WSI Blog - Internet Marketing Tips and Strategies

These days website traffic can be increased through numerous methods. Whether you're initiating a PPC campaign, sending targeted emails or adding valuable content to your site you need to keep one constant in place. Your goals!

The ultimate (macro) goal may be to sell a product or gain a customer. Other macro goals may be:
    •    Downloading a whitepaper
    •    Signing up for an e-newsletter
    •    Requesting a quote
    •    Submitting information in return for something of value
    •    Viewing a product, service page or consuming some form of content (article, video, blog, etc.)

These macro goals can take time to achieve. Equally important to success are smaller (micro) goals that help build to your ultimate goals. Micro goals are the steps it takes to complete the macro goal. These may include:
    •    Opening an email
    •    Clicking on a PPC ad
    •    Browsing your website and viewing multiple pages
    •    Putting products into a cart and providing billing information
    
Initiating an analytics package can easily help you track the actions of consumers during a visit to your website. Where did they spend the most time, what actions did they take and what was the bounce rate upon the initial arrival? Understanding the steps taken prior to completing a macro goal can help you better understand your consumer and how to direct them where you want them to end up.

Site visits are not the true measure of your overall internet marketing strategy if you are using your site to generate new business leads. Many businesses get caught up in only tracking how many visitors they drive to their web site. Truth is, anyone can track site visits, and this is far from what you need to be paying attention to. While seeing your site visits climb each and every month is exciting, the true measure of your internet marketing success comes from contact form submissions/email marketing sign-ups/online sales/whitepaper downloads/etc, and phone calls generated.

Every business should be using some type of web analytics software to track the overall activity on their site. We use Google Analytics (free) for most of our client’s sites, but there are many other paid analytics software programs out there that are very good. Using your analytics software, you should be tracking all leads/sales generated directly on the site "Goals" or "Conversions," and setup ways to track all of the phone calls that have been generated from your website and pay per click ads.

An easy way to track your web form submissions in Google Analytics is to setup Goals. Not only will this give you a more accurate picture on what keywords are leading to conversions, but there is also evidence now that Google's search algorithms are taking into account how well your site converts to determine overall organic ranking. This makes sense considering Google's business is setup to deliver the highest quality, most relevant sites to their users, and a great way for Google to determine relevancy and quality of a site is to look at how many people interact or convert (fill out a form, sign up for email list, purchase an item, download a whitepaper) on the site.

Tracking Phone Calls is essential with internet marketing. How many people use their existing phone number and stick it on their web site? Just about every business we encounter has done this. Take the time and setup a tracking number just for your web site, one that will allow you to record phone calls, track number of calls, and even provide a list of who called, where they called from. Use only this number for your web site, setup additional numbers for your Pay Per Click campaigns and other off-line marketing mediums. WSI VoiceMarketer is a tool that we use to track the effectiveness of not only our own site, but many of our clients. And with Click-to-Call options available from both computers (need Skype or similar service installed) and Smart Phones, combined with Google Integration (a WSI Voice Marketer service), you can track what organic keywords let to a specific phone call.

Every internet marketing strategy can be tracked and measured, more so then you ever thought possible. Take the time to setup analytics goals and tracking phone numbers with your internet marketing strategies, and you will see the true picture of how well your marketing dollars are performing

Think you have squeezed every last dollar out of your Pay Per Click campaigns? Or think you have your Custom Landing Page down to a science? Maybe....maybe Not.  As the old saying goes, "You can't improve what you can't measure." This holds true even more so during tough economic times like we are facing today. The answer is effectively managing your Analytics.

Maketing managers and business owners are looking for ways to trim marketing budgets and increase ROI  (we should always be looking to do this, recession or not). If you can spend less and make more money, why wouldn't you want to do this?

Ask yourself:
1)  Does my print ad in the local newspaper really work? And how well does it work?
2)  What is my Yellow Page Ad costing me per lead? 
3)  Is my website unattractive to my visitors?
4)  Is my search engine optimization (SEO) work giving us the leads we are looking for?
5)  Are my email marketing campaigns even reaching my prospects INBOX or going straight to Junk Mail?
6)  I am spending all this money on a radio ad, but how can I measure its effectiveness?

If you are asking yourself these questions then its pretty clear that you probably aren't up to speed with Web Analytics. You can track and measure all of these marketing campaigns effectiveness. Without proper analysis and not being able to make informed decisions, business owners and marketing managers might stop campaigns that might be working or just need some tweaking. 

Check out our Analytics Webinar and Whitepaper on Web Analytics and How to Optimize Your Marketing Dollars During a Recession.

Optimize Your Marketing Dollars During the Recession (410 KB)

Watch the Webinar
 

Many companies are either at the beginning stages of experimenting with internet marketing or just beginning to see the true potential of this marketing medium. We are seeing a lot of companies using social media, pay per click, search engine optimization, and email marketing to promote their products and services and promote their company name because its effective at driving conversions.  The best way to shed some light on the actual performance of your marketing campaigns is through Web Analytics.

Web Analytics (Click Tracks, Google Analytics, Urchin are popular analytics software), will shed some light on which sites increased your marketing Return on Investment and are worth spending time on as well as which ones to eliminate or modify. Saving time (our most valuable commodity), analytics will aid in helping businesses make better decision as to how to allocate the time spent on a particular site, web channel, or internet campaign.

Analytics is not limited to tracking just online marketing activities, Television, Print, Radio, and other offline campaigns can now be effectively tracked and analyzed using Web Analytics. Why guess at how effective your marketing dollars are being spent? You can find out exactly what is happening with each campaign using Analytics. You can also use Web Analytics to guage how effective your Press Releases, Blog Posts, News Articles, Brochures, Videos, Podcasts, etc are working ON and OFF your site.

Having used Web Analytics to track the various websites and businesses we have developed over the years, its amazing the level of information you can find out about how people interact with your site. Analytics is as important to internet marketing as the website itself. Without Analytics, it's like driving at night from Boston to Chicago with no headlights. You can't get where you want to go without seeing what's in front of you. Analytics can shed some serious light on your marketing campaigns.

You should think about learning everything you can about Web Analytics if you are going to market on the internet, or hire a Web Analytics consultant to help you out. I am a Certified Google Analytics consultant and would be happy to help you sort through the data on your site and make your marketing dollars succeed. 

Contact me today to schedule a consultation radams@wsipremierEsolutions.com