Five Ways to Use Google Analytics to Improve your Marketing

Google Analytics is the undisputed king of website analytics, and for good reason. For a free tool, Google Analytics has an enormous amount of analytical power, built on an intuitive and easy-to-use platform that does a great job balancing depth and complexity, perfect for novice and expert marketers alike. In today’s web development market, nearly every website is built from the ground up with Google Analytics in mind. Considering this fact, every marketer should know how to use Google Analytics as a part of their marketing campaign. Here are five ways to get you thinking about the possibilities:

Understanding User Experience Through Traffic and Behavior Flow

If there’s any one thing you should know how to do through Google Analytics, it’s tracking your website audience from page to page to understand what audience behavior looks like on your website. Much like traffic at an amusement park, understanding where people start (landing pages) and where they’re headed (behavior flow) gives you an idea of what an average user experience of your site looks like– and consequently let’s you think about where decisions might occur along the way. For example, if users typically land on your blog pages and navigate to one to two other blogs before leaving, you might want to guide those visitors towards related services on your website and the top of your sales funnel. If they just visit your home page and leave shortly after, you’ll want to take a look at site load times and links to internal pages to make sure that visitors are quickly able to find what they’re looking for.

Using Conversion Paths Effectively

For many businesses, guiding visitors towards conversion of some kind is a major purpose of the website, whether that’s direct product sales, sales leads through contact forms, or even newsletter signups. It would make sense, then, that optimizing the user experience mentioned above to push visitors towards conversions would be a high priority– and luckily, conversion path analysis can do exactly this. Conversion path analysis is essentially an advanced form of behavior flow analytics, containing an aggregate of the pathways that site visitors take on their way to conversion. The trick here is that conversion paths can sometimes be significantly different than typical behavior flow in a demonstrable way. Your data may show that users who converted overwhelmingly did so on a few specific pages, or only on their first time visiting the site. By using this data, you can get a sense for what a successful conversion looks like and optimize your user experience to make this process as likely as possible.

Understand Your Audience Demographic with Affinities and In-market Segments

If you’ve developed your marketing plan, you probably have an idea of your target audience and may have even developed your audience personas. However, there’s a big difference between having an idea of your audience and truly knowing them– and this is where Google Analytics comes in. With Google Analytics, it’s possible to see exactly what kinds of people are actually visiting your website and track the way that groups with specific characteristics behave through use of the audience affinity and in-market segments. More powerful than the basic demographic settings, these options connect to Google’s search data and offer information on what kinds of interests and purchase habits your website visitors have outside of their interactions on your website. One idea you can try is to isolate different segments of your audience and compare the ways they interact on your site. This way, you can find out what’s working and not working for your website and gear pages towards the audience segments that are most likely to find them.

Creating Goals in Google Analytics

For any business with a website, it’s important to think about what you want the website to accomplish. Do you want your website to drive product sales? Create leads? Distribute information? Whatever your objective, you should track it through GA’s Goals functionality. In order to set up this tool, decide what specific actions you’d like website visitors to take, like downloading your newsletter or purchasing an item. These are your conversions. From there, head into your Google Analytics admin panel and set up goals under the view panel. (Here’s a guide if you need more detailed information) If possible, make sure you assign monetary values to the goals so that you can measure return on investment! Once this is complete, you’ll be able to measure how effective your website is at creating conversions, as well as what kinds of visitors are more likely to convert. You can also see which kind of traffic is bringing you the most conversions. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll be able to track goals from week to week and evaluate the success of your digital marketing strategy.

Use Google Search Console to Track Search Terms and Optimize Content

So far, all the analytics we’ve mentioned above have focused on information about visitors once they’ve already found their way onto your website, but there’s one crucial component before this as well– how did they get there? With Google Search Console integration, you can finally answer this question by viewing the exact terms which visitors used to get to find your website. To give context, not all users find their way to your website in the same way, or are even necessarily looking for the same information. Because of this, page search engine optimization (SEO) matters a lot and plays a large role in determining how frequently visitors will land on a given web page. Using the search console, you can determine what terms people are using to find your website, and inversely what terms have not been as effective. For example, if your website is focused on selling baked goods out of the city of Seattle and your most popular search terms are all related to pies and pastries, you know that your page SEO has been effective for those terms but not necessarily on terms like “baked goods Seattle” or “baked goods near me,” giving you an idea of where you need to spend your efforts to improve your website. SEO is complicated, so we recommend looking up a list of best practices to learn how to improve your site.

Thinking about getting started with Google Analytics? We’d be happy to help you develop a strategy to take your digital marketing to the next level. Contact us today at (800) 980-7962 or [email protected].

/by

5 Good Marketing Habits to Start in 2019

As we enter the new year, many of us are likely considering starting a new habit (or breaking one) as part of our new year’s resolution. When it comes to marketing, there are many good strategies that can help your business grow if you make them a consistent part of your marketing plan. We’d like to share with you a few ideas that we think will be important in 2019 and encourage you to make them a habit as you move your business forward this year.

Be consistent with content marketing

We know how hard it can be to keep your content marketing moving, especially for small marketing teams. However, by being consistent throughout the year, you’re showing your followers what they can expect from you, keeping them engaged and looking forward to your content, and hopefully driving new leads. If your plan for 2019 is to write a weekly or monthly blog, begin early in the year (preferably January) by researching keywords and relevant content topics to build an editorial calendar. You may not be able to create a calendar for the full year, but if you start with three to six months worth of topics, it will help you save time if you get too busy later on. By getting into this habit early, you’ll find it easier to keep writing throughout the year and make sure your audience is regularly hearing from you.

Maintain regular social media management

Along with your content marketing strategy, ongoing social media management is a habit worth making. Not only should you stick to a regular posting schedule, but there should also be a focus on interacting with your followers. Remember, one function of social media is a customer service tool, and responding to users as quickly as possible is very important for your brand. If you’re unable to keep up with social media notifications on your phone or computer throughout the day, dedicate at least 15 minutes at the beginning and end of the day to go through and respond to any comments or messages that you may have received. Use this time to repost or engage with other pages or followers that may be sharing relevant content. To make this process even easier, you can take advantage of free tools like Hootsuite to connect and manage your accounts all in one place.

Identify new marketing channels

If you’ve been managing marketing for your company for a few years, you likely have a good idea of which marketing channels bring you the most success. While you’ll want to continue tactics that are successful, it is also a good habit to try new things when it makes sense for your business. Relatively new tactics such as IP targeting and geofencing can help you reach your audience with different targeting strategies than some of the more popular digital channels, such as Google Ads and Facebook, are able to offer. Make it a goal to try at least one new marketing tactic this year and make sure you’re able to track your results to see if it works for your business.

Find ways to include video marketing

Video marketing is definitely here to stay, so if you haven’t taken the time to incorporate it into your marketing strategy you’re missing out on a lot of potential traffic. According to a recent Forbes article, video is predicted to account for 82% of global internet traffic by the year 2021 (now only two years away). A study by Animoto also showed a higher likelihood of consumers making a purchase after watching a branded video on Facebook. The key to making your video marketing successful is to ensure your video is engaging, relevant, and mobile friendly (notice we didn’t say it has to be super high quality). Your video marketing strategy could include using Facebook live videos at company events or to show behind-the-scenes footage, or creating short demos of a your products to let people know what to expect from your brand. In 2019, make it a priority to try video as a part of your ongoing marketing strategy–you’ll be surprised how easily you can work it into your existing plan.

Get personal (to an extent)

We all know that some companies have gotten too personal in the past year, and we definitely don’t advocate for that. However, there are ways that you can personalize your content to make it more relevant to your followers. Contrary to what you may think, there are plenty of low-complexity options to try out, like segmenting your email lists, automating email campaigns with demographic targeting, or using Twitter Lists or Facebook targeting to share updates. Some of these options may take a bit of time to set up, but automation will save you plenty of time in the long run and will make it easy for you to continue your good habits throughout the year.

The new year is always a good time to start making new habits–and when it comes to marketing, these are just a few habits that we recommend to get your business on the right track. If you’d like to learn more about implementing any of these strategies, whether it’s video marketing, IP targeting, or social media management, we’d love to get together with you and strategize for 2019. Plus, your 30-minute consultation is free of charge! Concierge Marketing Agency today and let’s grow your business together!

/by

Rethinking Your Email Marketing Strategy

Rethinking Your Email Marketing Strategy

Love it or hate it, email marketing continues to be a strong marketing tool. For most people, including myself, our love-hate relationship with email marketing exists mostly due to spammer misuse. Thankfully, most of the obvious junk mail is usually filtered out, but even so, there’s also the issue of companies sending too many marketing emails, which can quickly become an annoyance to most people and cause recipients to opt-out from future communications.

In my own personal experience, I delete an average of 30-50 unsolicited emails every day. It’s a nuisance, given the fact that I do use a reliable email platform for my agency. I frequently spend the first 10-15 minutes of my day clearing out my inbox from irrelevant or too-frequent emails from sources I need to be in touch with, and thus choose to stay in their mail list even though many of them email me too often.

As a marketer, I often pay attention to the marketing practices that drive me nuts as a consumer and try to find ways to be effective in my profession without becoming ‘one of them’. When it comes to email marketing, less is more. Daily or even weekly emails could drive potential new buyers away. In our experience here at Concierge Marketing, bi-weekly or even monthly emails tend to generate a higher ROI.

When rethinking your marketing strategy, keep the following steps in mind:

  1. Ask for permission. Make sure your company is compliant with the recent GDPR rule by sending a double opt-in email and asking for their preference when it comes to frequency of email messages. According to a recent survey by MarketingSherpa, 86% of consumers said they prefer to receive promotional emails monthly. Considering the amount of email that the average person receives, following a regular schedule can keep your messages from being ignored and deleted, and will lead to a more successful campaign. If and when your messages are read is entirely up to your contact. Make sure they can easily unsubscribe from your list at any time they wish.
  2. Write engaging subject lines. Your subject line is the first part of your message that your contacts see and should reflect the content it’s introducing. To catch your reader’s attention, use personable language that directs readers to a specific action without sounding too much like a sales pitch. When it comes to length, the shorter the better – especially if your message will be read on a mobile device. Ideally, you should keep your subject lines under 50 characters.
  3. Write to your audience. The content of your email should speak directly to the reader. Knowing who you’re writing to by creating a buyer persona can help you better tailor this content. Writing in second person (using words like “you” and “your”) can add a personal touch that helps explain what your product or service can do for your reader. This message should be followed by a clear call-to-action linking to a landing page on your website with the next steps for your prospects.
  4. Be human. People like getting email from other people. Sending messages from the email address of one of your staff members rather than a corporate email, such as  [email protected], will make it more likely that your message will be opened. Also, use both the sender and the recipient’s names to add a personalized touch. In your content, try to personalize offers and other messaging to better appeal to the recipient.
  5. Test it and analyze your results. Test ways to keep your target audiences engaged by running A/B split campaigns to find out which subject lines, content length, or even types of promotions work best for your target market. Like any of your other marketing activities, your email campaigns are a source of valuable data. This data can tell you who has opened your message (and how many times they opened it!), if they’ve followed any of the links in the message, and who has unsubscribed. If you use Google Analytics, you can even track who in a specific email campaign responded to a call to action or purchased something from your website as a result of an email message.

Email marketing provides you with the opportunity to personalize your marketing activities in ways that no other method does, including building and maintaining long-lasting relationships with your customers. The success of your email marketing campaign is directly correlated to your business’ respect for the reader’s privacy and the frequency of your email messages— when creating an editorial calendar for your email marketing campaigns, keep in mind that sometimes less is better.

Want to learn more? Give us a call at (800) 980-7962.

/by

GDPR Checklist for Small Businesses

By now you’ve probably had a chance to review some information about the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went into effect in May. This new regulation applies to any company that interacts with European Union citizens, which makes it applicable even to small businesses in the U.S. who have a website or collect personal information from customers.

The provisions of the policy for keeping the personal data of customers secure and regarding the legal collection and use of that data by businesses are straightforward and easy to understand, but the penalties laid out for violations are significant. Businesses found to be in violation of the provisions of the GDPR can be fined up to 4% of annual global turnover or 20 million Euros, whichever is greater.

We have put together a checklist for small businesses to follow to be in compliance with GDPR. When in doubt, please check with your business attorney. There are no exceptions for enterprise size or scope, which means any business with an internet presence is potentially subject to this law. Here’s our list:

  1. Review your data handling procedures—Review your current mailing lists and check for contacts in EU countries. Make sure you have records of consent from these individuals.
  2. Keep track of your data collection channels—Make sure you know where your contacts’ data came from, such as  events, web forms, sales, etc. Make sure you have consent from the people in these lists.
  3. Provide clear consent wording—Avoid confusing legalese wording in your terms of use. Make sure the wording is clear and concise enough for anyone (no matter what level of education) to understand how you’ll use their information.
  4. Make sure all of your forms are GDPR compliant—Include consent verbiage in every single form – both in electronic and print formats. Add country of residence to your forms.  
  5. Verify the age of your web visitors—GDPR requires parental consent to collect or process personal data of children under the age of 16. If you offer products targeting youth, this step is very important to you.
  6. Send a double opt-in email—This step will definitely trim down your email lists, but it will also safeguard your business with the assurance that you’re only contacting customers who have given consent to be contacted. Make sure you’re not emailing individuals who have previously asked to be unsubscribed.
  7. Create (or update) a privacy policy for your website—Offer clear directions on your website as to what information is being collected, how data is being stored, and how to contact the organization. Please note that Facebook pixels and Google remarketing cookies should be disclosed on your privacy policy, if you use them for marketing purposes.
  8. Make sure you have a data breach plan—GDPR requires businesses to report a data breach no later than 72 hours after the organization becomes aware of the breach. In other words, be proactive and make sure that you are safeguarding the data you’re collecting.

Please keep in mind that your business may have other areas that may need to be analyzed to maintain compliance. When in doubt, consult your business attorney. We can help your business with the following steps:

  • Develop your website terms of use.
  • Disclose how your contacts’ information will be used and request permission to continue to use their data.
  • Make sure your website contact forms are GDPR compliant.
  • Disclose information about re-marketing practices – what your business does with data being collected by Google or Facebook on your website.

What to learn more?  Give us a call at (800) 980-7962.

/by