Competitors can make running a business difficult to run smoothly. With competition, even a small mistake could send consumers to another business that offers a similar product. Making sure you are unique and have fantastic customer service is a must in order to compete today. But is that all? What strategies are your competitors using that you are not? More importantly, how can you monitor your competitor’s analytics so you can know how to steer your company? One of the most effective ways a business can grow is by monitoring and imitating the tactics used by their rivals. Thankfully, there are quite a few ways to do this effectively.
Go Beyond a Google Search
As you begin your research to monitor your competitor’s actions, it’s always good to start your research with a google search, but be sure not to stop there. It is a good idea to turn on Google Alerts, which will help notify you when there is an announcement or important news being announced by a rival or competitor. These notifications alert you to changes that you would otherwise spend a lot of valuable time trying to find. Another great resource to use to keep up with your competitors is Spyfu, which will let you know about the keywords and Adwords that your competitors are using and how successfully they are working for them.
Spend Some Time on Their Website
One of the quickest and easiest ways to find out information about your competition is to familiarize yourself with their website. You should pay attention to the content that is popular and shared the most often. For example, if a keyword is working for your competitor over and over again, maybe it’s time you implemented similar keywords or targets to your own campaign. You can use Buzzsumo to find out more regarding shared content, what influences their customers most, and how your domain and keywords match up with your competition.
Talk to Your Customers
There is a reason why your customers chose you over your competitors. Usually the best research you can do is speaking directly to the people who chose your brand over another. Ask your customers why they used a previous business and what attracted them to yours. What other companies were they considering, if any? You may learn about new strategies and even incorporate similar ideas into your own business.
Another great way to
access customer information is through reviews online. This allows you to see
honest discussion about what consumers are looking for and what they would like
improved. Online reviews allow the contributors to remain anonymous, which
gives them the freedom to honestly discuss an organization without backlash of
any kind. While someone may be cautious how they talk about a company they work
for or buy from regularly, anonymous reviews allow for honest discussion and
can be the most trustworthy platform on which to gain information.
Pay Attention to SEO
Search engine optimization is important because it is what increases visibility on the web and allows people to find you easier. You should pay attention to the SEO techniques your competitors are using. Are they using a company to help boost their website, or are they using google to help promote their website? In today’s world, being easy to find and access online is one of the most important tools you can use to help boost business. If your competitors are doing it right, you should learn how to effectively utilize SEO as well.
Call Them
After you have done research on your competitors, it never hurts to just pick up the phone and give them a call. In many cases, companies will not mind answering questions that you ask, and you may be pleasantly pleased with how much they are willing to tell you for free.
Attend a Conference
Attending conferences held by your competitors can help you better understand your competitor’s points of view, as well as more information regarding their products and services. Make sure that you visit the competitor’s booths and interact with them.
As important as your
own strategy is, it is just as vital in today’s business world to know your
competitor’s strategies just as well.
So, you decided to take your business to the next level and invest in a nice website?
Awesome!
But, what you should know is that despite the beautiful design and good overall usability, your sleek new website needs tweaking and fine-tuning if you want it to live up to your expectations in terms of conversions and bottom line.
Many people make a mistake by thinking that once the website is finished and live, their only task is to update content and fix potential bugs.
The truth is that the real work begins only after your audience gets a chance to visit your website thus allowing you to monitor its performance in the real world and optimize it for conversions.
This means that you need a solid, easy-to-follow CRO plan, so let’s see how to craft it.
Why Do You Need a Plan?
That’s a good question.
The main reason for having a conversion optimization plan in place is to establish the right goals, methods, and tasks which will help you make the most of your website and turn it into a conversion machine. Without a plan, it’s easy to lose focus and waste your time on things that don’t particularly matter.
It’s about setting your priorities and identifying what the problem is and how to solve it in the most effective and efficient manner.
Although the approach “Let’s see if it’s possible to convert more people if I change this or that element” is a good starting point, it needs to evolve and cover different areas of your sales process, and your business in general.
1. Collect Data
You’ve probably heard that popular phrase “People don’t buy products; they buy better versions of themselves,” and it perfectly sums up why you need to have a deep understanding of your customers, their needs, interests, and issues, as well as how they perceive your business and website, if you want to optimize your conversions.
Having the right data is essential for gaining valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t, that is, what areas, pages, and elements of your website should be optimized.
This step is crucial for helping you see where you stand and what assets you have.
As this is a pretty comprehensive process, it’s a good idea to break it down into three main categories.
In other words, you need to gather data on the following areas:
The company itself. Dig deeper and identify the “why” of the company – why it exists and why customers like it. It’s not always about superb products and services. There’s that special X factor, which makes a particular company and its messaging appealing, and it’s up to you to pinpoint what it is and implement your findings into your CRO plan. Identifying the unique sales proposition is essential because it’s what distinguishes your company from competitors who sell similar products or services. The USP is integrated into your marketing messages and its role is to capture your customers’ attention and give them a reason to explore your website further. Finally, learn what your customers’ common objections and complaints are. Talk to your customer support reps and they will provide you with customers’ feedback. If we bear in mind that 67% of customers name bad experiences with a brand as their main reason for churn, but only 1 out of 26 will actually complain, it’s self-explanatory why this step is a must. So, knowing what your customers feel about your company is a make-it-break-it factor when it comes to improving your CRO.
The website. Your website analytics should be accurate and detailed. Be in the know about all the relevant metrics such as the amount of traffic, dwell time, bounce rates, conversion rates, as well as the demographic information. The data about the browsers and devices they use to access your website is extremely important, especially after Google officially rolled out mobile-first indexing in July 2018. The fact that most people visit your website from their computers might indicate that there’s something that they don’t like about the mobile version.
The customers. This is, perhaps, the most important area and you should use different methods and tools in order to feel the pulse of your audience. Use heatmaps to find out what pages they visit and engage with most and use surveys to hear their first-hand opinions and experiences.
2. Create a Hypothesis
After this lengthy and demanding first step, it’s time to put these findings to good use.
You’ve probably identified a couple of issues on your website that need to be solved. There are two options when it comes to testing a page that returned poor results – you can either build it from scratch and test that new version, or you can change a couple of elements and A/B split test them.
For example, if the data shows that your CTA button doesn’t generate clicks, you can introduce a number of changes, such as the copy, different colors, and fonts, and test them.
But before you start experimenting, you should be able to clearly state why you believe that a particular change will improve your conversion rates and what problem it solves.
Again, you need to know:
What you’re testing. Let’s say that you’ve found out that a lot of your customers abandon their shopping cart and that your customer support reps frequently answer questions about how secure the checkout process on your website is. This clearly shows that you need to introduce some trust signals which will convince your customers that it’s safe for them to trust you with their personal information. For example, using an SSL certificate and switching to the HTTPS protocol, offering multiple payment methods, and showing payment assurance certifications are some of them.
Who you’re testing. There are different ways to split your audience, not just based on demographic data. You can, for example, test your repeat customers, one-time customers, or those who abandoned their shopping cart. Segmenting customers based on the browser they use is also helpful because you won’t test Opera users if the element you want to test doesn’t load properly in this browser.
3. Test Your Hypothesis
It’s showtime.
Although implementing new design and testing it might seem like a complicated task, there are useful tools that can significantly simplify the process.
Some of them include Optimizely and Visual Web Optimizer.
There are a couple of things to bear in mind:
Make sure that your new design displays properly across different browsers before it goes live.
Choose how much traffic you will direct to your test pages. If you have a lot of visitors, then this step can help you control possible risks in case that your design fails and your conversions on the test pages drop.
Don’t neglect the average order value, because although your conversion rates might be low for the pages you test, the average order value might go up.
So, set all these things up before you launch your tests if you want to get accurate readings. If you want to run your tests efficiently and effectively, it’s a good idea to enlist the help of experts from respectable web design agencies who will offer you their take on your ideas and implement everything properly.
4. Review Your Results
In this stage, you’ll review your results and see whether your hypothesis has been correct.
However, before you get down to work, it’s important to establish whether statistical significance has been reached. This is a complex concept, so check out this article which will tell you more about it.
Luckily, even if you’re not familiar with statistical significance, most optimization tools will give you this information.
If your hypothesis is correct, then implement these design changes properly and send all your traffic there. However, it’s important to keep track of your metrics closely to see whether everything works as expected.
If your hypothesis isn’t correct, make sure to save all your data from these unsuccessful tests, and go back to square one – create another hypothesis and do it all over again.
It’s crucial not to give up because failed tests are gold mines of data that you can use later.
These 4 steps can help you get to the bottom of a CRO plan that everybody can understand and implement.
Harris Norman is a 35-year-old web developer, born and raised in San Francisco Bay Area. Harris is also very passionate about spending time in nature, which is why he spends all of his free time hiking, sailing and mountain climbing. His design skills are admirable, which is why he’s got a special place among the writers of designrush.com. When he’s not running around chasing adventure, he likes to play the trombone, though not very well.
https://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/guest-article.png626626Josiah Bussinghttps://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/website.pngJosiah Bussing2019-02-07 09:00:472019-02-11 18:32:27A Detailed Guide to Creating a CRO Plan
Social media can be a goldmine for your digital marketing strategy. You can “strike oil” if you know where to focus your content marketing process. This is the advantage of having social media analytics. It will help you track, monitor, and evaluate key data so you will have a solid basis for fine-tuning your social media strategy.
4 Benefits Of Using Social Media Analytics
Track and measure the performance of every piece of social media content. By identifying the types of content that generated the best results you will be able to re-share the posts that garnered the highest levels of engagement.
You will be able to identify the poor performing posts and have accurate data to find ways to improve them.
Stay updated on trends; industry developments and changes in audience preferences and behavior so you will have an idea which topics are of great interest to your followers.
Pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of your current social media marketing campaign so you can identify which strategies generate the highest ROI.
What Is Social Media Analytics?
More than 3 billion people log in to some type of social media platform every day. That is nearly half of the world’s population. Thus, with such a large volume of users, social media will guarantee you of high-level activity. People will be constantly viewing, reading, engaging, sharing, and liking content.
However, not all posts will be viewed, read, engaged on, shared or liked. Some will receive more attention than others. Not all content that is posted on social media will be liked or shared.
If your social media posts seem largely ignored, don’t throw in the towel! Keep in mind that social media networks are communities made up of people with individual behavioral attributes.
People react to posts differently. They may click on your content and read it but they don’t have to like it or share it. That does not mean they didn’t enjoy your content. In fact, they might follow your page after reading your content.
The best way to make heads or tails of how your social media efforts are performing is to use social media analytics. It analyzes data-driven metrics to track and measure the results of your various social media activities.
The Importance Of Setting Goals In Social Media: Types Of Social Media Goals
What drives you to create content for social media? What do you want to accomplish? What are your expectations?
In short, what are your goals for your social media marketing campaign?
Creativity may be the key attribute behind the content marketing process, but you need to channel that creativity toward a specific purpose. While creativity is more of a function of artistic expression, you need data to give your content strategy direction.
Therefore, the first step in designing a social media marketing campaign is to establish your goals.
We noticed during our preliminary meetings with digital marketing clients that they are unsure of their social media marketing goals. There is a common belief that in social media marketing, the goal is all about getting likes, shares, and comments.
While getting a like on your post or having it shared is certainly a great feeling of accomplishment, the result should keep you aligned toward accomplishing your goal.
Here is a rundown of the 5 basic goals that you could have for your social media marketing campaign:
1. Increase Traffic – If you are having trouble increasing traffic to your website, social media marketing is a proven way of driving more site visits.
2. Increase the Number of Followers – Social media is an effective platform to enhance your reputation as an expert. If people find your content a valuable resource or a reliable and consistent source of information, they will not hesitate to follow you.
3. Maximize the Level of Engagement – Your posts will truly become social when someone engages with it. Engagement is interaction and can come in the form of a like, share, or a comment.
This creates an opportunity for you to establish a connection and potentially build on it and gain some future value.
4. Maximize Your Reach and Total Number of Impressions – This is what we were referring to earlier. It does not matter if no one liked your post.
If some people took the time to click on it and read its contents, then you have successfully maximized your reach and number of impressions.
In social media, getting visibility for your content is likewise important. That is why posting frequently is a key strategy.
5. Increase the Rate of Sales Conversions – Ultimately, what you would want to do is to convert interest into sales. You want your website visitor to become a paying customer.
Social media marketing is an organic approach to digital marketing. Unlike paid advertising which is more direct, it may take longer to accomplish your goals but at the same time, a successful social media marketing campaign can create positive residual and sustainable results.
Before coming up with your social media marketing goals, you should make sure these goals are aligned with your business goals.
For example, a startup will have a different social media marketing goal compared to a business that is trying to expand its services.
A startup’s content line up should include the following:
Feature on the company; its business, founders, management and staff, the office premises, factory, and operating procedures.
Advantages of using the company’s products and services.
“How To” and List-Type articles that explain how the company’s business can help its audience find solutions.
Product reviews.
An established business that is in the process of scaling its operations can have a content line-up covering the following areas:
History of the company’s growth and achievements over the years.
Current development plans of the company.
An in-depth analysis of trends in the industry.
Articles on the company’s socio-civic activities.
Client testimonials.
Glossary Of Popular Terms In Social Media Analytics
In order to have an easier time understanding social media analytics and how it can benefit your business, it pays to know some of its most popularly used terms.
Actions on Page – This term refers to the number of clicks received by your Call-To-Action (CTA) button and Contact Information.
Engagement – Engagement is one of the most important metrics in social media analytics. It measures the number of times someone has interacted with your social media post.
Impressions – The number of people who saw or viewed your social media post.
Engagement Rate – This is measured by dividing Engagement with the number of impressions.
Followers – The term refers to the number of people who have seen your post on their timeline.
Page Likes – Refers to the total number of people who have seen and liked your page.
Page Previews – Refers to the number of people who have gone over your profile and page name in order to view your content.
Page Views – The number of times people have visited and viewed your social media profile page.
Post Clicks – Tracks the number of times people have clicked on your post.
Post Reach – This metric tracks down and records the number of people who have seen your posts on their screen. Post Reach is measured and categorized as total, promotions, and organic.
How To Use Social Media Analytics
You don’t need to open a business page on every social media network on the Internet. A social media platform is its own community with their own strengths and purposes.
A good point of comparison would be Facebook and LinkedIn. Facebook is the largest social media network on the Internet with more than 2 billion users. In comparison, LinkedIn only has 575 million users.
However, the organic reach of Facebook has been declining since 2014. This means fewer people are interacting with published content. One reason for this is Facebook’s decision to transition to an ad agency. There are more ads and marketing content appearing on the news feed and this is turning off many users.
Facebook is a popular source for news and entertainment content. When someone logs into Facebook he/she wants to relax and stay updated on his/her network. Ads are seen as distractions much as they would on regular television.
LinkedIn is primarily a networking platform. People who want to look for jobs, clients, and expand their network of contacts have LinkedIn as their social media platform of choice.
Thus, if you want to use Facebook as the vehicle for your content, post articles that are meant to entertain, provide useful information, and presented in a less formal tone.
In LinkedIn, opinion posts carry more value. For example, if you are in the real estate business, share your opinions on property price trends and the direction of the prime lending rate.
Your choice of social media platforms should have the community, the culture, and the ideal conditions to support your overall social media marketing goals.
There are many social media analytics tools that you can use to measure the performance of your posts. In addition, every social media network has its own built-in analytics. You can use these analytics tools to assess the performance of your posts.
Here is a summary of the key metrics that you should look into when using any of the following popular social media analytics tools for each network:
1. Facebook
Likes – A “like” can be as good as a comment. Take note of the use of emoticons.
Comments – Negative comments can give you clues on what to improve on your content.
Shares – The higher the number of shares the greater the probability of your content going viral.
Referral Traffic – If more people are visiting your website because of your Facebook content, it means you are considered a valuable or credible source of information.
Page Views – More page views mean higher exposure for your brand.
Engagement Rate – A high engagement rate means more people are interested in your content.
Video Metrics – Measures how long people watch your posted video-based content.
Page Fan Growth – Focus on your page’s organic growth. The number of followers reflects your status as an authority figure in the industry.
Conversions – Measures the level of the persuasiveness of your copy. If your Facebook post leads to a web page with conversion intent, use Google Analytics to monitor the rate of conversions.
2. Twitter
Retweets – The higher the number of retweets the greater the opportunity for your tweet to build a larger audience.
Replies – Signifies level of engagement; it will let you know if your tweet has resonated with other people in your community.
Tweets Linking to You – Measures the number of people talking about your tweet and sharing it with their community.
Tweet Likes – Shows you how many people appreciate your content.
Tweet Impressions – In a high activity network like Twitter, visibility is very important. The more views, the better for your content and brand building goal.
Profile Visits – Gives you an idea of how many people are becoming interested in your business, products, and services.
3. LinkedIn
Impressions – Measures how many community members have seen your content.
Clicks – The higher the number of clicks, the greater the probability of driving traffic to your website.
Interactions – Indicates the level of interest in your content.
Engagement Rate – Gives you an idea of the value of your content to its viewers.
Visitor Demographics – Gives you an idea of the demographics of the people viewing your content.
4. Instagram
Likes – In Instagram, getting a “like” carries more weight compared to Facebook or any other social media network because there are very few data points available in this platform.
Comments – Positive comments help your brand became more influential.
Engagement Rate – The higher the number, the greater the level of interest in your content.
Total Followers – More followers mean greater opportunities to increase the visibility of your brand.
Conclusion
By having a better understanding of your social media data, you will be able to spot trends, identify the posts that are performing very well, and pinpoint flaws in your campaign.
Without analytics, you will miss out on potential opportunities to improve your audience’s overall experience in your social media platforms. You might not be able to catch red flags that could greatly compromise your digital marketing objectives.
It takes tremendous time, effort, and resources to create social media content. For example, a well-researched 2,400-word blog will take around 4 hours to write.
Social media analytics will give your content creation process direction and strategy. It will ensure that your efforts will yield ROI by guiding you to create content that produces the intended results.
Did you enjoy our article? If you have ideas and suggestions on how to effectively use social media analytics, please feel free to share them in our comments section.
If you’re interested in implementing digital marketing strategies for your business, give us a call. We’ll gladly give you a free 30-minute consultation and let you know how our expertise and experience in digital marketing can help take your business to the next level.
https://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/social-media-integrations.jpg367550Josiah Bussinghttps://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/website.pngJosiah Bussing2019-01-07 14:42:592019-01-08 11:36:12Social Media Analytics: What It Is And How To Use It To Improve Your Content
Google analytics is an online tool that we always tell our clients to have on their website. It is that important! Analytics is perhaps the biggest reason why digital marketing is more effective than traditional marketing methods. It gives you real time and highly-accurate data on your website’s performance. Analytics will track and measure the performance of your digital marketing campaign:
Which digital marketing strategies are working?
If so, which processes are generating the highest ROI?
Where are my site visitors coming from?
Which online channels do they frequently use to access my website?
How long do they stay on my website?
Which types of content interest my site visitors the most?
How often do site visitors abandon the transaction at the checkout counter? (For e-commerce businesses)
The answers to these questions will give you valuable insights about your audience. Analytics provides you with hard data that will describe the online behavior of the people who visit your website.
In so doing, you will have empirical basis for improving the performance of your digital marketing campaign. You will know how to make your content better and the most effective channels for distribution. Likewise, you will have the necessary information to fine-tune your digital marketing budget.
There are a number of analytics tools available on the Internet. However, let us save you the time and effort. Just set up Google Analytics for your website. It is quite simply, the best.
What Is Google Analytics?
When our clients hear the word, “Analytics”, they shake their heads.
“We’re not techies. We’re just entrepreneurs. We can’t make heads or tails of all those numbers.”
That’s exactly why we always recommend Google Analytics for our clients. It is easy to set up and simple to use. Best of all, it is free!
Google Analytics is an online tool that collects and generates accurate statistics on website activity. Every time someone visits your website, Google Analytics stores first party cookies on his/her computer. These cookies allow Google to aggregate visitor information in your account.
How does Google Analytics do its job?
It is connected to your website through the use of a tracking code made from Javascript. Google Analytics should be installed on every page of your website that you want to monitor.
Is Google Analytics the preferred analytics tool of businesses? Here are some of the data that was revealed in a study by MarketingLand.com:
The methods for evaluating Google Analytics usage may differ but the conclusion is the same.
Google Analytics is the most popular online analytics tool for businesses.
How To Read Your Google Analytics
We mentioned earlier that Google Analytics is easy and simple to use. Please allow us to clarify our statement. It is easy and simple to use. However, like all first experiences understanding Google Analytics will take some time and regular use in order to develop proficiency.
After all, Google Analytics is a skill. To learn a skill, you must constantly work on it. Eventually, with time and enough repetitions under your belt, you will become more comfortable with Google Analytics. Going through its reports will just be second nature.
The first step in learning how to read your Google Analytics is to understand some of its terminologies:
Visits – Measures the total number of visits to your website by a user during a specific reporting period.
Unique Visitors – A unique visitor is a person who visits your website for the first time during a specific reporting period. Successive visits in the same period will be considered “additional visits”.
Pageviews – Tracks the total number of pages that were viewed on your website.
Pages/Visit – Measures the average number of pages that were viewed by the user.
Average Visit Duration – Gives you data on the amount of time spent by users every time they visit your website.
Bounce Rate – Measures the number of times a user visits one page then clicks out of your website.
New Visitor vs. Returning Visitor – Allows you to compare and analyze the ratio or new visitors to returning visitors to your website.
City – Identifies the top 10 cities where your visitors come from.
Page Title – Google Analytics will list the pages viewed by site visitors from highest to lowest.
Average Time on Page – Measures the amount of time a visitor spent on a specific page that is on the list.
Entrances – Enumerates the number of times a specific page in the list was visited first by site users during the period of reporting.
% Exit – Identifies the number of times a specific page in the list was the last page visited by the user before leaving your website.
Page Value – Used exclusively by those with an e-commerce website in determining transaction values.
Source – Identifies which channels are referring sources to your website during the reporting period.
Visits – Measures the total number of visits that were sent to your website from the each respective source.
% New Visits – The percentage of visits that originated from the respective source identified in the list during the period of reporting.
Once your account has been set up, you will start receiving data from Google Analytics. When you log-in to your account, the first stop will be the Audience Overview report.
Just to pre-empt your surprise, Google Analytics can provide you with more than 50 types of reports. It can get overwhelming especially for first-timers. If you want to open the other reports, you can do so by simply clicking on the “Reporting” link that is located at the top of the page.
We will not have the space to discuss all 50 reports from Google Analytics. However, we can go through 3 types of reports that every first- time user of Google Analytics should get familiar with right away.
Audience Reports
If you want to get a detailed report on your website visitors, the Audience Report feature of Google Analytics will tell you everything you need to know. It will provide you key analytics data on specific characteristics of your site visitor. This data includes the following information:
Demographics – Population characteristics such as age and gender.
General Interests – What hobbies or interests your visitors are preoccupied with.
Location – Where your site visitors come from.
Language – The breakdown on languages that your site visitors speak or are proficient at.
Behavior – How often visitors go to your website
Technology – How your visitors access your website.
Acquisition Reports
As a business owner, it is important for you to know how your visitors came to be at your website. More specifically, you should know what made them want to click onto your website link.
Google Analytics’ Acquisition Reports feature will tell you everything you need to know about your website’s traffic. You will find out where your traffic is coming from. From here, you will be able to pinpoint which online channels are most effective in generating traffic.
This is particularly important if you have a varied Digital Marketing strategy that uses social media marketing, PPC or Pay- Per- Click advertising, and content marketing.
Behavior Reports
If you want to know how your site visitors respond or react about the content that you have published, use Google Analytics’ Behavior Reports. You will get hard data on the following key pieces of information:
The volume of traffic your website receives.
How visitors navigate your website upon entry; where do they land and which pages they explore next.
Your top performing content in terms of the amount of revenue it has generated.
The top entry points of your website; which pages are most often used by visitors to enter your website.
The last page users visit in your website before they click out; the data presented here will help you come up with ways to keep your visitors in your site much longer.
The loading time of your website. You will know if you need to increase site speed or not. Generally, a fast-loading website is better than one that is slow-loading.
The keywords used by site visitors to find your website.
The data provided by the Behavior Reports are crucial in helping you fine-tune the types of content that should be published in your website and social media accounts.
Again, keep in mind that Google Analytics has a large volume of reports to choose from. Other reports that you may wish to access include the following:
Mobile Report – Provides key data that lets you know how well your website is optimized for mobile devices. Why is this important? For the reason that mobile now accounts for more than 65% of online traffic, you should be sure that your website is fully mobile-responsive.
Traffic Acquisition Report – This report will give you hard data on how your digital marketing strategies are performing. You will see if the blog you spent 7 hours researching, writing, and editing is bringing in enough traffic to your website. If you have invested in PPC ads, you will know which ones are being clicked on by viewers.
Content Efficiency Report – How big is content marketing today? Google Analytics has its Content Efficiency Report to give you more data on how your content is performing. You will know which type of content is generating the highest levels of engagement. You will also find out which of your content is being shared more often by your followers.
Keyword Analysis Report – Keywords are a key component for content optimization. The Keyword Analysis Report will let you know the most popular keywords used by visitors to access your website.
New vs. Returning Visitors Report – Knowing that you have returning visitors is great for any business. It means they enjoyed the initial experience and are back for more. How important is this data? Returning visitors will tend to stay longer on your site thereby lowering your bounce rate.
Conclusion – What Are The Benefits Of Having Google Analytics?
Despite the overwhelming number of websites that use Google Analytics, as website developers, we find it incredulous that there are still websites that do not use Google Analytics.
A website remains static unless it is acted upon by online processes that drive traffic to it. This is why if you have a website, you should promote your business with Digital Marketing tools, techniques, and processes. You should be creating content via blogs, articles, videos, and product reviews that meet the interest of your target audience.
Google Analytics is an online tool that can help sharpen your Digital Marketing strategy. It will point out its strengths and iron out its flaws. If you own a website, you should install Google Analytics. Remember, it is for free!
As easy as it is to install, we will be more than happy to help you set up your own Google Analytics account. We will also take the time to get you through the process of understanding the different analytics reports and how you can apply them to your business.
Simply give us a call or drop us an email and we will have your Google Analytics account set up in no time at all!
https://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/excel.jpg14251900Josiah Bussinghttps://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/website.pngJosiah Bussing2018-09-10 09:00:472018-09-04 17:10:13How To Read Your Google Analytics
Digital Marketing is an effective way to promote your business. It is definitely a smart move to outsource your digital marketing to an agency. Even if you have the experience and expertise, your time is best allocated to managing key business functions. Digital marketing agencies not only have the experience and the expertise. They also have the right people to get the job done right. However, the industry is not insured against scammers. How do you know if you are getting ripped off by your Digital Marketing agency?
If you keep buying new hardware from the computer technician and your PC still does not run well, chances you are getting scammed. If your car continues to break down one week after getting it back from the shop, the car repairman could be milking you of your month’s salary. Other than the cost, getting ripped off by supposed “professional” service providers can be a very infuriating experience.
All you want to do is earn an honest living. You put in the time at work so you can generate enough money to pay off your bills, support your family, and live a comfortable life. Sadly, there are people whose business it is to live off your hard work.
They pass themselves off as honest, working-class people; proprietors of an honest business just like you. However, what we don’t see behind the beautiful website home page, the office signages, and the welcome, “sunshine smile” is the ulterior motive.
These are scammers; people who want to make as much money off you through deceptive business practices.
Scammers lurk in every industry, including digital marketing. The people who do this are not beginners. Most of them have been doing this all their lives. How else could they pull it off without remorse or guilt?
They know how to scope out their victims. Just like a shark that nudges its prey before devouring it, these scammers have ways to find out if you are ready for the taking.
If you are not careful, you could end up becoming a statistic. You may become the new notch on their belt and several thousand dollars poorer.
5 Signs Your Digital Marketing Agency Is Ripping You Off
Marketing is an essential component of a business development strategy. This is particularly true for startups. You cannot expect your business to gain traction if you do not promote it through multiple channels.
The process of marketing does not end once the cash registers start ringing. On the contrary, you will have to step it up. Now, you are part of the industry-wide race for customers.
However, you must be smart about your approach to Digital Marketing. Success isn’t contingent on the size of your marketing budget. It comes down to designing strategy, implementing it, and making sure there are contingencies in place to keep the campaign on the right track.
The fact of the matter is, you are at the mercy of your Digital Marketing agency. They are the experts. They have the experience, the knowledge, and the manpower to manage an effective Digital Marketing campaign.
The harsh reality is not every Digital Marketing agency can be trusted. This is a burgeoning industry that creates opportunities for growth for both the client and the service provider. If you are not careful, the success of the Digital Marketing agency will come at your expense.
Here are 5 signs that you are getting ripped off by your digital marketing agency:
1. No Numbers To Support Digital Marketing Campaign’s Performance
In view of all of its advantages over traditional marketing, there is one benefit of Digital Marketing that stands out above the rest. This is Digital Marketing’s ability to track the campaign’s performance and provide you with accurate numbers in real time.
Having numbers allows you to monitor which strategies are working; which ones are contributing to your targeted goal and generating ROI. Real-time data also gives you a better idea of your audience demographics and their online behavioral patterns.
Who are reading the blogs? Where do they come from? How do they access your content? Which time of day and night are they most active? How many of my targeted audience has pushed through with my Call-to-Action?
The Digital Marketing agency should provide you with numbers as the basis for assessing the performance of the campaign. A reputable agency is one that is willing to take you through the entire process. And part of the process is realizing that results take time to achieve.
An honest Digital Marketing agency is not afraid to show you that every campaign goes through growth stages. That even the best agencies in the business make mistakes.
However, the advantage of Digital Marketing is that the availability of analytics; these numbers being presented to you, makes it possible for the agency to implement changes in the campaign.
Remember the old saying in business development, “Strategy follows numbers; not the other way around.”
2. The Digital Marketing Agency Does Not Discuss Worst-Case Scenarios
Who wouldn’t want to have a Digital Marketing campaign that generates thousands of dollars from the get-go? However, the harsh reality is that like all ventures, Digital Marketing is a process and all processes take time to bear fruit.
Spurious Digital Marketing agencies will prey on your natural tendency to view only the rosy picture. As a matter of fact, you should be able to spot them as early as the initial presentation.
They probably used a lot of flash and fluff in their PowerPoint; presented big, extravagant keywords and industry buzzwords to convince you that success is guaranteed.
Agencies that focus only on the upsides of the campaign during their project presentation without mentioning the downsides are probably out to scam you.
There is no such thing as the “Perfect Plan”. Especially not in this age of the Internet where every consumer has immediate access to information. People’s tastes and preferences can change without warning. The demographics that were used to create your Buyer’s Persona could change during the campaign.
A trustworthy Digital Marketing agency will discuss the risks in the campaign. They will not paint a rosy picture but instead, they will present a real picture of what you should expect or anticipate. Instead of hyping up results, they want to moderate expectations.
3. Contingency Plans Are Not Discussed
In line with discussing with you the downsides or risks of the campaign are the contingency plans. These are the alternative courses of action that you can take should the initial plan’s performance turn contrary to expectations.
The best way to counter unpredictable markets is to adopt flexible business strategies. This applies to marketing as well. Rigid or highly-structured, tightly-organized strategies will not give you the mobility needed to change course.
Honest Digital Marketing agencies know the importance of having flexible marketing strategies in place. They have prepared contingency plans that can be implemented at any time during the campaign.
If worst-case scenarios were discussed beforehand, the contingency plans are there to assure you the Digital Marketing team will know what to do should any of the undesirable scenarios take place.
4. Digital Marketing Agency Pushes You To “Go Big” Right Off The Bat
If a Digital Marketing agency tells you to “Go big or go home”, or passes this line by you, “Digital marketing is an investment; the larger the investment, the higher the return”, terminate the meeting right away and tell the ad agency to go home.
Another great thing about Digital Marketing is that it is scalable. You can easily add new processes to its framework once analytics validate that results are becoming more consistent. Likewise, you can remove processes that are not generating significant ROI.
A Digital Marketing agency that pushes you to do a massive, ambitious campaign right away with all the bells and whistles, is only thinking about their company’s interests.
There is a direct relationship between the size of your campaign and the needed investment. Put simply, you will need a larger budget to pull off an ambitious campaign.
Every process that is added unto the initial Digital Marketing framework only guarantees one party in the agreement of sure-fire earnings: The agency. You will be footing their bill while the fate of your campaign remains shrouded in uncertainty.
The truth is you don’t have to go big with Digital Marketing right away.
Social media marketing is one of the cornerstones of a sound Digital Marketing strategy. At Mountaintop, we advise our Digital Marketing to choose only 2 to 3 social media marketing platforms to start out with.
Having only 2 to 3 social media platforms to monitor makes it easier to track performance. We also lessen the client’s exposure to risk. With regular analytics and campaign benchmarking, we can determine with greater certainty if we should add or remove processes to the campaign.
5. Your Approval Is Sought On Every Decision
As the client, it is within reason for the agency to discuss any change in plans with you. That is, after all, professional courtesy. However, be wary if your Digital Marketing agency always seeks your stamp of approval in every decision.
Isn’t the Digital Marketing agency the expert in this arrangement? Even if the client funds the campaign, he/she will not be in the best position to give the right call every time.
When the agency seeks your go-signal before implementing a plan or course of action, it may only be doing so to pass accountability to you. If something goes wrong, the agency can just tell you, “Well, you approved it.” On the other hand, if the plan is a success, the agency will bask in the glory and take credit for it.
The keyword in Digital Marketing is collaboration. The agency is the architect of the campaign. The client trusts that his/her best interests will be served by the agency.
The agency should exhibit transparency even before the campaign gets rolling. While no one can predict the outcomes of a Digital Marketing strategy, the agency is responsible for setting expectations. This includes discussing scenarios that run adverse to the campaign and the alternative courses of action.
Conclusion
Because of the popularity of the Internet, mobile technology, and the influence of social media, digital marketing has assumed a more prominent role in the advertising budget. Companies spend millions; even billions, to run the best digital marketing campaigns through the Internet.
A successful digital marketing campaign will give you significant returns on your investment. In contrast, a poorly managed one will result in huge monetary losses.
It can happen to anyone. Even major companies like Procter & Gamble which in 2017 terminated more than $100 Million in ad agreements with agencies that needlessly wasted the company’s money.
For a company like Procter and Gamble which makes $16 Billion in a quarter, $100 Million must feel like a drop in the bucket. The same cannot be said for small to medium- sized businesses that go through unpredictable streams of income and have limited access to capital.
Digital marketing provides small and medium- sized businesses the most cost-efficient marketing option to promote their products and services.
Content such as blogs and videos can be distributed through social media and other Internet-based channels which can reach a wider audience at minimal cost. Pay-per-click (PPC) digital ads target a specific audience. You will only pay for the ad whenever someone clicks on them.
Likewise, content is reusable and therefore, sustainable. The content that you post today can be published 6 months later and still elicit positive results.
For the reason that small and medium scale businesses have limited capital, they should be more careful when dealing with digital marketing agencies. Not only will they fail to achieve their marketing goals, but they will be ripped off and lose hard-earned money.
Have you ever experienced being ripped off by your Digital Marketing agency? Please feel free to share your thoughts on the comments section provided below.
If you want to know more about our Digital Marketing services, please give us a call or drop us an email.
https://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/PPC-v-SEO-1.jpg6861000Josiah Bussinghttps://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/website.pngJosiah Bussing2018-09-03 09:00:042018-12-09 18:05:145 Signs Your Digital Marketing Agency is Ripping You Off
If you own a startup that secured venture capital in the hundreds of thousands or perhaps in the millions, then congratulations are in order. The truth is many startups and small businesses operate on a shoestring budget. As a consequence, key business strategies such as Digital Marketing are either placed on the wayside or allocated with barely enough resources to get it running effectively. According to data collected by Small Business Trends, 82% of startups are self-funded or secure capital from personal savings or family and friends.
With limited access to capital, the small business owner becomes limited to what he/she can do to support revenue generation strategies. In this day and age where 50% of the world’s population is online everyday, it becomes more imperative for businesses to embark on a Digital Marketing campaign.
But the cost of digital marketing has been rising. Adobe Digital’s 2017 Digital Advertising Report showed that the cost of digital marketing has been increasing at a rate that is five times faster than U.S. inflation and 71% faster than the cost of television ads.
And as competition in the digital landscape continues to get tighter, expect marketing costs to climb higher.
SEO practitioners have to frequently revise optimization strategies while writers have to produce relevant, engaging and usable content for their audience on a consistent basis.
When digital marketing costs rise, so does the pressure of generating an ROI for your efforts.
Given the capital constraints on small business owners, is it still possible for them to set up a digital marketing campaign?
5 Tips on How to Develop a Low Budget but High Performing Digital Marketing Campaign
The answer is “Yes”! The key is to set up your Digital Marketing campaign on these five principles:
1. Learn What You Can About Digital Marketing
Like what we discussed in our article, “How People Get Ripped Off by Digital Marketing Agencies”, in order to reduce the risk of catastrophic digital marketing experience, you have to learn everything you can about it. You don’t have to be an expert.
You don’t have to get certified in SEO, SEM or Social Media Marketing. All you need is to have a firm understanding of the process and how all its component parts work together to create a successful digital marketing campaign.
2. Keep it Simple
A digital marketing strategy can consist of a combination of different tools and techniques. But you don’t have to use every Internet- based platform to ensure an effective digital marketing strategy.
If you have limited funds, it only makes sense to allocate your capital to a few processes so you can maximize the return. Another benefit of small scale digital marketing is that it is easier to track performance.
3. Manage Your Time Wisely
Accounting is an important function for every business. But it is not just money that you should keep track of. You should also account for how you budget your time.
The saying is true, “Time is money”. The more efficient you are with time, the more productive you can be. As a business owner, the bulk of your waking hours should be devoted to running the core functions of your business; the activities that translate to dollars and cents in your bank account.
Digital marketing is not a discipline you can learn from YouTube or self-help books. You need more than technical and fundamental competence. You need experience. Instead of doing digital marketing yourself, outsource it to experienced third party service providers.
A digital marketing agency has the advantage of having web designers, content writers, graphic designers and specialists in SEO, SEM and SMM. Many agencies also have flexible payment options so you can stretch out your budget.
4. Be Consistent
Even if you decided to outsource your digital marketing campaign to a third party service provider, be involved by staying consistent with the strategy.
In most, if not all cases, the success of a digital marketing campaign rests on your ability to deliver results or what has been promised in your content.
If you want your audience to know that your company consistently addresses all issues and concerns, then make sure your customer service channels are on the ball at all times.
If you want your end users to remain confident on the quality of your goods and services, take the necessary steps to ensure that there is no compromise on craftsmanship or detail from day one.
Before embarking on a digital marketing campaign make sure you are committed to meet the expectations of your target audience.
5. Track Your Performance
The knock on marketing before 2004 was that it was difficult to track performance. We are referring to traditional marketing methods.
All of that went out the window when the Internet became accessible to almost everyone on the planet in 2000 and broadband technology took off in 2004.
With digital marketing you can track the performance of your campaign through web analytics. Get real time data and find empirical bases for your decision-making.
Again, this is where contracting the services of a digital marketing agency is a big advantage.
They have web development experts who can analyze data from your website and give you an orientation on how the campaign has been playing out.
They can provide you with weekly or monthly reports that you can study and use as reference for any changes in strategy. In time and with consistency, you will also become proficient in web analytics.
Now that you have the foundation of your digital marketing strategy setup, it’s time to look at the processes and techniques you can use to run your simple but effective campaign:
1. Invest in a Mobile Responsive Website
It will be difficult; almost impossible to run a successful digital marketing campaign without a website.
Even if you came up with highly-visible social media pages on Facebook and Twitter, where will the engagements terminate?
Your website is the centerpiece in the digital marketing campaign because it represents your business on the Internet. The website is the terminating point for all the inbound traffic that we hope to create through digital marketing.
But it is not enough to just have a website. It must be mobile responsive or have the ability to accommodate devices with varying screen sizes. If you want to learn more about mobile responsive design, check out our article, “Why Your Website Needs Mobile Responsive Design”.
Keep in mind that 75% of all online traffic today originates from mobile devices. If your website cannot be accessed by a smartphone or a tablet, you will potentially lose business as well as industry credibility.
2. Focus on Organic SEO
Search Engine Optimization sounds so technical, most businesses think it is expensive. That may be true when it comes to paid search. But if you focus only on organic SEO, you can help your website move up the search rankings with only a few simple steps:
Open a Google Webmaster Account – All you need to do is register and verify your domain name. Google will point out what you need to do to boost your site’s rankings.
Use Keywords Judiciously and Strategically – Keywords are the words and phrases that are popularly used to launch a search query. Google prefers long tail keywords which are more descriptive. But don’t overstuff your content with keywords. The accepted ratio is 2% for every 1,000 words.
Write Long Form Blogs – Google rewards websites that feature long form blogs or those that average 1,500 to 2,400 words. The advantage of long form blogs is that as a longer read, your visitor would spend more time in your site. Second, if your content is informative and usable, it establishes your site as a valuable reference.
3. Build Up and Leverage Your Content
Content is the cornerstone of digital marketing. People will continue to consume more content in the coming years as they become more dependent on the Internet. Therefore you should likewise focus on building a content creation strategy.
Content isn’t just blogging or article writing. Videos are a big part of a content-based strategy.
As we wrote about in our article, “How to Use Video Content in Marketing”, the use of videos can significantly enhance your online marketing strategy. You can also leverage your content in a number of ways:
Share your blog on social media and link it back to your website.
Create an infographic or video that presents your content in a visual medium.
Create tiles or graphics filled with powerful quotes from your blog and share it on Pinterest.
4. Utilize the Power of Social Media
Of the 3.8 Million people on the Internet everyday, 3.03 Billion or 79% of them are on social media. While experience is necessary to be able to harness social media’s power, you can generate traction for your efforts by implementing a few simple strategies:
Choose no more than 2 to 3 social media platforms to start out with. These networks do not function or cater to the same audience. Focus on the platforms that are more appropriate for your business. For example, if you sell merchandise, a more visual platform like Instagram or Pinterest would offer more benefits for your business.
Use the analytics tool that come with the platform to track the performance of your social media efforts. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have built-in analytics.
Find key influencers and engage with them. Influencers have tons of followers in your industry. They present a great avenue to enhance your online presence as well as leverage your content. Share their content whenever you can and engage them as often as possible so you can establish a good relationship.
5. Engage Your Audience
When you publish content online, be prepared to receive a wide range of comments some of which may be unflattering. But in marketing, there in no such thing as negative publicity. You can still extract long term benefits from unfavourable comments through smart engagement strategies.
First, regardless of how the comment was phrased, remain professional at all times. Just tell yourself the commenter took the time to read through your content. The least you could do is be courteous and respectful.
Second, encourage the commenter to follow your page and remind him/her that all comments are welcome and appreciated. It is through engagement that you will be able to establish relationships and followers. From there you can build email lists and new social communities.
Conclusion
We only presented five strategies you can use for your low cost, high performance digital marketing campaign. The truth is there are other processes and techniques that you can use which won’t cost you much money. These include using PPC or Pay-Per-Click advertising, co-hosting an online event and investing in social networking ads.
But as we mentioned earlier, if you’re getting your feet wet in digital marketing, it is always better to start out small and keep things simple. Once you’ve added years of experience on your belt, you can branch out and incorporate other methods of digital marketing.
If you’re interested in getting your digital marketing campaign rolling, give us a call or drop us an email. We have very talented people onboard our digital marketing team: web designers, graphic artists, social media experts, content writers and professionals in the fields of SEO and SEM.
By having Mountaintop manage your digital marketing campaign, you can focus 100% of your time on your business. We will keep you in the loop by providing you with regular reports and schedule time to discuss the current performance of your campaign.
We will be more than happy to guide you through the process and answer other questions and concerns you might have about digital marketing.
https://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/low-budget-marketing-strategy.jpg6051000Josiah Bussinghttps://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/website.pngJosiah Bussing2018-02-12 09:00:152018-02-06 14:45:43How to Set Up a Low Budget but Highly Effective Digital Marketing Campaign
If you’re planning to start a business, digital marketing should be included in your budget. It is the best way to promote your products and services to your target market. However, digital marketing costs money. If like most entrepreneurs, you have limited capital, don’t worry. In this article, we will show you how to launch a digital marketing campaign for $100!
According to reports compiled from Forrester and eMarketer by Web Strategies, in 2018 businesses will allocate around 11% of their budgets to marketing. 45% will be dedicated to online marketing strategies.
But what if all you can afford is $100? Can you still run a campaign and get 100% results?
The answer to the first part of the question is “Yes”.
One of the benefits of digital marketing is flexibility. As we will discuss later in this article, it has the advantage of having onsite analytics which you can use to track the performance of your campaign in real time.
Analytics allows you to see which strategies are generating good Return on Investment (ROI) and which ones are not.
As for the second part, even if your budget runs in the millions of dollars, there are no guarantees in marketing.
Success in digital marketing will depend on the effort you put in. With such a tight budget, your margins for error will be quite small. You will have to be more strategic and purposeful in your approach.
Always keep your budget in mind. Don’t get swayed by the latest email marketing software or pushed to purchase the most expensive keyword phrases. Digital marketing opens up a treasure chest of tools and techniques. Some of them won’t even cost you a cent.
Now let’s get started!
1. No Website? No Problem!
The website is an integral part of your digital marketing strategy. It is basically your office address on the Internet; the place where potential customers click on to learn more about your products and services.
But even if you don’t have enough capital to fund a website at this point, you should still buy a domain. A domain is simply the name of your website. The costs of registering a domain name can vary. You can acquire one for as little as $10 per year.
Once your domain name has been registered, you can use it as your professional email address and have it indicated on your calling card. The domain can also forward to your social media accounts until such time that you have the resources to set up your website.
2. Promote Your Business Via Social Media
With more than 3 billion users per day, social media has become a very powerful driver of business. Social media marketing can help you generate leads, improve sales conversions and enhance your credibility in the industry.
There are a number of social media networks to choose from. The most popular platforms and their community sizes are as follows:
Facebook – 2.061 Billion
YouTube – 1.5 Billion
Instagram – 800 Million
Twitter – 330 Million
Reddit – 250 Million
Pinterest – 200 Million
Looking at the list, it may seem that the wise move would be to set up accounts with the largest networks. But when it comes to social media marketing, size does not always matter.
You should select the social media networks that have the features to support your marketing objectives and that match the platform used by your target audience.
For example:
Facebook, Twitter – If your goal is to build brand awareness and distribute content.
YouTube, Instagram – If you plan to integrate video and picture content in your marketing campaign.
Instagram, Pinterest – If your business deals with visual-heavy merchandise such as fashion apparel, jewelry and health supplements.
Facebook, LinkedIn – If you want to connect with influencers in your industry.
It will not cost you a cent to open a social media account. But you need to invest time and effort managing the accounts especially when it comes to creating content and engaging with followers.
3. Register Your Business In An Online Directory
When an Internet user wants to look for a specific product or service, the search will begin with an online query.
By registering your business in an online directory, its name could come up in the search engine’s “map pack”.
What is a map pack? This is the list of establishments or businesses that are included in the results page provided by the search engine.
For example, if an Internet user does a search for personal fitness trainers in Cardiff, Google would produce a map pack that looks like this:
(Image courtesy of https://www.totalcoaching.com/blog/seo-guide-personal-trainers)
As Google is the largest search engine on the Internet. It makes perfect sense to sign your business up with Google’s online directory.
This is very easy to do and signing up is for free. All you need is to register your business at GoogleMyBusiness.
When registering your business, make sure you are providing accurate and updated contact information:
Business Name
Business Address
Business Phone Number
Website Link
Email Address
Categories
Business Description
Google will send you a validation code via postal mail to confirm your business address.
4. Identify Your Target Market
Content creation is a very important component of an effective digital marketing strategy. There are many types of content. You can produce blogs, videos and even podcasts.
But the first thing you need to do is identify the target market for your content. You have to create a buyer’s profile. This is the segment of your market with the highest probability of being converted from followers to paying customers.
Assuming you don’t have a website, here are 4 ways to pinpoint the buying characteristics of your target market:
Review your current level of content in your social media accounts. Determine which posts have generated the highest levels of engagement, likes and shares.
Check out the social media accounts of your most active followers and observe the types of content they post. Instagram and Facebook are great sources for identifying customer online behavioral patterns.
Visit the social media pages of your closest competitors. Take note of the topics they frequently post or blog about. Find out the types of content that generate the highest amount of engagement, likes and shares from their followers.
Conduct a survey within your community. Ask them about the topics they would want you to cover in your blogs and articles.
These strategies will not cost you anything because you can conduct them through social media or email.
5. Sharpen Your Writing Skills
Blogging is widely regarded as the cornerstone in the content marketing process. A well-crafted blog that is informative, relevant and usable to the audience will surely help enhance your reputation as an expert in your industry. Blogs are proven drivers of inbound traffic.
But many entrepreneurs are hesitant to blog because they don’t believe they have the writing skills. The truth is everyone has the ability to write a great blog. All you need is practice!
Writing is a learned skill. Like shooting a basketball, hitting a golf ball or hitting a backhand return in tennis, you simply have to keep practicing in order to get better. The more you write, the better you will get:
Set a specific time in the day for writing; 60 to 90 minutes a day of uninterrupted writing should suffice.
Choose a topic that you are familiar with and related to your business. It should be relevant to your buyer’s profile.
Establish a structure for writing. For example, create an outline first. Then research for reference links.
Learn to write for your audience; this means avoid using technical jargon. Remember, you should assume that you are the expert and your readers want to learn from you. Write in a language they can understand.
Review your work and watch out for grammatical and spelling errors.
Ask 2 to 3 of your most trusted friends or family to comment on your writing.
The other aspects of content writing such as the use of keywords can be learned at another time. For now, focus on developing basic writing skills.
Once you have become more confident with your writing skills, start a blogging schedule:
Initially publish 2 blogs a week.
Once your blogs have gained traction, escalate your writing to 3 blogs a week. Statistically, companies that publish 16 blogs a month generated 3.5 times more traffic than those that published from 0 to 4 posts.
Blogging takes time and effort. You have to do accurate research to make sure you are sharing facts that are well supported by reliable evidence. You also have to focus on writing original content. This means avoiding the risk of copying another writer’s content.
If you don’t have a website yet, you can use the blogging platform provided by LinkedIn then share it to your other social media accounts.
6. Track Your Performance Using Analytics
As we mentioned earlier in this article, digital marketing has the advantage of web analytics to help you track the performance of your campaign.
Web analytics are programs used to collect valuable data from your website or social media accounts. The collected data will help you better understand how your website is performing by answering these questions:
Where is the bulk of my traffic coming from?
Which pages have the highest visits?
What types of content are being read more often?
Analytics can identify potential problems that are hindering the campaign’s progress. It will tell you which techniques are working and which ones aren’t. This way you have solid bases for realigning your digital marketing budget. You can put more resources on strategies that result in higher ROI.
Social media networks like Facebook and Twitter have built-in analytics. You can also download offsite analytics tools free of charge.
It may seem complicated at first but in time and with consistency, you will get better at evaluating analytics.
7. Expand Your Network
Networking is a proven way of building your business by connecting with key people in your industry. One of the most effective social networking sites is LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is the preferred social network of professionals. There are a number of ways you can build your business through this platform:
LinkedIn has a blogging feature which allows you to post blogs and share it with those in your community.
You can customize the parameters of your search so you can connect with community members who fit your buyer’s profile, target demographic or those who hold influential positions in the industry.
Sign up and engage regularly with community focus groups that are directly involved with your industry.
Post relevant content at least once a day in order to stay top-of-mind with your community.
Although signing up for LinkedIn is for free, its features for customizing search parameters will require a monthly subscription fee that ranges from $29.99 to $79.99.
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are other effective social media networks you can use to connect with key influencers and expand your community.
Conclusion
Digital marketing gives you the most efficient way of reaching your target market by capitalizing on the power of the Internet. Because digital marketing primarily uses Internet-based tools to run its campaigns, it will be easier on your budget as most of these processes are free.
Finally, the benefit of having web analytics allows you to identify weak points in your campaign so you can further streamline your budget.
The biggest investment you will make in running a digital marketing campaign is time. You will have to spend time to become a more proficient writer. As your campaign gains traction, you will have to double up on your efforts.
If you want to learn more about running an effective but low budget digital marketing program, please give us a call or drop us an email.
We will gladly take you through the process of planning a well-thought out and highly efficient digital marketing campaign.
https://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/StartUpSuccess.jpg10591000Josiah Bussinghttps://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/website.pngJosiah Bussing2018-02-05 11:00:212018-02-20 18:03:54How To Launch A $100 Digital Marketing Campaign
Google Analytics takes away the guesswork from marketing because now you have hard data to use as valuable reference for your marketing campaign. You have the capability to fine tune your strategies and pinpoint the processes that are working and underperforming.
Marketing is no longer a shot in the dark. Google Analytics will help you identify your target audience as if you were guided by a laser sight. There will be no wasted effort. Every decision you make will have basis and empirical evidence to fall back on.
Google Analytics will justify your marketing budget by giving you the means to measure your ROI.
Google Analytics Adds Value to Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Businesses understand the value of investing in a marketing campaign. If you want to build markets, there are no excuses, you have to constantly push and promote your brand to potential end users. Success does not come overnight; just like a learned skill, proficiency comes by doing the activity over and over again.
But it’s difficult to justify a marketing budget if you can’t track performance or measure results. It’s like using a shotgun to hunt for ducks at night. You’re firing everywhere but you have no idea if you’ve hit your intended targets.
Many of our clients raised similar concerns. From their previous experience with traditional marketing, they wanted to know if having a mobile responsive website and switching to digital marketing would make any difference.
Would this just be another hit or miss experiment?
The answer is “No” and the reason is because of Google Analytics.
What is Google Analytics?
Before broadband technology opened up the Internet, websites functioned more like online company brochures. It had the usual pages but content was purely informational.
Today with the Internet growing to a population of more than 3.7 Billion daily users, companies are putting up websites as the hub of a digital marketing campaign. It is the destination point where leads are converted to sales.
A website not only organizes your entire digital marketing campaign, it maximizes the collaborative effort of all its component parts.
Let’s assume we mapped out a digital marketing strategy for your business that incorporated the following processes:
SEO
Social Media Marketing
Content Marketing
PPC Advertising
These processes are the online channels that we will use to drive inbound traffic to your website. Results will vary among these processes; some will generate more leads than others. As we implement our campaign strategy, your website will receive valuable data from these channels.
The objective of a digital marketing campaign is to generate website traffic. But you need to organize and sort out the traffic that comes in so you can make heads or tails of the information you receive.
Enter Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a freemium web service tool offered by Google. It was launched on November 2005 after the company acquired Urchin, a web statistics program developed by Urchin Software Corporation.
It’s purpose is to track and measure website traffic. Google Analytics is the most widely used analytics tool on the Internet.
If you’re embarking on a digital marketing campaign for the first time, you may not be clear on what to expect. Google Analytics helps you find the answers to the following questions:
How much traffic is my website generating?
Where is the bulk of the traffic coming from?
Which pages enjoy the highest level of viewership?
Which content generates the highest levels of engagement and shares?
What percentage of site visits generates leads?
For e-commerce proprietors, Google Analytics will help you identify factors why shopping carts are abandoned at the checkout counter.
Google Analytics gives you a snapshot of your market’s online behavioral profile. All data is provided in real time. You can be creative and run comparative studies between different timelines to track changes in demographics and demand patterns.
It will help you re-frame your buyer’s profile so you can fine tune your digital marketing campaign and accommodate changes in consumer behavior.
How to Setup Google Analytics
Setting up Google Analytics is very easy.
You only need to have a Google account. Then follow the instructions in setting up your Google Analytics account to get your tracking code. This is a piece of Javascript which needs to be integrated in your website’s code for Google Analytics to work.
What’s more important is setting your goals.
Goals set the direction which will help turn the wheels of your marketing campaign into motion. There are many ways you can achieve your goal but you have to identify it so we can determine the best tools to get the job done.
Here’s a list of goals identified by some of our clients:
What do you want your website to do?
What would you have your visitors do when they land on your website?
What types of information do your visitors need to know to encourage higher sales conversions?
Clients know what they want but have some difficulty articulating it in the context of a digital marketing campaign. This is where we collaborate with them to come up with the best approach.
Google Analytics Goals will help you uncover the following important information:
Engagement level or time spent by a visitor on a page of your website.
Participation with submission forms.
Specific actions taken by visitors: play video, chat engagement.
Incorporating your targets in Google Analytics Goals will allow you to measure the effectiveness of every strategy or process that will be implemented.
7 Reasons Why You Should Use Google Analytics
There are more reasons why you should use Google Analytics other than the fact that it is the preferred analytics tool of marketers.
1. It’s Free and Easy to Use
Google Analytics is a godsend for startups with limited or tight budgets. As a free tool, budding entrepreneurs have a cost effective way to efficiently manage their marketing campaign.
If you have deep pockets and want to fortify your analytics by subscribing to platforms that charge $10,000, go ahead. But please install Google Analytics as well.
The program is very easy to use and does regular updates. Still, we strongly advise that you hire an expert to help you get started. Having an expert onboard will minimize the risk of committing costly mistakes and fast track the learning process.
2. Helps You Build a Comprehensive Buyer’s Profile
Targeted marketing strategies become more effective when you can draw up an accurate profile of your potential buyer. It can be challenging when you are running your business on the Internet. Unlike a brick and mortar business, you don’t know who is checking out your products and services.
Google Analytics will help you sort out the traffic and categorize information on your site visitors. You will receive valuable data on where your audience is coming from; what issues concern them the most and information on tastes, demands and preferences.
Having an accurate depiction of your typical buyer’s profile will help you tailor your marketing content. You will know the right keywords to use, the best topics to write about, the products and services to focus on and where to distribute content.
3. Provides You With Customizable Reports
Our clients at Mountaintop have Google Analytics. Every month we send them comprehensive reports on how their digital marketing campaign is performing. These reports are easy to read and include awesome looking graphs that simplify data analysis.
We make these graphs through a program in Google Analytics’ API feature. API stands for Application Programming Interface. It gives you complete access to all data and allows you to back up your account.
Customizable reports make analytics unique to your business. It will enable you to assess the performance of your business in comparison with your competitors in the industry.
4. Generates Real Time Results
Gone are the days when you would sit and wonder how that $3,000 full page print ad you took out would generate returns. Traditional marketing methods remain relevant especially for brick and mortar establishments.
But it will never be as efficient as digital marketing. And Google Analytics just made digital marketing even better.
With Google Analytics, you can access data in real time. You can see how many people are on your website. You can determine which posts they are reading, sharing and engaging with.
Just like a brick and mortar business, you can identify your peak and slack hours. Google Analytics will show you the best times of the day to post content and which networks you should distribute them to.
5. Data-Based Alignment of Your Marketing Budget
In a digital marketing campaign, we will put together a number of tools and processes which we believe, based on preliminary research, would be most effective in helping you achieve your campaign goals.
Using hard data, Google Analytics shows you which processes and tools are contributing to your campaign and which ones are not. This way you can realign your budget and allocate more resources to marketing channels that deliver better results.
6. Customizes Testing and Tracking Methods
In web design, testing is an absolute must. Before we turn over the site to you for its official launch, we conduct numerous tests to make sure it will run 100% according to expectations.
It must be responsive to a variety of mobile devices, it must load in 2 seconds or less and all of its features must be functional and running smoothly.
Testing is not about trying to achieve perfection. It is mostly about minimizing the probability of problems and technical issues arising when your website goes live. The same meticulous approach to testing applies to your digital marketing campaign.
We mentioned earlier the importance of setting goals. Google Analytics allows us to run tests to make sure the components of the digital marketing campaign are working to bring you closer to achieving your goals.
It has features that will enable you to pinpoint targeted results such as the size of blog traffic, online channel that resulted in highest newsletter signups or if your content is getting any attention from the Southeast Asian market.
7. You Can Integrate It With Other Online Tools
The saying goes that if Google sneezes the Internet catches a cold. There is no question that Google generates the most traffic. For our clients, Google accounts for 92% of their organic traffic.
The great thing with Google is they always find ways to give users advantages for using its products. With Google Analytics, you can integrate it with other tools such as Google AdWords so your current analytics package can directly receive the right tracking codes.
You can also get data on keyword impressions from Webmaster and integrate these with Google Analytics.
Conclusion
Google Analytics is not a perfect analytics tool. It will not provide you specific information or data on site visitors because what it does is analyze trends. However it meets an important criteria in every digital marketing campaign and that is to always have an analytics tool to track and measure performance.
It’s free. It’s easy to use. It gets the job done and it is easily the most popular analytics tool on the Internet.
If you’re thinking of installing Google Analytics on your website or if you have one but are experiencing problems interpreting data, give us a call or drop us an email. We will gladly take a look at your configuration and do the necessary changes to make sure Google Analytics will work to your benefit.
https://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Google-Analytics.jpg5911000Josiah Bussinghttps://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/website.pngJosiah Bussing2017-09-26 11:19:362018-02-13 16:40:10Why Should You Use Google Analytics?
In this day and age of the Internet, the word “analytics” gets thrown around a lot. Generally the term analytics refers to a system that utilizes a series of tools and processes to assess or evaluate the performance of a strategy. The advantage of living in the digital age is that you have access to data in real time. In this regard, every discipline has its own analytics.
As web developers, we use web analytics to extract both qualitative and quantitative data and categorize them so we can analyze on-site and off-site factors that affect the website’s performance. How we apply the techniques and methodologies of analytics would depend on the type of website and its requirements.
For example, an ecommerce website would demand more complex and intricate data. Using web analytics, we are tasked to pinpoint visitor demographics, particular online shopping behavior and most importantly, address potential issues for getting the shopping cart past the checkout counter.
We also use analytics to track the performance of the digital marketing strategy. A typical inbound marketing campaign would incorporate a variety of processes for the purpose of driving traffic to the website. The marketing toolbox may include SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, link building and PPC advertising.
With web analytics, we can see which processes are delivering and which ones are under-performing.
Web analytics finds the answers to these questions:
How many people visited my site?
Where did they come from?
Which social media network generated the highest number of leads?
How did they find me?
Which type of content did my visitors find interesting?
What keywords did they use to find my site?
Web analytics removes guesswork. We are able to itemize strengths and pain points with empirical evidence then use the data to help the client come up with a better, more effective and dynamic business plan. You don’t waste time, energy and save up on resources because now you have a basis for decision- making and strategy design.
But is web analytics enough to ensure the success of your website and its marketing and promotional campaign?
As it turns out, we can amplify the effectiveness of web analytics by incorporating a system that is directly related with the marketing discipline.
What else but marketing analytics.
What is Marketing Analytics?
If web analytics focuses on website performance, marketing analytics measures the results of your online marketing activities.
It takes the data collected by web analytics and blows it up by using other tools, online and offline metrics. You can view marketing analytics as a deep dive into the numbers provided by web analytics.
The end result? You get a holistic, all-encompassing perspective of your online marketing campaign. It would be an upgrade of your current analytics approach. Call it “Analytics HD”; you will see things much clearer and with more definition.
If your current marketing program is predicated only on web analytics, you are limiting yourself only to the outcomes of your efforts. You know the result but what about the factors and circumstances that got you there?
Marketing analytics will give you information on how you executed a specific campaign:
What was the optimal schedule for content distribution?
Which hours of the day resulted in the highest levels of engagement?
What issues were of greatest concern to my audience?
Which platforms resulted in the highest ROI?
How did my strategy impact my end users, followers and subscribers?
If web analytics answers the question, “How is my site performing?”, marketing analytics will answer the question, “What is the return on my efforts?” Collectively, both types of analytics will yield the answer to the all- important question:
“Which strategies are paying off and deserve more support and investment?”
By understanding the details and the finer points of your strategy, you are able to minimize the risk of making decisions that could be costly for your business.
Why Your Business Needs Marketing Analytics
Long before the Internet became accessible by broadband technology, many businesses relied heavily on traditional marketing methods to promote their products and services.
Traditional marketing methods such as print ads, press releases, radio and television ads, billboard placements and POP’s or Point-of-Purchase materials are expensive, limited in their scope of distribution and unsustainable.
The question that nagged business owners hesitant to invest in marketing programs is, “What will be my ROI?”
Even with the inclusion of tracking numbers and barcodes, it is difficult to measure with accuracy and certainty the return and effectiveness of traditional marketing methods.
Marketing analytics gives you the means, techniques and processes to measure and calculate with a great deal of accuracy the returns you get for investing in a marketing campaign.
1. Track Changes in Market Behavior
Having the tools to track marketing performance is very important today when consumers have access to information. The Internet has made it easy for people to do research on businesses; their products and services.
They can access sites that offer product reviews. They can join forums that are dedicated to a specific industry. In social media, there are focus groups that regularly share information and opinions on trends and developments. Then there are the blogging communities that frequently publish relevant, usable and engaging content.
As a business- owner, you have to stay on top of your market. With information becoming so accessible, consumer tastes, demands and preferences can change without warning. Shifts in online behavior can create distortions in your content writing and distribution strategies.
2. Spy on the Competition
The Law of Comparative Advantage states that you should position your business development strategies based on the strengths that are your competitors’ weaknesses.
In the early 1990’s, companies played this strategy well by having spies work for their competitor. Fast-food companies are a good example. Burger franchise “A” would have a spy for burger franchise “B”.
The spy who would be asked to work all the restaurant stations would collect data on average daily sales, best selling item, food cost, sanitary and food preparation practices, ingredients, recipes, formulations and list of suppliers.
Marketers who understand analytics know competitive analysis should always be a constant metric. It is not a process that you do at the beginning of the campaign and run sporadically. It must be constant; always flowing and moving. You should have a finger on what your competitors are doing so you can stay ahead of them.
Competitive marketing analytics seek to uncover your competitor’s moves:
Are they testing new products or services?
Are they targeting a new audience or market?
Where are they distributing content?
What do their end-users think?
Are they using networks and tools you haven’t heard of?
Are they changing the way they are positioning a product?
What are the common issues and complaints brought up by end users?
In a race, the golden rule is to know where your competitors are while keeping your focus straight ahead. Marketing analytics will do just that. You can gain valuable insights on your competitors without losing focus on your own campaign.
3. Make Informed and Educated Decisions
Digital Marketing opens up a treasure trove of tools you can use to maximize opportunities for your marketing and promotional campaign. You can optimize your site and content with high- performing keywords and utilize various distribution channels like social media, blogging communities and online publications to filter them out to a wide audience.
You might even want to focus heavily on video content or conduct podcasts to bring in new demographics. For marketers, the possibilities are endless.
But not all tools will yield the same result. Some may even be counterproductive to what you are trying to do.
Marketing analytics will show you which channels are working and which ones are not. It will give you an idea of where to allocate most of your money so you can re-align your marketing budget and be more efficient. And it is not just about money.
Knowing which channels are paying off will tell you where to delegate more resources in terms of time and manpower.
Is your content marketing strategy generating higher shares, engagement levels and likes?
Are PPC ads helping your conversion rate?
How many leads on average is Facebook generating for your site?
Are people engaging more on Twitter?
In business, time is money. If you have to make changes in your marketing strategy, you need to implement them within a reasonable time frame. Otherwise, the opportunity might be lost if conditions shift again to another direction.
With marketing analytics, you don’t make educated guesses. An educated guess is another term for “making a gamble”. Instead you make educated decisions.
How to Develop Effective and Successful Marketing Analytics
In order to have effective marketing analytics, you must have a system in place that references past data as a basis for strategies in the present day and also paves the way for future frameworks of analysis.
The Past – Shows you which programs and methods were most effective in generating results. How did my email campaigns differ in terms of performance? Which blog topics generated the highest engagement levels?
The Present – Gives you an idea of how today’s end users are responding to your strategies. Are they engaging more? What platforms do they frequently use to access my site? Who is talking about my products and services in social media?
The Future – Analytics will give you the basis for planning for future activities. Should I consider expanding my manpower? How do I turn engagement into long-term loyalty?
You should also do an honest assessment of your ability to conduct marketing analytics. It is not an easy discipline to be proficient at.
If you are a full-time entrepreneur, your time should be spent on activities that directly contribute to your bottom- line. A better option would be to outsource marketing analytics to an experienced and capable digital agency.
Remember that this is what digital agencies do! They are continually gathering data and information from various online and offline sources. Agencies have the personnel to run all areas of your online marketing campaign.
Since you are contracting their services and not employing additional personnel, you are saving up on overhead costs while increasing overall productivity.
Finally, analytics will be useless unless you act on the data collected. A big part of analytics is subjecting ideas to testing methods. Once you get the results, you should move from the test lab and go live. Practical application will give you the best perspective for evaluating your plans and strategies.
Conclusion – Web Analytics or Marketing Analytics?
You need both!
As detailed as marketing analytics is, it should not replace web analytics. Both disciplines are complementary of one another.
Analyzing your site’s performance will give you an idea of where traffic is coming from and how your content is doing but it will not give you the details you need to make well- informed decisions.
Marketing analytics fills in those gaps by providing in-depth information on the numbers collected by web analysis. It lets you listen in to the conversation from your audience and build a better relationship by developing a greater understanding of what they want and need.
If you want to know more about marketing analytics and how it can help your business achieve long term success and sustainable growth, give us a call or drop us an email.
We’re not just a web development company; we’re also a digital marketing agency that can give you the best of both types of analytics!
https://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Anayltics-blog.jpg6671000Josiah Bussinghttps://mountaintopwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/website.pngJosiah Bussing2017-09-11 09:00:072018-03-13 22:29:57Why is Analytics Important in Marketing?
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