Join us on the afternoon of October 19 to keep up to date on the latest research from Google.
As usual these events are hosted in our offices – this time in both Auckland and Christchurch. Two themes to cover this time: 1) how mobile has changed consumer behavior, and 2) the steps you can take to build an online presence.
Treat this as a high level information update. No pushy sales process here đ Speaker details from Google as below – Chris Price will run the Auckland session, Abby Shepherd will manage Christchurch :-
Agency Development Manager, Google Australia & New Zealand
Mitchel will present Google’s Micro Moments research, explaining how mobile has changed consumer behavior. He’ll talk about the opportunities this has created for shaping consumers’ decisions and preferences, and touch on why now is a great time to promote your business online.
Head of Agency Relationships, Google Australia & New Zealand
Elizabeth will cover the practical steps your business can take to build an online presence. She’ll give recommendations on how to align business goals to a digital strategy, talk about solutions available and also explain the benefits of working with a Google Partner agency.
We have only 8 spaces available at our Auckland offices in Grey Lynn and 5 spaces available in Christchurch. Go here to claim your space. (Unfortunately, the Google registration system has everyone register for Auckland – just flick us a note if you prefer Christchurch and we will get you sorted.)
Google will provide complimentary snacks and we will keep the hot drinks flowing.
Learning about a new report from Google AdWords does not make most of us sit up and listen. Struggling already under a mass of data, finding out about one more set of metrics is not something most people celebrate. Which is a shame, because most reports in AdWords are there to help you avoid making bozo mistakes with your ad spend.
For instance, once properly configured, AdWords Conversion Reporting allocates orders or enquiries directly to the keywords you buy clicks for. If you fail to look at this reporting, you may as well be using intuition to tune your account.
In some cases, applying the information in Conversion Reporting is all thatâs needed to get your AdWords account to succeed. Ad clickers arrive, look around and buy or register during the one visit â nice, clean, simple and relatively straightforward.
However, when it comes to costly products, visitor behaviour may be very different. They may jump in and out of your website a number of times before deciding to buy. Whether you allocate the sale to the start, or the end, or divide it between the various elements of traffic, is a question of attribution.
People may also interact with your advertising during such a sequence of events in a variety of ways. A comfortable sofa and smartphone screens of expanding sizes have a lot to answer for here.
For example, people may browse on their phone in the evening, between ad breaks, find your ad and click. Fortunately, they like what they see, but damn, the credit card is in the car â so no sale, but a reminder is set for tomorrow at the office.
Next day our potential buyer forgets the name of your website, so searches and finds your paid ad again â this time on the office computer â and clicks again. Thankfully the price is unchanged, the item is in stock and the purchase is made.
Sound unique? Google reports that six out of 10 internet users in the United States do exactly this â start their shopping on one device and finish on another.
The image below from Google shows the percentage of cross-device search impressions for different industries.
If you tuned your AdWords account in a standard way for the scenario outlined above, you would celebrate the conversion and promptly allocate it to the office hours click from the desktop computer and shift your budget from mobile ads to desktop.
Thankfully though, the new cross-device attribution reports from AdWords can help you avoid this mistake.
Borrowing the pic from the Google post below, you can see how it operates.
The above image shows how many sales were started on a phone and finished via another device by way of something called the device assist ratio. This means that if your mobile assist ratio was five, then for every conversion you achieved on mobile, another five were started on mobile but completed on other devices.
Accessing reports like these will make it easier to see the true value of your investment in mobile advertising.
A lot of people question the value of paying for visitors who view your website via a screen size that always converts at a lower percentage than its larger desktop alternative. But maybe mobile could be starting a lot more than it converts.
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, thereâs 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 thatâs 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.
Hereâs 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.
Hereâs 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 itâs 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 itâs 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. Itâs 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 letâs 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).
Thatâs nice of course. But not necessarily as effective as you, the person reading this, knowing more yourself. Thatâs 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 â the housing market had collapsed â 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, Iâm looking for an answer to a specific question. The problem in my industry, and a lot of industries, is you donât get a lot of great search results because most businesses donât 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 â these are not philosophies in themselves â 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 â like what’s the price? â 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 â here in New Zealand â 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 â 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 â like new or pending legislation â 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 â 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 doesnât 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 âfurther researchâ 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 teamâs 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 itâs 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 itâs your service – maybe you respond to quote requests faster than the rest?
Or it could be the way you present your website content. Letâs 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 agencyâs 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 âblahâ. 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 youâve 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. Youâll 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 letâs chat about what success means for you.
Some things work much better when thereâs 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. Itâs just when they have to talk with each other that we have confusion that could cost you dearly.
For instance, letâs 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 canât do that. And thatâs an issue.
Why? Because even though email marketing may be old and crunchy, itâs 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, itâs easier than you might think. And it pays to think like a Finn.
Hereâs what you do. You decree a common language and then you have everyone speak it. In this case, itâs email that acquiesces and ends up âspeakingâ 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 donât 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, whatâs more, difficult to interpret.
But get this. As Iâm 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?
Hereâs what I think it is: Spending more money on something they donât yet understand.
It may be Googleâs 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 itâs working. And that scares them.
Fortunately, they donât 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 thereâs 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 competitorsâ, you double the effectiveness of your ad spend.
Customisation makes sense
The âout of the boxâ 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. Itâs the crazy tale of a guy who becomes separately employed by two people, each of whomâs 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 itâs 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? Letâs look and see:
Guvnor #1, The Big G – Google.
Make Google happy and your website will be found by people using the worldâs biggest search engine. Broadly speaking, âhappinessâ 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 websiteâs link then staying on your site for a reasonable time.
How can Google âknowâ what to rank you for? By digesting your websiteâs content – that is, text. And the more of it, the better. Pages and pages of great content makes Googleâs life much easier. And it also helps with the second goal – ensuring visitors stay for a decent chunk of time.
Thereâs 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 âgetting the contentâ. Most clients struggle to write it and begrudge paying someone else to do it. So theyâre happiest when the site goes live with as little content as they can get away with.
The problem is , thatâs not so good for the big guvnor G. So sorry Business Owner, youâre 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 developerâs 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 siteâs purpose is to make geeks smile or designers chuffed. But thatâs 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 Googleâs. 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 itâs about trust. So show lots of customer case stories, please. Maybe itâs 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?
Can one thing really transform your website marketing? Yes it can.
Unfortunately, itâs 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 âjobâ that Google does for your prospect.
To do that, put yourself in your prospectâs 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.
Thatâs how it is for your prospects who arrive via Google. When they have only one option, Google doesnât feature. They go to Google looking for options, plural, not an option.
But they donât want dozens of options – research has shown that too many options can make forming a decision nearly impossible. Iâm going to guess (ie, I have no scientific proof – the number just âfeelsâ 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 âone thingâ lives that ensures your business remains on your prospectâs 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 canât?
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 websiteâs 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.
âOk 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?â
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 websiteâs 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 theyâre not. (Or not much.)
Thatâs why Janeâs home page bounce rate is so high and her conversion rates so low. Itâs also why her existing online marketing support hasnât 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 donât care how appealing your site looks – Iâll find a reason to bumped you off. And it wonât have to be a big reason. It might be how fast your website loads, or images I donât 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 prospectsâ attention.
Now I realise that competitive markets are competitive because the USPâs that survive in them are subtle and transient. So creating this âone thingâ 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?
Letâs think of your website as a sales person. Letâs 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 âbusiness profitâ for a business coaching service when most prospects arrive behind the keywords âbusiness coachâ or âbusiness mentorâ.
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 Iâd look would be the questions the salesperson is asking. But websites struggle to ask questions, so all you have is your content. Perhaps itâs the format that is failing. Perhaps itâs all a mass of text when your prospects will respond better with a mix of text, video and audio. Maybe youâve 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 donât 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 âraise their handâ.
5. Not following up on those who are âthinking about itâ
Nearly there – we now have those who present well, ask for the sale and get the common response âlet me think about it – come back to me laterâ. And guess what – they donât. 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 Googleâs 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, itâs 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 thatâs 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, âyou drive for show, but putt for doughâ. Achieving good Google rankings is driving, and improving your siteâs conversion rate is putting. You need both, but with a duff putter even the best driver will struggle.
With that cleared up, letâs 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, itâs in here that our first two tasks live. And without them completed all the other âsexy stuffâ- 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. Iâm not talking about 10,000 links all of a sudden from sites you never hope to visit yourself. Iâm 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 thatâs 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, Iâve 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.
Get 13 super smart business owners with their own Google Analytics accounts in a room for the morning, add in some fresh coffee and over a hundred training slides, and anything is possible.
Each was there because they believe, as we do, that managing a website is a lot easier if you have a basic understanding of Google Analytics and its core metrics. Just as understanding terms like profit, expenses and assets makes managing your financials much easier, understanding terms like bounce rate, page views and users is helpful for managing a website.
For three hours we gradually layered the information down with frequent breaks for quizzes, card games and chocolate. We are a relaxed bunch, so questions and insights were fired at Abby and me from all directions. And, as is frequently the case, it was they showed us that the stuff was slowly being absorbed.
Questions and insights like…
Once I remove all my spam traffic my numbers look great in some areas and a disaster in others.
Every Google Analytics account involved in the training had spam in it – some more than others. Those with low visit counts were especially affected. Their high proportion of rubbish traffic made their total visitor count look great, but engagement data a mess.
Early in the course we showed a quick way to filter out spam data to reveal the real numbers beneath. For some it was a revelation – the site they thought was busy with prospects was 80% spam and very, very quiet when it came to local traffic.
Why am I paying someone to manage my advertising when I donât have any goals set up to measure its performance?
After we had removed spam data from the accounts we then helped people set up their first Google Analytics Goal. Think of this as configuring an account to track all the things that show the website performing successfully. Typical measures include contact forms being completed, or sales made. About 20% of participants already had goals set up – the rest went along with a simple scenario that we suggested. By the end of the training, about 50% had set up a goal, and all got the importance of setting them up to measure the success of their efforts. If youâre paying hundreds of dollars a month to Google for advertising, this is a critical step.
Now if I could only reduce the bounce rate from my home page, life would be so much better.
This from an attendee who had to leave the room to convince her web developer to give her access to her own Google Analytics account for the first time. From that standing start she picked up that her home page was her top landing page by a long shot, and it bounced 75% of the traffic it received. She left with attending to that at the top of her to-do list for the week.
The stats from our new website are both good and bad. Good because our engagement has improved, but bad because the conversion rate looks to have plummeted.
This insight came from a design company who had rolled out a new website two months earlier. Thankfully, they had kept the same Google Analytics code across both sites. So now it was easy to see that their fancy new, redesigned home page had delivered a lower bounce rate but also was now hiding the next-step conversion choices they wanted prospects to take.
This is just a smattering of the questions and insights we heard – they kept flying right to the end.
The post-event survey results tell us that the format size and style of training works; allowing business owners to get down and dirty in their own Google Analytics account while being trained along the way seems to hit the mark. Contact us today if you would like to join the next group.
The other day I had coffee with a friend who was struggling with her business. Their financial year had just wrapped up and the results proved what she already understood – it had been a tough year. However, deep down we knew the direction she was heading in was right – the principles were sound. It was just the implementation that needed work.
I think of principles as the âwhyâ parts of a business, the overarching reasons the business does what it does. They are the bits that the owner stands for – the parts that force you to take those hard decisions. The middle of the Simon Sinek bullseye for the company.
When I set up Ark Advance in 2002 I had two core principles I wanted to apply. As the years have progressed a few more have been added. There are not dozens – probably fewer than ten. However, there have been times where I would have just loved to ditch each and every one of them to make life easier.
But unfortunately principles are not like that. They are part of you and so long as you remain true to yourself then they just sit there – guiding you forward and calling you to task along the way. Visions of my mother remind me of this fact.
My Mum was a quietly spoken person who believed in the principle of fairness. (Itâs something I believe in too.) One situation in particular sticks in my memory.
Our home in England had as neighbours the local Anglican Church. All was going well until a new vicar arrived and decided to put up a two-metre high black fence along our border without talking to Mum. Effectively, it blocked the view out the front of our house across the nice church grounds towards the vicarage.
I still remember to this day the vision of my five foot Mum in her mid 50s trying to push the fence over from our side – while the six foot tall Vicar was on the other side trying, quite unsuccessfully I may add, to keep it up. Principles make you do that – fight and push and generally keep going when things are against you.
So here are four of mine for Ark Advance.
#1 Itâs all worth zip if nothing gets sold.
I sold offset business printing on commission for many years, probably one of the more competitive markets to make a living in. My boss used to chase us out of the office at 9am to knock on doors – cold call style – to make our budget. We were allowed back in at 4.30pm to write up our orders. If we had any. Walking down the street going door to door is probably the least efficient way ever to market a business. Unless, that is, you pay people only when they sell – then it makes perfect sense.
The directors knew this and paid you well IF you made the sale. They had the numbers dialed in. Each drove around in the latest Jaguar sports cars and the company invested in high end printing machinery from Japan.
The simplicity of their sales model was a charm.
Compare that to all the marketing and sales options available, now that most offices stop cold calling reps turning up at their door. In online alone you have social media, search with all its different facets, email marketing and even remarketing. More options than most have time to explore.
However, what hasn’t changed is that itâs all worth zip if something isnât sold to someone. Forget the razzmatazz of this technology over that one. The end goal remains the same.
#2 Itâs David against Goliath, and we provide the slingshot.
A few large US tech corporates control an ever-increasing slice of the online space you market within. And yep, the dice are loaded heavily in their favour. They can and do change the game on a frequent basis and you are left to react as quickly as the rest.
Small to medium sized companies are only allowed to interact with these brands through script-driven call centres. Fairness has nothing to do with the situation. Itâs market economics on a global scale that means a few can control so much.
Nevertheless, there are ways to make things work in your favour. Itâs not about doing the same thing the big brands do. Their budgets are crazy and you will never get the same access they do. For you, itâs about finding the nooks and crannies in the online marketing space where, at the right price, you can locate the right prospect, win their attention, and convince them to do the right thing. Our job is to show you where these places are and then hand you the tools to achieve your goals.
#3 Process delivers repeatable success
Ever press the âsendâ button on an email campaign going to a half a million people? Our team do on a regular basis. The only way I can have them do this is by supporting them with a process that works. We would have over a hundred steps an email campaign needs to follow to ensure it is launched to spec – a similar number to setting up a good paid advertising campaign. So when things go awry itâs the process thatâs called to task first, not the team member.
#4 The truth is in the data.
Itâs less about opinions, feelings, thoughts or hunches. These are the places where seemingly great ideas can still remain alive, sucking your budget and, more importantly, your time. The cold hard data tells the front-footed truth, the bits you donât want to know. Such as the thousands you spend with an SEO âspecialistâ each month without any data to show you the extra sales it produces.
Or the 80% bounce rate from the Google advertising campaign that makes you cringe but is managed by a friend of the boss who is nice to chat with each week BUT still hasn’t asked for access to your Google Analytics account so they can see the data themselves.
Ark would be a different business without these principles. For instance, we would have dived into social media from the get-go. Instead, we held back until we could see it driving sales as opposed to âbrand exposureâ. Also, our focus on Google Analytics would be way less than it is now. We actively look for data to challenge our approach.
Compare this to the accounts we are asked to review where thereâs lots being spent because of just one thing – trust. No data – just the business owner trusting their supplier to do the right thing for them. Thereâs a great Peter Drucker saying, âculture eats strategy for breakfastâ, but in these situations it should be âdata eats trust for breakfastâ.
Struggling to get more value from your online marketing? Time to shape up or ship some tactics out?
If so, let me offer the humble funnel as a tool to steer your turnaround, help you apply the right tactics in the right order, and ensure a steady passage towards your goals.
Thereâs real power and magic in the funnel. Its basic premise is that more people arrive on your website than decide to convert. So it makes sense that the top is wider than the bottom :).
The segments below the top describe the different levels of engagement as people meander through your pages. There will always be those who bounce in and, before you know it, have bounced out again. Whoa – the funnel just got a bit smaller!
Now weâve got those who have remained and are enthralled with your content. Theyâre hanging around to play the videos youâve so cleverly provided, or download PDFs.
Now youâve got a funnel that look something like this.
Like all models, it doesnât capture every situation – and that sharp point may be a bit too sharp. But this little shape with just its four stages can really help you focus on the right things when turning around your online marketing.
Letâs consider two scenarios – one great, one not so great.
The great one first. Here I am, one of your prospects. I hop across to Google to start a search. Bang! and there you go – Google worked. Just what I wanted is staring me squarely in the face.
So I click and arrive on a website that looks just as I hoped. The content is good – it keeps me lingering longer than I planned. Then – not wanting to waste all that invested time – Iâve made contact so someone can follow up with me later.
Iâm happy. And, as the website owner, so are you!
Now for the not so great scenario.
Now letâs look at how the four stage funnel can help us debug a poor performing website which delivers very few of these scenarios. First up let’s deal with the top part of our friendly funnel – Acquisition.
Iâm the same prospect as before, but this time when I do my Google search, I donât see your website anywhere. Poor SEO and ineffective AdWords advertising are the problems you need to address first. Until you do, the rest of the funnel is irrelevant. Itâs empty.
So now youâve sorted that issue and I find your site. But I donât stay long. In that case, the content of your website now needs serious work. Very rarely do we see a website with poor engagement perform well in Interaction and Conversion.
So now youâve sorted your content and your interaction levels have shot through the roof. But conversions suck. Usually thatâs a result of not having the kind of interactive content that the customer needs to make the purchase decision. For instance, complex products or services may require videos to explain them, or PDF documents to provide more detail.
Employing the funnel theory can help you focus your efforts on fixing the right things. For instance, it can help you avoid wasting money on a five minute video of your services (an interaction event) until youâve increased your engagement values (time on site and pages per session) sufficiently to ensure visitors are spending enough time to even find or play the video.
Or you may decide not to purchase additional advertising from Google until youâve done something about your 70% bounce rate (again those engagement values need work!).. And yes, improving these stats can be a lot harder and possibly a lot less fun than creating a video or buying more clicks from Google. Sorry ⌠I never said using such a simple shape could make the work simple too.
Nevertheless, when there are more tactics available online than there is time to deliver, the funnel should help you focus on fixing the right parts first. Contact us today to arrange a session with a member of our team on how your online marketing performs against best practice for each of these four stages.