Measuring Digital Success for Sustainable Marketing Campaigns
Importance of Web Analytics
Throughout the past nine weeks I have learned the overwhelming importance of web analytics, Search Engine Optimization and social media. If a digital marketer wants to ensure a realistic chance for success in this technological era, he or she must pay attention to all of these topics and categories. Correctly analyzing the data provided by Google Analytics or any other search engine is necessary to keep audiences satisfied and to potentially locate other customers that may want to consume the content a website owner provides. Digital marketers who simply operate their website without investigating the data about their customers are most likely going to be left behind.
Goals of Web Analytics
Measurement is a term that has been used by marketers for many years. Measuring who is visiting a website and understanding what motivates them is a large part of gaining tangible results. The desired end game result for web analytics is to track fiscal return on investment (ROI), which will help a company justify its digital marketing budget and/or to optimize that budget by supporting activities that have the most impact on revenue (Tietbohl). Web analytics/metrics is relevant because it helps marketers gain a full understanding into the ‘why.’ Why are consumers visiting a website? Why do they keep returning to my site and why is a website having optimum success or struggling to gain new visitors and customers?
Many of these questions can be defined by taking deep dive into web analytics. Website users would be wise to have a strategy before he or she develops a website. A user should have a clear definition as to why they are building a site. In most cases, developing a site is to earn money by selling products or services – and to inform their publics. Web analytics is a process that is always changing and requires a user to be flexible and adapt to ever-changing methods.
Adaptation is vital because technology and trends are moving very fast. What works for one website may not work for another. Do you need to look at developing a mobile or reactive site due to the amount of mobile/tablet visits you are getting? Is your site speed slower on certain browsers? The answers to those questions are available and will help you create a more successful and better web experience for your visitors (ProAcademy). Visitor habits are always changing and digital marketers must find unique ways to keep up and maintain a sense of loyalty. It is not always easy to find an exact scientific definition as to why someone is visiting or why they are not, however, staying true to the objectives and goals can help a marketer stay focused on the various tasks at hand.
Social Media Analytics and Ad Channels
Social media analytics has grown exponentially over the last 10 years and keeps digital marketers on their proverbial toes. Using social media to engage customers is crucial to online success in the business world. Finding different ways sell products and services can grow the business’ bottom line and reach new customers. Developing a social media analytics plan requires thought and execution for everyone involved in the process. Understanding the social media landscape is relevant because it is where many consumers socially engage and do their shopping. After all, selling products and services is one of the big factors to building a website. If a company is not connected to social channels they are likely missing opportunities.
As social and digital media become more mainstream; so does the volume of content that gets created. Consider for a moment that people and brands send almost 350 million tweets and share more than 684,000 bits of content on Facebook per day. People upload approximately 72 hours of video to YouTube every minute, and Google receives over two million search queries every minute (Hermann).
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
A significant aspect of defining the importance of social media metrics is measuring the online engagement. Key performance indicators help define and measure engagement. Engagement is a major part of the social experience – if a marketer cannot measure this, it can raise questions as to why they are in business. By tracking the right KPI’s, a company will be able to make adjustments to your social media strategy and budget. There are many different KPIs that can be measured. A few of the more popular ones are: alerts, bookmarks, testimonials, comments, fans, downloads, followers, favorites and shares.
The measurement of social media is still relatively new and finding the best way to extract return on investment can be difficult and an inexact science. This also creates a massive demand for data related to social media. Where are users coming from? What topics excite them? These are questions that, when answered, can be the difference between a successful Web site and a failed social media campaign (Tietbohl).
A few of the most popular social sites are Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest. While engaging consumers on the mentioned platforms, digital marketers should keep in mind the number of fans, followers, likes connections and shares he or she is attracting. Properly tracking these sites can ultimately lead consumers back to the website and allow for more growth and improve the ROI. Understanding who is visiting your site can give the marketer a better indication if they should explore utilizing advertising on social platforms. Targeted advertising can be very useful when finding the right audience.
Google Analytics
Google analytics can be an overwhelming undertaking if not done properly. There are many categories and measurements digital marketers can navigate and explore. A marketer has to figure out what his/her goal is. What is a goal? A goal is a web site page that helps generate conversation for your site (Tietbohl). GeoTargeting, dashboards, conversion funnels, e-commerce reports and on-the-fly visitor segmentation allow marketers the ability to zero in on what activities consumers perform when on the site, where they leave, what they purchase and more.
Gaining valuable insights about the consumer via the above platforms can increase the ROI of a website. Setting up Funnels is another way to attract and retain customer via the web. There are many different ways to set up funnels, but many are set up with a top, middle and bottom approach. The top of the funnel is where the first interactions with your brand take place. It is typically attributed to search or organic, but it can a case by case circumstance depending on the website.
The top of the funnel can deal with exposure and discovery to the website. The middle of the funnel is where consumers move from initial brand interaction to the first sale. This is where marketers can figure out the most popular and most effective middle-of-funnel channels a couple of different ways. The first would be to track the attribution to discover which channels get more credit based on first click, linear, and last-click. The bottom funnel is very important to understand because it can help build the strategy around how to get people into those channels and convert them later (Doherty).
Adwords
Adwords also are an important factor in Google Analytics mix. Adwords help businesses track the traffic from their website. In online advertising, a conversion occurs when a click on your ad leads directly to user’s behavior you deem valuable, such as a purchase, signup, page view or lead. Below is a nice image of what consumers see when conducting a search.
Image
retrieved from: www.smallponddeveloper.com
I do not typically click on Adwords during my search, but I do see them appear while I am conducting a search. It can be a valuable tool for marketers who are looking to expand their brand with specific advertising.
Understanding your audience
Google Analytics offers many forms of research opportunities to further understand their targeted audience. Resources such as audience reports, acquisition reports, duration, pages/screens per visit, event, filters, e-commerce tracking and more can be valuable resources to gain a better understanding of who is visiting and why they may or may not be staying very long on a particular site.
Arguably one of the most important tools with Google Analytics is the use of e-commerce tracking. If a site owner is not interested in tracking who is coming to the site, then why have a site? E-commerce tracking will allow users to know exactly where the most profitable customers are coming from and how they can find different ways to attract more business. A platform like Shopify will automatically pass e-commerce data to Google Analytics once the user has connected them together. The user must give Shopify the Google Analytics property ID and turn e-commerce tracking on and the system should be ready to track.
Filters also are very important in the process to attract more viewers. There is a lot of data to sift through for digital marketers and filtering the correct data for their particular needs is important. Below are six key filters to consider implementing when setting up filters.
• Setting your URLs to lowercase: If the URLs for your website allow upper and lowercase character, Google will report on each version of a URL separately.
• Excluding your own traffic from reports: Chances are that your own visits to your own site are not going to be a large percentage of the total visits and page views.
• Showing the domain/hostname: If you want to see the domain/hostname appended to page names within your reports, this filter will include it for you.
• Filtering directories and sub-directories: This filter is useful to either report on stats for a specific directory e.g./blog/or exclude a director from the report.
• Separating mobile and non-mobile traffic: Mobile traffic is on the increase and mobile users will interact with your site differently to desktop users.
• Making sense of the search keyword (not provided): If you have looked at the organic search phrase report, the chances are that one of the top keywords appearing reads as (not provided).
On-page Optimization
If a digital marketer wants to launch and run a successful campaign, it starts with a solid on-page SEO plan. Every campaign starts from the web site and if your site is not optimized for both search engines and users, your chances for success are minimized (Chris). Making sure a website is properly equipped with the right functionality is crucial for successful on-page SEO. Everything from search friendly URLs to engaging content/keywords to great headlines will certainly help the website owner create better SERP rankings. If the website is not set up correctly for the visitor, it can lead to disappointing results.
A good strategy should always focus on keywords that have intent, search volume and are relevant to a brand’s products and or services. Once the campaign manager has the visitors to his/her site, they must do everything in their power to ensure their experience was rewarding and worth their time. If it was a great visit, the manager stands a great chance of returning visitors, additional page views and more.
Off-page Optimization
There is no question on-page optimization is important in the grand picture, but I would argue off-page optimization is slightly more important. Today’s digital marketers must realize the importance of off-page SEO. This process includes everything that happens off the website itself. Getting the attention of customers has become increasing more difficult because of the massive amounts of messages circulating the Internet these days.
Finding unique ways to attract potential customer to a website is the key. Using tactics and strategies such as video, public relations, social media, blogging, cross-linking and more can boost chances opportunities for more visitors. For example, press releases are a great way to distribute information and fresh content, products or services. Within a press release, a content strategist can insert hyperlinks that bring consumers back to the intended site where the campaign or project begins. The use of video has become very popular throughout the years. Savvy marketers use video within a multimedia release to drive engagement rates and visitors to the site.
Social media also is one of the most innovative ways to seek out the attention of potential clients. The multifaceted uses of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google + and more have made it easier for digital marketers to have multiple ‘voices’ at one time.
Conclusion
While it can be overwhelming for certain digital marketers to not completely understand the importance of SEO and all of the tactics involved; it is crucial that campaign managers and site owners make a strong effort to measure their results in a data driven society. Some brands have been obsessed with the notion that rankings are the only SEO metrics that matter. While rankings can contribute to overall success, they are not reliable measurement or predictor of success. Instead, increases in traffic and revenue, along with other conversion metrics, should be the sole metric by which SEO success is measured (Burton).
Additionally, there are only a select number of keywords that deliver the most traffic to a site and a vast majority of those keywords are likely branded. A digital marketer should always rank high in branded keywords. If a particular company does not accomplish this goal, he or she has some real issues to work out.
References
Tietbohl, M. (2015) Introduction to Web Analytics, Retrieved from: Lesson 1, WVU
Professional Academy (2015), Why are web analytics so important to marketers
and businesses alike? Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/1MB49zX
Hermann, C. (2015), 5 Steps Required to Building a Best Practice Digital Analytics
Function, Retrieved from:
Tietbohl, M. (2015), Lesson 3: Social Media Analytics & Advertising, Retrieved from:
Lesson 3, WVU IMC
Doherty, J. (September 23, 2013), Building Your Marketing Funnel with Google
Analytics, Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/1jHA8mx
Cartwright, J. (July 2012), 6 Must Have Google Analytics Filters, Retrieved from:
http://bit.ly/1wW0ryx
Chris, A. (2014), 5 On-Page SEO techniques That’ll Boost Your Rankings (Checklist
Included), Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/1z9leMh
Burton, W. (March 12), The Real End Goal of SEO, Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/18tz6Zu
