In Woopra, you can identify your visitors, tag them, track them, look at their site history, you can even chat with them (though I don’t think I would ever do this).
Now, how about differences in the data? Are the numbers the same? Generally, I’ve experienced a 5-10% differential in the data between the two packages, which I believe is well within a good margin of error. Usually Woopra is the one that reports higher numbers.
Besides, as everyone in Analytics should well know, web analytics isn’t about exact numbers – it’s about trends and statistics.
So, if you’re debating whether to install one over the other – why not install both? It’s just a snippet of code and it won’t slow down the usability if your site. You’ll discover some very interesting things about your sites.
Find out more about Google Analytics Here.
Find out more about Woopra Analytics Here.
Google to Personalize ALL Search Results
8 Dec 2009
by Michelle O'Hagan
Take a look at today’s blog post from SEO Roundtable: Google is now personalizing search results for all users by default. Which means a search performed on 10 machines could pull up 10 different results pages.
Previously, Google was personalizing results only for users logged in to their own Google Accounts. Now, by default, Google will customize search results for every user based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in the browser.
To say Google is trying to discourage rank-checking is an understatement. Too early to tell if this development will automatically favor websites with a huge reach, or if it will help to meet the needs of each and every searcher. Or both.
Google Adwords: The Conversion Comes First
20 Oct 2009
by Timothy Nolan
It may sound like a “Captain Obvious” statement, but when developing a Google Adwords campaign (or any online marketing strategy for that matter) it is essential to create goals and define conversions, for the following reasons:
1. Analytics: Meaning and Purpose
When looking at trends and analyzing data for an internal site or external client, the numbers mean nothing without context (a conversion rate). I have been looking through some of the campaigns for a major client. The numbers themselves seem to be moving in a positive direction, but without an identified end result I have no way of interpreting any of the trends.
2. Keyword Success
Perhaps you have been looking at your Adwords campaign thinking, “How can I ever increase these numbers?” It is much easier to analyze data that already exists. With goals, funnels, and conversion rates established, it is easy to tweak and test new ad groups against the current successful ones. By establishing goal conversions you can notice keyword success and decrease costs.
3. Visitors vs. Clients
Just as an established sales cycle helps companies close sales quicker, studying conversion rates is the key to quickly turning clicks into revenue streams. The conversion “ding” in your Analytics account will help to identify where that individual came from, what they looked at, and how they ended up converting. Now you can use that information to gain insights into what visitors are thinking.
Conversions Defined
Each one of these can be defined as a conversion:
- Download
- Purchase
- Sign-up/Subscribe
- View of a video(s)
- Click-thru
Don’t forget the landing page(s). A customized landing page and a prominent call to action makes it more likely visitors will follow your Reese’s Pieces (had to have an “E.T.” reference) to the end. But whatever the case may be, make sure that the goals are set on your end, and the path is illuminated on theirs.
The Magazine Business Really is Just Business
19 Oct 2009
by Michelle O'Hagan
This week, Advertising Age magazine’s cover story, The A-List, includes 10 magazines that “reach beyond the printed page to build a future as finely honed media brands.” The big winner: Women’s Health.
The article was an eye-opener for me because, although I’ve read all of the magazines on the list, I was wholly unaware of the fact that every one of them has become its own cross-selling empire. To be included on the list, a magazine must be operate as a brand, which may include the following:
smart licensing moves
becoming retailers in their own right
creating revenue-generating digital content
building smart cross-media content and ad platforms
finding a way to engage and monetize their communities
Whew! Even one of those things, (say, creating revenue-generating digital content) can be really, really difficult. And it goes to show that the magazine business is not really about magazines anymore: it’s about business.
It’s worth noting that every one of these publications has an intense editorial and creative focus on its readers. National Geographic isn’t trying to convert the FHM demo; National Geographic continues to excel at delighting a core constituency. It’s mission: exploration and conservation and bringing the wonders of the planet to people.
But, I’d guess that each of the magazines on the list has as many (or more) staffers dedicated to biz dev, technology, measurement and analysis as they do for editorial and design. It takes constant measurement and analysis to know if and when something is working, and to know when to adjust or pull the plug if something is not working.
National Geographic, according to the article, has more than 550,000 Facebook fans, 20,000 Twitter fans, and more than 190,000 YouTube subscribers. It also has ancillary publications, (”Adventure” and “Traveler”) and a cable television station. Think about what that means for measurement and analysis.
Consumers expect to be able to access to their favorite content in numerous delivery channels. They also expect content providers to reach out to them where they live (Facebook, Twitter, cable channels, iPhone apps).
And now, a question: Will it ever make sense again, in any circumstance, to start a new magazine on its own, without an integrated marketing plan that includes numerous content delivery channels? I can’t see it.
SEO Corner – How to Move Your Google Analytics Account
14 Jul 2009
by Jonathan Thomas
Google Analytics is quickly becoming the web standard for web analytics. The data it provides is awesome and the fact that it’s free makes it easy to adopt in a lot of organizations.
One problem with it though, is that many people sign up for Google Analytics with their personal Gmail accounts when they get started. This creates problems over data ownership if that person ever moves on to another job or gets hit by a bus.
It can also be a pain if several people within an organization have different Google Analytics accounts, it can be a nightmare for SEO’s to navigate. There is no official way to move your Google Analytics data out of one account to another – a frustrating limitation. But we’ve discovered a great workaround.
It’s pretty simple actually and we’ll walk you through it.
First Step – Create New Account
Create the new account you want to use for all your Google Analytics accounts. This requires a Gmail account then registering for Google Analytics.
Second Step – Add New Account
Log into the Google Analytics account you want to move and go to the users control panel, there is a link below your URL list.
Add the new Google Analytics Account as an Administrator and then logout.
Third Step – Remove Old Account
Log into your new account and you should see all your websites there. Now, the trick is to go to the user accounts and either downgrade the other user or remove them completely.
And that’s it, with that simple procedure you can move your valuable Google Analytics data to a completely new account. So, take some time and gather all the disparate Google Analytics accounts in your organization and consolidate them into one account. You’ll be saving yourself a lot of time and headaches.
Marketing to “Profitable Loyals”
22 Jun 2009
by Michelle O'Hagan
Why a Loyal Customer isn’t Always a Profitable One, an article in today’s Wall Street Journal, posits:
To be considered loyal, it shouldn’t be enough for a customers to feel a bond to a company, or to simply stick with the relationship. It should also require certain actions, or shopping behaviors, on the part of the customer.
In other words, loyalty and profitability are not synonymous: The proper target audience for any marketer should be those customers who actually are profitable, not just customers who visit your site often or who may have warm feelings toward your product or service.
Assuming this is true, questions arise. How do marketers encourage clients or customers to become “Profitable Loyals” and against what benchmarks or metrics are those PLs measured?
I’d argue that once a marketer can accurately label their own PLs and set benchmarks and metrics around them, it is easier for business development to target clients who may, indeed, become PLs.
Thoughts?
Job Opportunity: SEO-Analytics Associate
21 May 2009
by Michelle O'Hagan
Imagination Publishing is an award-winning custom publisher and content marketing agency; we create custom content and manage the integrated marketing efforts of more than 20 Fortune 500 clients and international trade associations.
The SEO/Analytics Associate is a junior-level position that reports to the Vice President of Search & Analytics. In this role, your responsibilities will be diverse, challenging, and rewarding. As a shared resource, you’ll work with account teams to improve their clients’ websites and web marketing initiatives through SEO and analysis. You must be a self-starter, someone who continually contributes well-researched ideas and advice. To be successful, you must enjoy and excel at:
- learning about our clients’ businesses for the purpose of assisting in creating their web marketing strategy
- performing competitive website analysis for internal and external clients and developing strategies for surpassing competition and meeting their business goalsanalyzing website traffic trends and working through various SEO efforts to increase traffic for clients
- communicating regularly with clients regarding their website’s effectiveness and the changes needed for progression
The primary responsibilities of the SEO/Analytics Associate include:
Research
Much of the work you’ll do for internal and external clients falls into the bucket of research, which may include: keyword research, link analysis, search engine results, new search engine behaviors, in-depth site reviews, and more.Reporting
All internal and external client accounts require written deliverables such as a site audit and/or weekly analysis of site metrics. You will create informative, insightful, and clear analysis and recommendations for our clients. You’ll also respond to a wide array of questions about SEO/analytics from internal and external clients.Blogging
Imagination’s blogs are a critical part of our business: they help to build our online communities, establish our credibility as a leader in our field, and serve as a valuable reference for our clients. You will blog regularly with unique and worthwhile posts and comments about SEO/analytics.
Candidate Requirements (Must Haves)
- Minimum 2 years hands-on work experience in on-page and off-page search engine optimization with a track record for successfully improving both individual rankings for keywords/phrases and improving overall site traffic
- Deep understanding of search engine technology, functionality, and optimization tactics
- Knowledge of advanced search queries, SEO tools and automated methods for site analysis and optimization
- A grasp of Internet business and marketing strategies – how to build, improve, and grow a successful property on the web
- A basic understanding of XHTML/CSS, JavaScript/Actionscript, basic web server technology, database software/functionality (ability to write code not necessary)
- Previous work experience with at least one major web analytics tool (Google Analytics, Omniture, Web Trends, etc.)
- Strong analytical skills with the ability to translate insight into actionable communications
- College degree (or a great reason for not having one)
Candidate Requirements (Nice to Haves)
- Expertise in social media marketing/optimization (SMM/SMO) on the web, including linkbait design and viral marketing campaigns and promotion
- Search Engine PPC Experience; Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Microsoft AdCenter, and third-tier solutions
- Affiliate Marketing experience as either an advertiser or publisher
- Active participation with the SEO community on and off the web, including the surrounding blogosphere and social media outlets
- Blogging experience
Imagination Publishing offers a competitive compensation package including salary, benefits, PTO and more. Qualified applicants should submit resume, cover letter and salary history via email to Andrea Scott, Director of Talent at ascott@imaginepub.com.
To learn more about Imagination Publishing, check out our site: http://www.imaginepub.com.
Imagination Publishing is an EOE.
