Online Marketing Blog

Do you know how many visitors are coming to your Website each month? Do you know how they get there? How long they stayed on your site? How many different pages they looked at? If you answered no to these questions then please continue reading…..
.
One definition of Web analytics is- the process of collection, measurement and analysis of user activity on a Website to understand and help achieve the intended objective of the Website. Having a Website without having any analytics software programmed to it is almost useless! Why spend your precision time and money on building a Website if you’re not going to track what’s happening on it? Web analytics can provide you with a wealth of information (probably more then you will ever need or want to know) that can be very useful in planning your marketing strategy, search engine optimization campaigns and even Website design.
.
How do you know which tool to use? Well, Google Analytics is a free analytics program provided by Google. All you have to do is add a small snippet of code to every page of the Website and in less than 24 hours you will be able to your Websites statistics. I highly recommend Google Analytics because it easily links with your Google Adwords account if you are utilizing PPC as a marketing strategy and it also allows you to track “Goals” or “Conversions”.
.
One of the best things about online marketing is that virtually everything is trackable! Before beginning any online marketing campaign one should make sure they have analytics up and running on their Website- otherwise you are just throwing money away because you are not able to track what effect the campaign had on your Website. If you need help setting up analytics or have any other questions contact Bayshore Solutions and one of their analytic experts will be happy to help you!

Bookmark:

Using keywords in web site copy, meta tags, alt tags and URLs is important for successful Search Engine Optimization efforts.  Search engine algorithms place weight on the URL of the page when determining relevance.  Your site stands a much better chance of ranking for a key phrase when you use small, tightly “themed” groups of words that are incorporated throughout the page in the areas mentioned above.  If you’re not using keyword-friendly URLs, chances are, your competition is…or will be soon.
.
It should be noted that the keywords you select should be purposeful, specific and well-researched.  Terms that are too broad will be too tough to rank for - you’d likely be competing with several different industries, service offerings or geographical areas.  Researching terms with a traffic estimator tool (Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, Google Adwords) will ensure you’re targeting for words that will actually bring traffic to your site.  Companies frequently make the mistake of using vernacular that is not widely known outside of their industry, missing valuable potential traffic to the site.
.
Other things to keep in mind when naming URLs:

• Use hyphens to separate URLs with multiple words - not all search engines recognize or index underscores or plus signs in the same way
• Be descriptive and enticing - name of the URL shows in search results and can affect whether or not a searcher clicks through to your site
• Keep it short - fewer words in the URL make it easier to copy and paste, speak over the phone, write down, remember, etc. 
• Don’t overuse keywords in your URL (or in your meta tags or alt tags, for that matter)
• Use static, not dynamic, URLs whenever possible to help with ranking and indexing
• Avoid multiple subdomains in your URL
• The fewer folders in your URL, the better
• Use lowercase letters when naming URLs - avoid capitalization
• Avoid using .exe, .dll, .bin and .0 (zero) at the end of your URL to ensure your URL is indexed properly

Bookmark:

As many companies today are continuing to look to the web as source of marketing their business, I see a common flawed practice taking place.   Companies spend so much energy trying to generate leads and perfect their lead capturing capabilities that they lose sight of making sure the leads are qualified and actually convert to sales.  While the concept of tracking leads through the sale is nothing new, marketers new to interactive marketing are finding that the analytics are often so detailed and that campaign changes can make such quick variable results that the efforts get distracted too much on the lead generation and lose focus on which leads are converting to sales.
.
For example, I recently had a client who we had been supporting for a year with campaigns for Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click Advertising, Landing Pages, and eMail Marketing.  As the year unfolded, the client saw significant positive website results in unique visitors, page views and ultimately actions taken by visitors which included white paper sign ups, PDF downloads, and eMail Newsletter Sign ups, all of which they believed, in that order, were the most influential actions that prospects could take on the website.  While the numbers of visitors, actions clicked, and overall activity was growing very well, my customer became entrenched with tracking the Bounce Rate of the pages.   For three months, all of our efforts were directed at lowering the bounce rate of and not on the abundance of landing pages. That direction resulted in our client not wanting to integrate the landing page actions into their CRM to track their leads efficiently.  The net result, they lost the momentum they had been building, by focusing so much on the Bounce Rate.  Three months later, the customers was now seeing a decline in actual sales and now back tracking, it was easy to see that too much effort was applied to one part of the interactive marketing metrics and not enough to all the other variables that help marketers make the right decisions.
.
This is one of many examples how watching one metric too closely and loosing sights on some of the others may have negative results.   The capturing of lead data is a critical phase in measuring results, but, the lead integration into a CRM and tracking the lead sources, sales cycle, closing percentage and average dollar of deal size can ultimately make great lead generation result in really great revenue growth.

Bookmark:

I would like to pass on some knowledge that I have acquired over the years in managing IT departments and computing infrastructure.  Some of these lessons I have had to learn the hard way, but I assure you that if you just adopt one of these you can make major improvements in your shop and in your career.
.

Identify Your Customer
.
From a business perspective it is easy for the organization to identify its customer.  It’s the entity that you are providing the goods and services to.  From an IT perspective, the customer is the internal user within the organization.  IT is providing services directly to the users within the company.  If there are breakdowns or deficiencies in the services provided to those users, then the ability of the organization to provide its goods and services to its customers is directly impacted.  Too often we forget who we are serving.
.
Provide solutions, not roadblocks
.
ITs role is to support the staff of the organization and provide them with reliable tools to perform their job duties.  ITs job is NOT to just make things easier for IT staff.  IT is entrusted with the keys to the computing infrastructure and with that comes the responsibility of making things easier for rest of the organization.  They expect innovation, improvement and efficiency in the systems that we provide for them.
.
Users often have requests for new functionality such as finding a better way to deliver large files to an external vendor.  Currently they burn them to CD and mail them to the customer.   Some might take the approach of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  Trying to provide a better solution would require work and thought on the part of IT who is already overloaded with work.  The right thing to do in this situation is to understand the overall goal what the person is trying to accomplish and develop a better solution for them such as setting up a web based transfer system or an FTP site.  Yes, it does take time to set this up, but it will make this persons job easier and will also benefit others that will come along later with the same problem.  IT needs to look out and help the users with technology.  They rely on us for it.  It’s our job.
.
Customer Satisfaction
.
Don’t forget customer satisfaction (CS).  Your organization measures the CS for its own customers.  IT should measure the CS of its customers to see if it is doing a good job and also to solicit feedback on changes and new services that could be provided to make their jobs easier.  Take this with a grain of salt as you will invariably have staff who expect the world and don’t understand why they can’t have the latest $5,000 laptop every year.
.
Take this feedback and do something with it.  Continual improvement is a tenant of my IT department and feedback from the organization contributes to this.
.
Stay with the curve
.
Keep an eye on New Technology.  You don’t have to be an early adopter, but you should immerse yourself in the new trends and technologies that are available.  When they mature, you can then be ready to test those technologies for adoption into your infrastructure.  Virtualization is a great example.  There have been a lot of trailblazers that have done all the testing and built the best practices for using virtualization in their organization.  We can now take advantage of their efforts without having to reinvent the wheel.
.
Keep up with Upgrades to your equipment.  Don’t rely on 5 and 7 year old equipment to run your core business systems.  Just because they are working now doesn’t mean that they will be working when you come in tomorrow.  Replace the equipment before it has failed to avoid costly downtime.  Additionally, upgrades become much more painful 5 and 7 years down the road because technology has changed so much that it requires a massive overhaul to upgrade.
.
Process, Standards and Documentation
.
Around here I am known as the “Process Guy”.  I have a process and a form to go with it for everything.  “Did you fill out the form?” or “Did you follow the process?” are two of my favorite things to say.  One of our goals is to build process and systems that are reliable AND repeatable.  When your processes are built this way it provides a strong framework that anchors the department.  Server builds and other daily tasks are then performed the same way each time, minimizing the risk of mistakes and the proliferation of different configurations.
.
An additional benefit of Processes and Standards is bestowed upon the rest of the organization.  You are providing to them the tools and knowledge of how to deal with the IT department.  You want them to be in the mindset of “I am sure IT has a process / standard for this.  They have one for everything.”  This will cut down on the number of requests that you get where your response is, “Please go to portal and fill out the request.”  The requests and information surrounding those requests become standardized.  IT gets the correct and complete information it needs for each request and the requestor only has to submit it once.
.
Consider adopting all or part of an existing IT framework such as ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library).  More info can be found at http://www.itil-officialsite.com/.
.
Document Everything and demand that everyone document everything as well.  Set aside time in a project for documentation and ensure that it is completed.  The documentation is just as important as the project itself.  Without it, how will you be able to maintain the systems later?  How will you be able to maintain it when the person who installed it has moved on?
.
You must have balance with everything.  Don’t just have process for process sake and be sure that your processes are streamlined and audited on a regular basis to ensure they are effective.  Remember who your customer is.  These tools should be used to make their job and your job easier.
.
New User Indoctrination
.
When new users join the organization, IT should go out of their way to be sure that they feel welcome during their first days.  Spend extra time with them familiarizing them with the computer systems.  Explain to them how best to work with IT and how to deal with questions and problems that they have.  This will go a long way to forming a strong relationship.
.
Security
.
Take this seriously on all levels.  Your organization might not be as big as TJ Maxx or Sweetbay, but it would be an awful day if you had to explain to your customers that you had a spreadsheet with all of their credit card numbers on your laptop and it was stolen.
.
Take appropriate measures to secure equipment and educate your staff.  Enough said.
.
Plan and Budget
.
Maintain a 6 month, 12 month and 3 year plan along with budgetary numbers.  “Plan your work and work your plan” is another mantra of mine.  If you ever find yourself lost in the battle you can always go back to your plan to find out where you are and where you should be headed.  Keep this plan up to date on a weekly or monthly basis.  You should live by this plan.�
.
Develop a budget of operating costs such as licensing renewals, hardware purchases and upgrades.  This budget should be aligned with the growth of the organization as well.  If the organization is planning on growing by 50% then you need to be sure that you have IT expenses figured into the growth plan.
.
Plan out major infrastructure upgrades that will need to be made such as network gear replacement which is needed every 3 - 5 years.  A know expense such as this, while still a big one, is much easier to handle when it is planned for then when it is a surprise.
.
The 3 year plan should be a loose collection of objectives to achieve.  IT changes drastically from year to year, as do the objectives of the organization.  All these things need to be kept in line.
.
ROI
.
Look for the Return On Investment (ROI) in all things that IT does.  If it doesn’t bring measureable and tangible benefit to the organization, then you should really consider whether or not it is a good business decision.  Produce a Business Case for each major purchase or project undertaken.  The size and importance of the project should dictate the detail of the Business Case.  It should be written from a “project supporter” as well as a “project opponent” point of view.  It is easy to skew a Business Case by only putting in the favorable detail if you want the project to be approved.  It is much harder to think from the other side and put in the detail for why the project should not be approved.  You will earn more trust by presenting both sides, trust me.
.
Training and Growth
.
Plan and Budget for training of your IT staff.  They need to grow as time goes so that they can continue to produce excellent solutions and understand the latest technologies that will keep your organization up to date.  Without training and growth, employees become bored and may begin to look for another job that IS using the latest technologies.  Invest if your staff so you don’t have to invest in hiring a replacement.

Bookmark:

Google AdWords has two networks for an advertiser to show ads on, the search network and the content network. In this blog entry I will discuss the placement targeted campaigns (formerly known as site-targeted campaigns) that appear on the content network. It is a common belief that the content network has low conversions, high  .impressions with low click through rates, and it burns through PPC budgets. This belief commonly stems from advertisers with experience advertising on the content network with their keyword based campaigns. Often advertisers choose this option for their keyword based campaigns and do not place any parameters on which websites their ads will display on (or not display).  The placement targeted campaigns allow advertisers to be selective on where their ads appear on the content network.

 How to set up a Placement Targeted Campaign

1. Log in to Google Adwords
2. Go the campaign summary tab
3. Select “create a new placement targeted campaign”
4. From there you will need to name the campaign, name the first ad group, and select language and location targeting options
5. Next you will create your first text ad
6. Here is where it gets interesting; the next screen is where you search for the websites in the content network to advertise on. There are multiple ways to narrow down the websites:
   •  Browse predetermined categories
   •  Describe Topics (enter some broad keywords/topics)
   •  List URLs for specific websites you are interested in to see if they are part of the content network
   •  Narrow down websites by their targeted demographics
7. When choosing websites, you can view the format of the ads available by website:�
   • Text
   • Image
   • Video
8. Each website also provides an estimated number of impressions the website receives daily
9. Then you choose price option of either CPC (cost per click) or CPM (Cost per thousand impressions)
10. You then set a daily budget and minimum bids

Once your new placement targeted campaign is all set up, what next? Test, test, test. Monitor your campaigns to see where you convert, which type of ad converted and make spend adjustments accordingly. You may consider broadening your selected sites and later narrowing them down by conversion rates.

Bookmark: