Mastering Google Analytics on your own can be a challenge. Yes, there are tonnes of articles to wade through, hours of You Tube videos to keep you entertained, and lots to figure out as you browse your own reports. However, very rarely do you get the chance to look over the shoulder of somebody else’s account to see how they have managed their set up.
Well, wait no longer, people.
Google have just released a demo account that lets you view data from one of their own websites, the Google Merchandise store. Now you can browse their reports to see how Google themselves configure their own account.
Follow this link to get access and start browsing. Apparently, the Google Analytics installation will be fully complete this month, but for now you can still enjoy:
– The neat selection of dashboards they have installed
– Viewing the extra reports available with their enhanced ecommerce setup
– Note the goals they have set up
Have fun!
PS: Want to fast track your learning? Why not try our Google Analytics Group Training Courses.
Still reeling from the disappearance of all those exciting Google AdWords ads from the right hand side of Google Search?
Well, as announced back in May by Google, there’s more change coming. One reasonably chunky one is that from October 26 you will no longer be able to create Google Text Ads in their current form. Ads created before October 26 will still run – but that’s the end of creating ads in the classic format.
Thankfully, it’s not going to be all white space.
All classic text ads will be replaced with what Google calls Expanded Text Ads, which bring with them 50% more space to tell your story.
Here’s a pic from Google of what they are going to look like.
Apparently, Expanded Text Ads are optimised for mobile – the device format that is driving search volume across the network. So instead of 25 characters of heading and two 35 characters of description, you now have two 30-character headlines and one sizable 80-character description.
Google talks about a 20% boost in Click Through Rate with this new format, but I presume this depends on your ability to use the extra space you have. If you want to see how this format could work, try this neat little tool from Karooya.
Here’s my take on what it all means.
Mobile is driving the future of AdWords.
Google tells us it has re-written the platform to focus on the mobile audience because, as mentioned before, it represents so much volume. Which means this change is in beautiful sync with your business IF your Google Analytics account tells you that most of your website visitors mostly view your pages through a screen the size of a hand.
Organic Slips Further Down
Organic search results are getting further down the page. Now assuming that click through rates is a zero sum game, guess where the increased click through rates that Google is promising for Expanded Text Ads is probably coming from? My pick is that it’s at the expense of organic listings, that are now just a little bit harder to find.
Set and forget is definitely not a AdWords Management strategy.
I imagine there are thousands of sleeping AdWords accounts – accounts that were set up a few years back by an expert of the time and that have been displaying ads ever since without further human touch. The opportunity to create Expanded Text Ads is rolling out across all AdWords accounts now, so it’s only a matter of time before these old skinny versions from sleeping accounts are crowded out by their upsized cousins.
Expanded Text Ads is just one of a few changes Google are rolling out across their AdWords platform. It’s a changing space alright, and a real opportunity to gain an edge on your competitors who sit back and do nothing. If this describes you – the action-driven person, that is – call us today and let’s start a conversation.
Thank you Google.
This month we received this block of Google Glass and a swanky certificate to recognise our status as a Premier Google Partner.
Basically, you move up a level of partner status by having more team members successfully complete Google Exams and being responsible for a collectively higher advertising spend.
Achieving Google Premier Partner status has been driven by our nationwide team passing exams in Search Advertising, Mobile Advertising and Google Analytics. So we know a bit about advertising online (he said modestly).
That’s nice of course. But not necessarily as effective as you, the person reading this, knowing more yourself. That’s why attending our Google Analytics and Google AdWords Group Training Courses is a smart move and a great way to experience our knowledge first hand. Or, if you want someone to take charge without you to having to add to your list of things to learn about, contact us and we can start a discussion.
A guest blog post from Colin Kennedy at Ironroad Communications
It was 2008 and the world was neck deep in recession – the housing market had collapsed – and father-of-four children, Marcus Sheridan, was grappling with the reality that his pool building business was just weeks away from shutting its doors.
His company, Rivers Pools and Spas, employed more than 20 people, but in just six months they had seen sales decline from an average of six a month to just one or two. As if a metaphor for the economy, houses in the US were abandoned, their pools thick with mosquitoes and algae.
At that point, Marcus decided to overhaul the company’s marketing. First he cancelled their radio and television advertising and started thinking about low cost strategies, like how to use the Internet better.
“I just started thinking more about the way I use the Internet,” he would later tell the New York Times. “Most of the time when I type in a search, I’m looking for an answer to a specific question. The problem in my industry, and a lot of industries, is you don’t get a lot of great search results because most businesses don’t want to give answers; they want to talk about their company. So I realised that if I was willing to answer all these questions that people have about fiberglass pools, we might have a chance to pull this out.”
Within a year, River Pools and Spas was recording record sales and profits. Marcus would later say, however, that it wasn’t blogging or content marketing that saved his business – these are not philosophies in themselves – but the fact that the company began to see themselves as ‘teachers’ and ‘problem solvers’ who could answer all possible questions on pools.
The River Pools and Spas success is very much within the reach of New Zealand SMEs like yours because so few companies here are putting themselves forward to offer solutions, or to answer the real questions customers are asking – like what’s the price? – or making an effort to educate the target market.
Right now, most New Zealand companies still want to talk about themselves instead of the things customers want to talk about.
A good local example making huge strides with the “answers and issues” approach is LoanPlan, a mortgage advisory firm that competes in an industry where Adword spending of $10,000 per month – here in New Zealand – is not unheard of; particularly because the keyword ‘mortgage’ is the third most expensive in Google Adword in New Zealand and the world.
LoanPlan’s budgets are negligible by comparison, but the company ranks first, second or third for organic search results ahead of their big spending competition because they simply answer the questions customers are asking, and address the issues of our times.
For example, LoanPlan was recently featured by Stuff here, Radio New Zealand here, Scoop here, and NZ Adviser here — pure gold when it comes to backlinks, expertise and exposure.
Bear in mind that this is a very crowded editorial space. Everybody has their say on housing and interest rates, from economist and politicians to bankers and property investors.
Your business can emulate that success in your chosen field.
Here’s a five step plan for how you can get the jump on your competition, exponentially increase your profile, website traffic and reputation as the foremost expert in your market:
1. Identify common customer frustration and problems. Research the questions they ask – all of them. To get this information, survey your sales team, your frontline staff and your customer support teams, including the people who deal with disgruntled customers. Every question is a potential blog, article or eGuide.
2. Survey the current environment for issues that could impact your customers now or in the future. These may be legal – like new or pending legislation – or economic, like interest rate rises. Current events, trends and breaking news in politics, the environment, technology or social spheres of life are good sources for stories that are relevant and topical to your customers in the here and now.
3. Think like a journalist and write a press release article highlighting the problem or potential issues and offer some tips on how to overcome them. For example, we recently created a press release article for a client who sells shades and canopies, in response to news headlines about college kids at risk from sun exposure because they refuse to wear hats or sunblock.
4. Distribute the article to media and bloggers you think may be interested. Most media have high authority websites, which means if they publish your story with links you will likely enjoy massive advances in your Google search rankings. It also amounts to ‘third party’ inferred endorsement of your products, services and expertise.
5. Once you’ve sent the article out, rewrite it as a blog and post it on your website. Share links to the article through social media to reach as wide an audience as possible (it’s also good for your search rankings). If the media publishes your article, share those links too. Radio is always hungry for content. After they interview you, capture the sound files and publish those on your website too.
Getting publicity on high profile authoritive news and media websites is not as difficult as it used to be because media teams are shrinking, while the demand for content has never been higher.
Media outlets will often publish your content if it is relevant, newsworthy and adds educational value to the target market – they appreciate good quality content that talks less about you and more about your customers’ problems, questions and issues.
If you would like help with creating and distributing relevant, newsworthy content to media, bloggers and other high authority websites, as well as publishing to your own blog and social media, talk to us about how we can do this for you at a cost of only $690 excluding GST per month.
So you have decided to engage an agency to transform your online marketing. Good move! But before you divert your focus to the other parts of your business, there may be two tasks to complete if you want to supercharge the results your agency is capable of delivering.
Having been engaged by hundreds of small to medium sized business owners, our Web Optimisation team have experienced all levels of client involvement. Some have promptly dashed off to the next project – leaving us to perform in isolation. Fair enough, but it doesn’t produce the best results.
Those who have remained fully engaged from the start, doing all they can to ensure above average results, get the best results.
So here are the two tasks you can do to ensure those great results.
Task #1 – Further develop the U in your USP
This makes more sense when you think of Google as a highly efficient comparison engine rather than a search engine. Your prospects pump in their question and in microseconds have a range of alternatives to research further.
Effective online marketing will get you onto their “further research” list. Perhaps beforehand you were nowhere to be seen. Now, with some optimisation, you can be found and easily compared to those around you. How well you show up at this stage depends on the strength of your USP, or Unique Selling Proposition. Your online marketing team’s work on keywords, ads and bidding strategies will get you seen. Further defining your USP will have people look at you more closely.
So what can you add to your product or service to make it stand the test of a Google comparison?
Sometimes it’s as simple as ensuring your website tells the complete story. For instance, you may have offered a Five Year Workmanship Guarantee for years – but lo and behold, this great benefit is not shown on your website for prospects to see.
Or perhaps your website says all it needs to but does little to have you stand out from your competitors. Your job may be to repackage what you offer in order to survive the Google comparison. Perhaps it’s your service – maybe you respond to quote requests faster than the rest?
Or it could be the way you present your website content. Let’s say you work in a complex area and your competitors rely on simple HTML web pages to explain what they do. You, on the other hand, invest in video to make it easy for your prospects to pick you.
The ideal product or service for online marketing is one with a large, chunky and easily understood USP that lots of people are looking for on Google. Anything you can do in this area will make your agency’s job easier and your chances of success greater.
Task #2 – Deliver more proof
We have all read so much marketing blurb that it all ends up as one big piece of “blah”. Customer focused this, service ethic that. Yawn.
Faced with that, who do we actually believe?
In order of preference, I would say our loved ones, followed by friends, colleagues, people we know, other people and, finally, the person writing about their business.
Therefore anything you do to document proof of your company’s ability is time well spent. Testimonials, awards, third party publicity – anything that has someone else saying how well you and your team perform will ensure your prospects stop and linger that little bit longer.
And if you’ve been in business for a while, reinforce those testimonials with chunky statistics. For instance, while knowing an alarm company has been in business for 32 years is nice, learning that over 12,000 homes and businesses rely on them carries even more weight.
So send your optimisation team pages of proof and statistics that make your experience seem overwhelming. You’ll make their job that little bit easier, and that will translate into better conversion for you.
So there you have it. Two things to deliver to your newly minted web optimisation partnership to improve your chances of achieving the success you both desire.
Want to know more about how Ark can help you? Contact us today and let’s chat about what success means for you.
Some things work much better when there’s a common way of communicating. For instance, a Danish friend works in Copenhagen with a team of experts from all over Europe. There are Danes, Swedes, Brits and Kiwis, with the owners based in Finland. Just imagine the confusion if each person tried to speak the language of the person they were talking to!
Fortunately, the Finns are smarter than that and decreed that English would be the common language. So clarity reigns, the native English speakers breathe a sigh of relief, and the business thrives.
You may be surprised to hear that your email marketing and website analytics speak different languages too. One talks of opens, clicks, soft bounces and unsubscribers, while the other lists page views, conversions and sessions within its mass of stats. When each works in isolation, all is fine. It’s just when they have to talk with each other that we have confusion that could cost you dearly.
For instance, let’s say you send an email newsletter that contains standard links to your website. Ideally, you would hope, your website analytics application will see each piece of traffic, know it is from your email campaign and help you report on it separately.
Unfortunately, it can’t do that. And that’s an issue.
Why? Because even though email marketing may be old and crunchy, it’s still one of the main ways that e-commerce companies drive revenue. Same with service businesses. And any venture that relies on repeat or referral business.
So having Google Analytics reveal that your last email campaign delivered 70% of your sales for the month is handy indeed. And knowing that your prospect newsletter produced 15 quote requests and 500 downloads of your latest PDF report would make most business owners sit back and smile.
So the question is, how do you get your website marketing and website analytics tools to talk to each other so you can actually get your hands on this information? Well, it’s easier than you might think. And it pays to think like a Finn.
Here’s what you do. You decree a common language and then you have everyone speak it. In this case, it’s email that acquiesces and ends up “speaking” Google Analytics.
The mechanism is some scary looking pieces of code added to the end of every link to your website. Then your Google Analytics application sees each piece of traffic coming from your email marketing campaign and slots it into the Campaign Reporting area of your Google Analytics account.
Thankfully, some email marketing applications make adding the code super easy – think Responsys, Campaign Monitor and MailChimp . You just need to know how to configure each so you don’t scratch your head to decipher it when you come across it in your Google Analytics account. By the way, if your application is not listed, head over to this page from Google where you can create the links yourself.
Once your email marketing traffic is nicely recorded in Campaigns within your Google Analytics account, your reporting options explode. Sales, quote requests, video plays, PDF document downloads – whatever you track for all your other website traffic – can be assessed by the results delivered by just your email activity. Baboom! All because you got the two of them speaking the same language.
Give it a go today – and if you are struggling, give us a call. Every day we work with companies who see the benefit of enabling all their online marketing – not just their email marketing – to speak the same language.
I suspect most people would have a FOWT – Fear Of Wasting Time – rather than a Fear Of Missing Out when it comes to understanding website analytics.
I mean who in their right mind would fear not knowing what a bounce rate is? All those metrics, dimensions, charts and lines! A place filled with arcane facts and figures that are hard to find and, what’s more, difficult to interpret.
But get this. As I’m writing this article, a sizable group of business owners in the meeting room upstairs are starting a three hour training session on Google Analytics. Friday morning for them is not about winding down, but winding up their understanding of web analytics.
Their FOMO was strong enough to have them open both their wallet and their calendar. But fear of missing out on what exactly?
Here’s what I think it is: Spending more money on something they don’t yet understand.
It may be Google’s paid advertising, boosting Facebook posts or paying a monthly fee to have a company manage their web marketing. Wherever the money goes, each month their company spends more of it on their website and they have no idea if it’s working. And that scares them.
Fortunately, they don’t need to know everything about Website Analytics to see if their investment is working. All they need are the basic concepts around traffic and conversion. This usually comes about midway through the morning session.
Here are some other drivers of our training group.
They need to compete at speed
Some industries move faster than others. Competition is tough and there’s little that separates the players. Any slight advantage needs to be pounced on and milked before others catch on.
Unfortunately, your advertising is there for everyone to see – as is your website. However, your website analytics are for your eyes only. And knowing more about how your website responds to visitors can be a great advantage.
It can help you cycle through multiple website changes super fast to push up your conversion rates (leaving your competitors behind). If your website converts traffic at twice the rate as your competitors’, you double the effectiveness of your ad spend.
Customisation makes sense
The “out of the box” installation of Google Analytics is good but not great. Just install the magic Google code on your site and you will see a basic profile of your visitors, where they arrived from, and the pages they looked at and for how long.
Useful, but not earth shaking.
Getting to the gold requires customisation. The kind that lets you track who bought something off the site, or completed a quote request or filled in a contact-us request. Or those snippets of engagement that reveal interest rather than commitment – like downloading PDF reports, playing videos or using calculators.
They want to boil all the complexity down to a few numbers
Running a successful business is to manage a machine with many moving parts. Unfortunately, a journey into Website Analytics initially feels like you are adding a lot more to your to-do list. But there is a way to simplify things down to a maximum of five numbers.
One key number is per-visit-value. It links a dollar value to each new visit by channel. For instance, every extra visit from your Google AdWords traffic could be worth $2.48. Want a simple metric to track your paid advertising optimisation efforts? Just drive this value upwards.
Starting to feel some FOMO for Website Analytics now? Great! Kick things off by installing Google Analytics on your site, then view the online tutorials. Or, if you prefer the fast track method, why not drop into one of our Google Analytics Group Training Half Day courses?
You may have seen the humorous play by Richard Bean, One Man, Two Guvnors. It’s the crazy tale of a guy who becomes separately employed by two people, each of whom’s existence must remain unknown to the other, and each of whom he must also keep happy despite the inevitable conflicts of interest that arise as his rather dramatic story unfolds.
A recent discussion with a client reminded me of the similarity of this scenario and successfully managing a new website build. Except with a website build, I see double the number of bosses to please. The four being Google, you (the owner), the web designer, and your prospective visitors.
Ensure all four are happy and things will be looking good. And that would be easy if their motivations were all aligned – which they rarely are. So it’s a case of picking which guvnors carry the most clout and keeping them happy at the possible expense of the others.
So which one does carry the most clout? Let’s look and see:
Guvnor #1, The Big G – Google.
Make Google happy and your website will be found by people using the world’s biggest search engine. Broadly speaking, “happiness” for Google equals two things: Number 1, them knowing exactly what to rank you for; and Number 2, them seeing their decision justified by searchers who click on your website’s link then staying on your site for a reasonable time.
How can Google “know” what to rank you for? By digesting your website’s content – that is, text. And the more of it, the better. Pages and pages of great content makes Google’s life much easier. And it also helps with the second goal – ensuring visitors stay for a decent chunk of time.
There’s no doubting the power of Google – without them you are struggling. So they go into the list of top Guvnors.
Guvnor #2, You – The Business Owner.
You pay the bills and have to live with the project after everyone else has left the room. Most owners naturally want costs to be controlled and to see results from their investment. Of course they also want to look good. Sometimes that leads them to include nice pictures of the team, the company offices and even some lucky clients.
Ask any web developer to name the one thing that stalls most new website projects and most will say “getting the content”. Most clients struggle to write it and begrudge paying someone else to do it. So they’re happiest when the site goes live with as little content as they can get away with.
The problem is , that’s not so good for the big guvnor G. So sorry Business Owner, you’re in the lower quartile of Guvnors even though you do pay the bills.
Guvnor #3, Your Web Developer
Everyone wants to be proud of their work, and web developers are no different. A lot of their new business comes from people who see the web developer’s reference in the footer of a website they like. Now that makes every project not just an income earning opportunity, but also an opportunity to gain new business.
And that means there can be a drive to showcase their talents – whether those talents are required for the project or not.
So design driven developers tend to load up a website with lots of beautiful images. Media driven companies have videos at every turn. Software-developer-focused souls use the latest web platforms and multiple gizmos throughout the site that look groovy for other tech-minded people. All of which is nice if the site’s purpose is to make geeks smile or designers chuffed. But that’s not its purpose, is it? So, web developers, off to the lower end of the Guvnor rankings you go.
Guvnor #4, Your Prospect
Say hello to the top dog of Guvnor land. This person has to be happy for the project to be deemed a success. Yes, their happiness ranks above even Google’s. I know of websites ranking well on Google that produce less business profit than sites ranking below them. Sure, all sites need some traffic – I get that. Nevertheless, achieving a top level ranking on Google is not the most important outcome – getting the prospect visitor to convert is. And trust me, happy prospects convert better than dissatisfied ones.
So what makes your prospects happy? Your answers to this question need to drive your next website development project.
Perhaps it’s about trust. So show lots of customer case stories, please. Maybe it’s about expertise in solving a specialised problem – therefore, downloadable mini reports that share your words of wisdom. Or maybe you have no idea. In that case, you need to conduct some research before anyone starts tapping away on their keyboard.
And guess where a good place to start is? The Google Analytics account of your old website.
Usually there are some gems in there to guide you on what people are really looking for. Our initial Website Review project digs into this exact space when helping you plan your next build. Results from this small engagement are frequently used to brief web development teams and avoid any multiple Guvnor confusion.
Sound like a plan? Guvnor?
Somehow you have heard of others growing their business by buying clicks on Google. Deep down you wonder if this could be the trick to give you the growth you want. However, you are stretched for time and drowning under a deluge of tasks. All of which means you are suffering from some serious Google advertising FOMO (fear of missing out).
Thankfully you have three minutes to read this short note and get a quick business-owner-focused primer on the key parts of Google Advertising and whether it could work for you.
First, some background on my experience with Google clicks. My company started buying Google advertising on behalf of its customers way back in September 2003. Thirteen years managing hundreds of different campaigns has helped us see what does and doesn’t work for this channel. So here are my top four reasons to either slay or nurture any FOMO feeling you may have.
1. You have a product or service that people search Google for.
If you sell a product or service in a category that no one knows about, it follows that few people will search for it on Google. Basic, I know, but easy to trip up on. Let’s say, for instance, that you develop new software that analyses a Xero account and reveals what’s required to double the profit of the business.
You start a Google campaign, bidding on the search terms “profit”, “improve profit” and the nebulous term “business software”. One search term you don’t bid on is “Xero Accounting Software Profit Improvement Add On” – because nobody is looking for that. So you’re stuck with your three choices. And you struggle to produce results because behind the search terms “profit”, “improve profit” and “business software” are dozens of different types of searchers all looking for very different things.
Compare this to someone who sells sisal carpet. People will go to Google looking for sisal carpet with the phrase – you guess it – “sisal carpet”. Their chances of success are better – but profits are still not guaranteed.
2. They followed the dollars they spent
Profitable clicks are those that convert. For your business, converting could look like someone arriving at your website and deciding to call your office, fill in your quote request, purchase an item from your shop or even book a meeting at your clinic. By doing any or all of these great things your click visitors become click prospects or, even better, click customers.
Unfortunately, buying clicks doesn’t automatically mean you will be able to track their ability to convert. Tracking may well require some setup in your website analytics account. Not a lot, but still some. And it’s important you do that so you know if spending your hard earned advertising budget with Google is working or not.
3. Money was invested in the juiciest of baits
I can assure you that Google will help you spend any budget you have in lots of different ways. So the smart advertisers go where the returns are the greatest.
There are two main places your Google dollars can go: the first is above and below the Google search results, and the second is on websites that support Google Advertising. Thinking about the different customer dynamics at play in each case will help you choose where to spend your money.
Consider that people generally go to Google to solve a problem. This week, for example, I’ve been looking for some new trail running lights to help me deal with the dark evenings. Last week it was to find a piece of equipment to help us improve our printing at the office. In both cases I went to Google and hunted down the solution.
During my quest I was taken to a range of websites that included Google Advertising in the form of banners around the text. I was hungry to get information, so I just screened the banners out – they had little effect.
It’s easier to sell to people who are searching to solve a problem. The bigger the better. Therefore, we always suggest you buy search clicks before buying clicks from banners. Think of Google search being the land of problem solving, whereas banners is the land of interruption.
Of course you can test this yourself by setting up a test to try both types of advertising and seeing which delivers the best results for you.
4. Control freaks have more fun
The thought of running a test like the one I just suggested could feel utterly repulsive for some. Dealing in that level of detail for such a small part of your business may not make sense. Unfortunately, detail is where success lives for Google advertisers. Like it or not, you, or someone in your business, or someone you pay needs to focused on it.
Avoiding detail can cost you when buying Google clicks. For instance, when you set up a new advertising account with Google, by default they’ll display your ads around the search results and also on websites. What’s more, the default search term settings when you build your campaign allows Google maximum interpretation in how they are displayed.
For instance, you may want to bid on “computer servicing”, intending to reach businesses who need a mobile service like yours that can come in, solve a problem, and leave. Google doesn’t have to worry about that. It’s free to show your ads when someone types in “service my computer at home” or “computer service training” – neither of which are relevant to your business.
As to whether you should experience FOMO at all, here are three questions to ask:
Answer “yes” to any one of these and you can rid yourself of FOMO for Google Advertising. Feel better?
For everyone else, contact us today and we will help you turn your Fear into Action – perhaps some AdWords group training could be a good start?
I wrote these three-minute FOMO guides for the frantic business owner who hates to miss out but also has a to-do list as long as their arm. For this person, adding one more task – like email marketing – requires careful consideration.
I have a bit of history with email marketing. I received my first colourful HTML email message in 1999 when I helped establish an email marketing software provider. Since then, and with the advent of Ark Advance back in 2002, my team and I have assisted in the successful deployment of hundreds of campaigns to many millions of subscribers for a multitude of business owners.
With this in mind, here are my four reasons why successful yet busy business owners spend their precious time with email. If none of these seem compelling to you then you can feel confidently ditch any FOMO feelings you might have for email marketing.
Reason #1 – You control the channel.
Let’s say that three years ago you added 500 prospects to your newsletter list through online marketing. Each subscriber will happily continue receiving your messages unless one of two things occur. First, they could get bored with your messages and unsubscribe. Or you could suffer the same malaise and fail to send anything out.
Now let’s compare this to your natural rankings within Google. And let’s assume that instead of investing in growing your email list, you paid someone to work on your website so it achieved some strong page one rankings. This delivered a bump in traffic, followed by a lift in prospect enquiries. How confident are you that three years on, given all the changes from Google as well as the optimising efforts of your competitors, you’ll still enjoy a page one ranking?
Better yet, what about social media? Instead of investing in email marketing or SEO three years ago, you paid a Social Media Expert to grow your “likes” on Facebook to 500. Three years on, can you communicate to all those people without having to pay Facebook for the privilege?
Investing in email marketing – specifically growing your subscriber list – gives you control over a communication channel that is thankfully beyond the grasp of Google and Facebook, the two advertising powers of the Internet. And that, my friend, is very, very valuable.
Reason #2 – The cost of entry is low.
You don’t need to spend thousands to send a message that looks a million bucks. While a great, highly functional e-commerce website needs some solid investment, the email messaging platform that supports it could cost a tenth or less.
And while you may need a team of web developers to deliver the website, you may be able to adapt a standard email template with your branding to enable your first campaign.
As for your mobile audience, whereas your website may need a complete rewrite to ensure it works for them, your email marketing template could take just a few alterations to achieve the same result.
Which all means it’s really easy to get started.
Keeping going, however, is another issue…..
Reason #3 – Frequency builds success.
We all know that remaining top of mind with our customers makes sense, especially in a crowded marketplace. But how many visit your website each month of their own volition? Probably only a few. A great email marketing newsletter points customers to your website every month.
That regularity and frequency is exceptionally powerful. I was once told by an expert in radio that it can take up to two years of repeated advertising to build a brand via that medium. I believe the time frame with email is a lot less; six to twelve monthly editions of well-written content can go a long way to bind people to your company.
Reason #4 – You can see what works.
The fourth reason for dedicating precious time to email marketing is that you know when your efforts have paid off. Nearly all email deployment tools will tell you who opened the message and clicked on each link within it. If those links take people to your website, then you can configure them so your Google Analytics account will treat those visitors as a distinct campaign. Then you can allocate sales or website conversions directly to specific emails.
That’s real power!
So, which of these reasons resonate with you and your business? Add them to your list of things to learn more about. Better yet, contact Ark Advance so we can guide you on your first steps 🙂
Youŕe a busy business owner and the idea of starting anything new makes you shudder. However, you’ve heard that others have transformed their website from a brochure into something special. So you’re committed – but where do you start?
This three-minute primer is for you – any anyone else struggling with online marketing FOMO plus a task list longer than their arm? It distills my 16 years of online marketing experience into techo free jargon to get you started.
First I need you to look at your website in a different way. Chuck out any thoughts of it being technical or colourful – from now on think of it as a sales person. Yep, shiny shoes, white socks and a charming smile. It’s tasked with selling your business and the solutions you provide – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The outcome of any online marketing tactic is to improve your sales person’s ability to sell.
This can be a challenge – impossible even – if you can’t measure who visits your website and what they do while there. That’s where Website Analytics – yours free from Google Analytics – fits in. Register for an account, install a piece of code onto every page of your website, and you’ll start to see how busy the site is and where your visitors arrive from.
A word of advice: go no further until you’ve properly set it up and configured it. Without a reliable way to measure your progress, you’ll get hopelessly lost trying to figure out where your time and money are best spent.
Now that you have measurement sorted, the next step is to find where your visitors come from. A few will arrive by typing your web address into their browser. Some may come via a link in your email newsletter. A few more could arrive from a recent Linkedin or Facebook post.
And then there’s Google. Your measurement tools will tell you the role it plays in sending you traffic. Don’t be surprised if it accounts for up to 50%.
Now most online marketing is about increasing website visitors, especially when it involves Google. And armies of jargon wielding people will tell you they can improve your visibility on Google.
However, improving visibility is NOT the whole story.
For instance, imagine you’ve employed a website salesperson who’s converted 1% of the visitors they saw. So last month your site made 50 sales after being visited by 5000 people. Your target, however, is 150 sales. At the current conversion rate, you therefore need to see 15,000 people, not 5000. That’s a LOT of extra traffic and, if you use Google AdWords, it’s going to cost you a LOT to buy it. That’s assuming the extra traffic is even there in the first place.
So improving visibility is likely to be a poor move. Here’s the smart one – improve your conversion rate from 1% to 3%.
And that brings us to a lesser known element of online marketing – conversion optimisation.
Conversion optimisation is like tuning your sales person’s script. It could involve writing additional web pages to suit different kinds of prospects. Or producing a range of videos to make it easier for prospects to see your service in action. Be aware this is not easy work – but it’s a lot more effective, and cheaper, than bumping up your ad spend with Google to get more traffic.
Conversion optimisation requires methodical testing to see if the changes you make actually make a difference. Once you are successful at increasing conversion rates to two or three times that of your competitors, you’ll have gained a massive commercial advantage – especially when you and they are competing equally for the same type of Google clicks.
Good online marketing has you sharing your time between these three spaces: traffic generation, conversion optimisation and website analytics. Get it right and your website should be the best salesperson you ever employed.
So how about getting rid of that FOMO feeling for ever? Try one of our affordable group training products for either Google Analytics or Google AdWords – or even both :).
* FOMO – Fear of Missing Out. LOL!
Hands up if you have enough hours in the day to deliver all the online marketing campaigns you want when you want?
Thought so.
For most there is a conflict, with too much required to be done with too little resource. Which leaves the challenging task of deciding which tasks will produce the greatest return when none have been deployed yet.
But what if there was a way to deploy a selection of campaigns without any manual intervention? You know – marketing campaigns running on autopilot, each focused on achieving its own little “win” for your business with little, if any, time “loss”?
Welcome to the land of online marketing orchestration. Think of this as a “techo buzz phrase” for configuring your online and offline marketing tools to achieve business benefits without the need of any human interaction.
Sound too good to be true? Over the years we have helped set up and configure a range of orchestrations for clients wanting to achieve just this. Here are three examples:
Orchestration #1: Welcoming the new email list subscriber.
I’ll start with the most basic of options which avoids the “black hole” experienced by so many website visitors completing subscription forms – receiving a “Thank You” web page and then … nothing. They then have no idea if their address made it through to the right place and if they are actually on the list.
The simple orchestration automatically sends the subscriber just what they were expecting – a “Welcome” email letting them know all went well. Because of their inherent level of expectation, you should expect an open rate that’s well above your standard baseline. What happens after that first message then depends on the frequency of your messaging and the complexity of your content.
For instance, for a large New Zealand FMCG company we configured orchestration to deliver five messages over two weeks. This dovetailed nicely with their newsletter delivery schedule and allowed them to point new subscribers to specific areas of their vast content library that the subscribers could find interesting.
Orchestration #2: Welcoming the new customer
Now let’s ramp up the complexity a bit. Let’s assume that sales and marketing have done their job and a freshly minted new customer has joined. The task now is to use a selection of online marketing tools to properly “Welcome” them into the fold. There are lots of ways to go about it – I’ll highlight a couple of projects we have worked on.
The first was for a medium-sized service business which chose email and phone as their primary channels of communication. To begin, a series of emails explained the ins and outs of how the company would manage their new piece of work.
The emails were orchestrated to drip feed out over the first few weeks. They were supplemented with a sequence of phone calls from the account management staff. The type and timing of the call was driven by how the clients had engaged with the emails. For instance, someone who wasn’t opening or interacting with anything was called earlier and by a more senior person than those who were.
My second example relates to a card-based loyalty scheme. Here, how the card was used determined the sequence and content of messaging for new customers. This requires a close technical link between the messaging technology and the client’s transactional system. Once the link was formed, the possibilities opened up and orchestration could be designed to respond to card holders’ behaviour.
Orchestration #3: Using email to complete stalled web behaviours
Wouldn’t it be great if everyone who put something in your shopping cart actually purchased it? Or how about those who came to your service-based website, browsed your pages multiple times across many days, BUT STILL failed to pick up the phone or complete your online quote request?
Unfortunately, neither scenario can be completely solved by deploying orchestrations – but they can be improved upon. For instance, an abandoned shopping cart could prompt a follow up email or a tailored piece of creative in your remarketing advertising.
If the person has previously subscribed to your email newsletter (and is now a prospect), and they then return to your website many times over the next few days – all without converting – then it may be an idea to automatically schedule a phone call from your account management team to check in on their requirements.
There are many more possible orchestrations. All require effort to set up and configure; however, the effort invested has the potential to keep on giving, as orchestrations run on autopilot 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Sound interesting? Contact us today for a discussion on how orchestrations could help your business.
Let’s be clear first up. This is not an article to get you all motivated to strap on some running shoes and head out the door and attempt something similar to my act of lunacy. I can totally understand if this is the last thing on your mind. However, there may be a few lessons in here that may help you put in your own “marathon effort” to get your business to do what you want.
So back to the running part. About 18 months ago in a rush of excitement I announced that I was going to run my first offroad marathon. I researched my options and picked the T42 event based in a remote part of the central North Island.
Last Saturday all the training stopped and the event started. Five and a half hours later I hobbled over the finish line, way down the list of finishers. It was messy but it was over. Looking back I can see a number of lessons I learnt that I think are relevant for the small business owner struggling with their own test of endurance. Here are five that come to mind.
Lesson 1: Slowing down helps you go faster
I have written before on my early mistakes in training. Basically, I was pushing my body to go too fast for too long. It took me a while to realise that the speed of my fitness development was limited by my capacity to recover from each session. So I had to slow the pace, back off the volume and let what recovery I had do its stuff. The paradox being that it was while I was recovering – not running – that I got fitter.
So where’s the “recovery” part in the full on mental side of business life? We all know the weeks that are packed with effort from start to end. What are our options to take a break and let the clarity return? I admit to being a very sporadic meditator. However, when I do take the time to “rest the chatter” for a few moments, I get the break I need and my thinking deepens. And, probably like you, some of my better business ideas have come not while at the desk, but after a day or two away from the office. Maybe we make smarter business decisions while away from the office rather than in it?
Lesson 2: Fuel is reasonably important
I ran with a backpack that looked twice the size of the others. My logic was that I would be running for twice as long so I needed double the fuel. Plus it was nice to plan each hour knowing I was going to slow down and munch my way through the weight on my back. Babyfood, pretzels, beef jerky – I mixed them all up depending on what my body wanted, and every hour I shoved down a bit more of each mixed with a couple of magic pills to delay the onset of cramp. No, it didn’t prevent the gradual drain of energy from my legs – BUT I didn’t hit the wall at four hours either.
So what fuels your appetite for business? Last year I took time out for the inaugural Nurture Change event in Fiji. For three days I listened and absorbed speakers’ stories from all parts of business. Each provided their own piece of motivation to ensure I came back fired up and ready for the next stage of the company. Those three days gave me enough motivational fuel to push through the next six months.
Lesson 3: There’s not much flat along the way
When it came to the event this was not a surprise. The organisers had earlier posted a map and profile. Yep, 800 metres of climbing from start to finish with a few streams and mud trails along the way. Other than the car park where we started and finished, we were running either up or down.
I was once told by a business mentor that running a business doesn’t have many flat bits either. You are either growing or you are not. Which can be a challenge for those looking for an easy life.
Lesson 4: It’s a bit easier when you love what you do
But me, I love running in the hills. Now I admit that running up the hills is no fun – but running with hills around me is the best. I put it down to my Capricorn goat-like star sign. Show me a trail which is heading up and away and you have me.
So training was something I looked forward to. In fact, when the feeling fell away I knew I had to dial back the volume as it was a sign my recovery was underdone. Twenty five years ago I ran a road marathon and ended up hating the training. I didn’t run on the road for months after. Motivation had pushed me to keep on doing something that wasn’t for me and once the event passed then my desire to run went with it.
It’s the same in business right? To keep going for the long term you have to love what you do. There’s only so much personal motivation that will push you to drive forward. Things are a lot easier when you are pulled along by doing something you love.
Lesson 5: There needs to be a time to celebrate
I crossed the line, received the medal, was given a sausage and a beer and I was done. I texted Claire to let her know I was OK then sat down chatting with others who had run with me over the last few hours. There wasn’t a lot of jumping around with excitement – just quiet sitting and enjoying the fact that we had done what we had set out to do and how that mattered to us in our own different ways. It was a great feeling.
How many times do you stop to celebrate in business? Do you take the time to reflect on what you have achieved and what that means? Marathons have an end point, otherwise nobody would enter them.
So where are the end points in your business? Think of them as the places where you take the time to look back and be thankful for the effort you put in and the goals you achieved. Perhaps they arrive each quarter or after delivering a chunky and challenging project.
Then you can allow yourself to rest, recharge and plan the next adventure.
Just as I am.
Can one thing really transform your website marketing? Yes it can.
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as writing better ads, buying more clicks or changing the colour of your website.
But it helps if you redefine your opinion of the “job” that Google does for your prospect.
To do that, put yourself in your prospect’s shoes for a moment. Now think of the last time you made a decision without having any alternatives to choose from. It was probably a long time ago, if at all. It is a challenge to know you are making the right choice when there are no wrong choices available.
That’s how it is for your prospects who arrive via Google. When they have only one option, Google doesn’t feature. They go to Google looking for options, plural, not an option.
But they don’t want dozens of options – research has shown that too many options can make forming a decision nearly impossible. I’m going to guess (ie, I have no scientific proof – the number just “feels” right) that they look for around five.
Their task, then, is to whittle this list down to a small group they think are worth their most precious of resources – time. And the focus is on whittling down, rather than keeping on.
And this, my friend, is where the “one thing” lives that ensures your business remains on your prospect’s list.
Is it your many years of experience fixing their kind of problems? Or the speed at which your vans arrive. Or the cost of your solution? Or the technology you provide that your competitors can’t?
Remember Marketing 101 and your Unique Selling Proposition? I know it’s basic stuff, and we are all a lot smarter than that now, but in the rush to establish a successful business did you perhaps overlook this when creating your website’s content?
I believe all successful business are that way because they have a USP – whether the business owners understand what it is or not. So the conversation may go like this.
“Ok Jane, I can see that your business has grown like topsy over the last 10 years and has an impressive list of clients. So tell me, what makes your Accountancy Practice so different from others in the Auckland region?”
Jane then goes on to list five significant areas that make her stand out from her competitors in a way that is relevant to her prospects.
I then get out my laptop and load up her website’s home page in my browser. This is the page over 80% of her visitors see first. And we start looking for each of the five points she mentioned being highlighted on the home page. And they’re not. (Or not much.)
That’s why Jane’s home page bounce rate is so high and her conversion rates so low. It’s also why her existing online marketing support hasn’t been able to solve the problem over the last six months.
Owning a strong USP can be a magical thing in transforming your online marketing.
I have found myself willing to struggle through more than one poorly designed website with atrocious graphics that load at a snail’s pace all because the website told me this business delivered EXACTLY what I was looking for.
But present a website that tells me you offer the same as everyone else on my list and I don’t care how appealing your site looks – I’ll find a reason to bumped you off. And it won’t have to be a big reason. It might be how fast your website loads, or images I don’t love, or difficulty in reading your content on a mobile device. Dumb things that cause you to lose business because there is nothing else to engage prospects’ attention.
Now I realise that competitive markets are competitive because the USP’s that survive in them are subtle and transient. So creating this “one thing” will be more challenging for some than others. Nevertheless, time spent here will be well rewarded in your online marketing efforts.
For instance, your USP-driven ad copy will push your PPC click through rates up – improving your quality score, which will lower your per-click cost. Landing pages written with your USP in mind can raise your conversion rates, lower your cost per lead. Benefits can also flow into your email marketing and social media.
So why not take some time this week to get back to Marketing 101 and list the points that define your USP, then see how good a job your landing pages are doing at explaining them?
Let’s think of your website as a sales person. Let’s also assume they are not a high performing soul delivering you a mass of leads and sales every month, but the opposite – someone struggling to make a dent in their monthly quota.
But there is hope. Just like salespeople, websites can be turned around. The first step is to pinpoint the exact areas of struggle then quickly coach the person or fix the website – to direct things back on track.
I have first hand experience in this turnaround process for both people and websites: fourteen years running Ark Advance and, before that, five years managing a sales team for an outsource mail processing company. I can assure you, the attributes of troubled salespeople and troubled websites are very similar. Here are the top six that come to mind.
1. Not seeing enough people
These were the sales people everyone in the office liked, mainly because they spent so much time in our office instead of in the offices of our prospects presenting great solutions. Just like your salespeople, your website needs visits to make it work. Now we may not require thousands per week, but there needs to enough to make it work. And if you are struggling to rank naturally within Google then it could be time to whip out your wallet and invest in some paid advertising to get the wheels turning.
2. Seeing the wrong people
Some salespeople making enough visits, but with the wrong people. For instance, they chew up hours presenting to people without the authority to make the purchase. In website marketing, this is similar to buying Google Advertising clicks on keywords that your target audience will probably never use. For instance clicks on the search phrase “business profit” for a business coaching service when most prospects arrive behind the keywords “business coach” or “business mentor”.
3. Failing to get the message across
These salespeople make it into the right office to pitch the right product to the right person – and still it turns to custard. There are a few things that can go off the rails here.
In direct sales, the first place I’d look would be the questions the salesperson is asking. But websites struggle to ask questions, so all you have is your content. Perhaps it’s the format that is failing. Perhaps it’s all a mass of text when your prospects will respond better with a mix of text, video and audio. Maybe you’ve got content written for all your prospects instead of content in different sections, each talking to the needs of specific audiences?
4. Failing to ask for the sale
And then you have the person who is great until the end when – BAM! – they don’t ask for the sale. This is similar to a website which hides its Contact Us page or fails to offer any juicy conversion choices that allows prospects to ‘raise their hand”.
5. Not following up on those who are “thinking about it”
Nearly there – we now have those who present well, ask for the sale and get the common response “let me think about it – come back to me later”. And guess what – they don’t. Nobody is followed up and prospects go cold and sales go begging. In website marketing this is about failing to deploy all the clever electronic reminder tactics available to you. Email marketing and Google’s remarketing product are great examples of tactics that neatly fit this need. Which leads me to the final hurdle.
6. Not selling to those who have bought before
Our salespeople began with a territory with customers to manage. The smart ones – wanting the easy way in life – began by selling more services to existing clients. The strugglers avoided those customers like the plague and went out to make a name for themselves quickly with new work from new clients. Very rarely did it turn out well. Think of this like avoiding your sizable email marketing list of current and ex-customers to instead embark on some Google Advertising.
There you go – six attributes that will ensure marketing failure. Do the opposite, and you will be well on the way to turning your struggling website into something that sells for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All without the hassles that come with managing their human equivalent. Contact us today if you would like to introduce us to your online marketing experience.
I have no idea how my Ford Kuga manages to direct me on how to successfully parallel park. I just press the correct button and then follow the prompts on the dashboard screen. Likewise, it’s beyond me how Google Maps can predict to the closest minute the time I will arrive back home. I just look at the right point on the screen and there the data is.
They both hide the all the complexity they have mastered and provide me with the right prompts in the right way so I park safely and follow the correct path on my journey home.
Online marketing carries its own level of complexity too. And for the business owner, controlling outsourced activity can be a challenge when the necessary success prompts are missing. How do you manage a supplier who has a lot more expertise in their specialty than you will ever want to achieve?
Nevertheless, you want to guard against paying for the worst type of online marketing service – repetition without change. Especially when every dollar invested needs to be questioned to ensure that a) each dollar is being well spent; and b) the money spent last month is being built upon this month.
So here are my eight tasks to help you direct your online marketing outsource supplier. After 14 years in the same industry think of them as questions that help classify you as a client who is a few steps ahead of the rest.
Firstly, let’s talk about what overall success looks like when you outsource some of your online marketing. Some see it as a top Google ranking for a search phrase that’s important to them. The more business savvy see it as a consistent but growing stream of sales or sales leads – each at an affordable cost.
Or as golfers say, “you drive for show, but putt for dough”. Achieving good Google rankings is driving, and improving your site’s conversion rate is putting. You need both, but with a duff putter even the best driver will struggle.
With that cleared up, let’s kick off with the boring part. Google Analytics.
I can imagine few business owners bouncing out of bed on Monday morning hyped up about briefing their outsource provider to correctly configure their website analytics account. However, it’s in here that our first two tasks live. And without them completed all the other “sexy stuff”- social media spend, Google AdWords budgets and so on – are challenging, if not impossible, to successfully direct.
Task #1 – Track as much as you can about who does what on your website. Playing videos, downloading PDFs, scrolling down the page, exiting to visit your Facebook page and completing your Quote Request forms – it all needs to be tracked so you can see what is and isn’t working.
Task #2 – Allocate leads or sales to each stream of traffic your website receives. Think of each stream being silver, gold or mud. Once your analytics is correctly configured all should be revealed so you can keep the gold coming and divert the mud to someone else.
Next, Google Advertising, where. I boil all the complexity down to just three results-oriented tasks.
Task #3 – Calculate your advertising cost per lead. I realise you have the cost of your outsourcer to add in but this should still be a useful guide.
Task #4 – Calculate the trend line of leads per month. Seasonality issues aside, you should expect an upward slope. Ads should be being tweaked, landing pages tested and new keywords trialed – all to generate the one outcome: more leads this month than last.
Task #5 – Select search terms now proven to move to SEO. Do you always want to pay Google for clicks? Now that you have proven the conversion viability of selected search terms through advertising and superior analytics, you can move them into your search engine optimisation plan.
Which leads us nicely into search engine optimisation. Here I have just two items to focus on.
Task #6 – Add content to your website. Why? To improve the ranking of the keywords that have delivered conversions in your paid advertising efforts. Think blog posts, FAQ articles, service outlines, product overviews – any of these can be added to help Google crawlers find and index new content and refresh its current ranking result.
Task #7 – Enjoy the new links your site now has from other high quality websites like yours. I’m not talking about 10,000 links all of a sudden from sites you never hope to visit yourself. I’m talking about sites linking to yours because some human has convinced another that the content on your website would help people visiting theirs.
Finally, I distill the complex area of conversion optimisation down into one task for you to monitor.
Task #8 – Review and, where appropriate, change the content on your website to convince more visitors to convert this month than they did last month.
Which brings us neatly back to my opening comment about success looking more like sales conversions than high search rankings. Traffic problems can be solved with your wallet and Google advertising. Then all that’s left is for your content to fix any remaining conversion problems.
There you go; eight tasks that will increase your chances of success and make managing your outsource relationship a bit easier. Admittedly, I’ve simplified things a little to keep the tasks down to eight, but if you follow these guidelines you will avoid paying for the same results repeatedly, and start seeing real progress with your online marketing efforts.