I hope you have been experimenting with your inbound marketing efforts over the last few months. If you have, you are beginning to experience the power that “showing up” and delivering relevant, remarkable content to your visitors can have on your business. In part 3 of this series, I will focus on the importance of monitoring your efforts. By using analytics, you can continually assess and refine your inbound marketing programs.
One of the things I love about digital marketing is the immediate gratification it provides. The Internet is an amazing and responsive marketing testing bed. You can take a great idea and within 24 hours, test that idea using one of the digital tools available to you (i.e. main website, branded landing pages, blog, social media sites, discussion boards, etc.). Each one of these tools has analytics associated with them that you can use to determine if it created the results you wanted (i.e. increase in visitors, more “likes,” sign ups, shares, feedback, etc.).
Companies should review key analytics on a monthly basis, at the very least, and then use that information to drive actions. Here are some tips you can use immediately to begin measuring your efforts:
1. Make sure you have Google Analytics (or at least some analytics package) set up for all your websites, blogs, landing pages, etc. It’s free and it’s powerful.
2. Understand and review these analytic terms:
• New vs. returning visitors
• Time on site
• Bounce rate
• Traffic sources
• Most popular pages
• Highest exit page
3. Measure your social media using the following:
• Audience (number of friends, fans, followers).
• Referrals from social media to your website.
• Engagement – is your audience participating?
• Leads/customers – are your social media visitors converting into a business lead or customer?
4. Set up a Google Alert for key phrases or terms for your own company, your competition, your industry.
5. Experiment – use your digital marketing landscape to test an idea, a message, a new offer or a hot topic in your industry right now. Continually analyze the results so you can constantly improve.
It’s important to realize that although we are using new terms that didn’t exist a decade ago, the underlying principles haven’t changed. It’s always been about:
1. Showing up and Getting found.
2. Converting visitors Into leads/customers.
3. Analyzing results to learn and constantly improve.
The difference today is that there are new tools available that make it easier and quicker to apply those principles. So what are you waiting for?
If you missed part 1 or 2, here you go: