Archive for the 'Website Analytics' Category

Global Leadership Conference Reinforces WebsiteBiz’ Mission

Published
by
Eric Dudley
 
on July 9, 2008 
in Customer Acquisition and Website Analytics
. 0 Comments

EO GLCFor the second consecutive year, I was given the opportunity to participate at the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Global Leadership Conference in San Francisco.  It’s one of my favorite places to visit and it’s close to my mom so I get to visit with her.  It’s gravy that it happens to be adjacent to mother’s day- and of course I tell her I came 3,000 miles just to visit her. ;-)

In case you were wondering, The Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) is a global community of business owners, all of whom run companies that exceed $1 Million in revenue.  This year, the Global Leadership Conference brought together 600 chapter leaders from around the globe.

The conference emphasized the idea that as long as there are innovative ideas, there will be entrepreneurial opportunities.  New technology is what spurs new business. 

One of the “hot” areas we at WebsiteBiz believe will continue to grow is around:

  • Marketing analytics
  • One-to-one marketing, and
  • The idea of utilizing the Web as a central hub for measuring integrated tactics

With continued advances in testing capabilities like multivariate testing platforms, there is more focus on website analytics and extraction of the business intelligence that mazimizes performance and return on investment.  Afterall, what marketer wouldn’t want that…?

 

New Benchmarking Service Available from Google

Published
by
Tom Dressler
 
on April 10, 2008 
in Lead Generation, Website Analytics and Website Effectiveness
. 0 Comments

Google recently announced the availability of a benchmarking service that gives users the ability to compare their properties to other sites within an industry. Brett Crosby from the Google Analytics blog writes, “Of course, benchmarking only works if people can opt to share their data into the system, so we’re also introducing a new data-sharing settings page. On this page, customers can choose whether to opt in or opt out of sharing their Analytics data. To be clear, we are not sharing individual data with competitors; we bucket data into industry verticals and then anonymize and aggregate the data.”

Wikipedia defines benchmarking as follows, “…a process used in management and particularly strategic management, in which organizations evaluate various aspects of their processes in relation to best practice, usually within their own sector. This then allows organizations to develop plans on how to adopt such best practice, usually with the aim of increasing some aspect of performance. Benchmarking may be a one-off event, but is often treated as a continuous process in which organizations continually seek to challenge their practices.”

As we are continually faced with more competitive online marketing environments, this information becomes critical in your strategic planning. When future direction is determined by a hunch or a perception the outcome can be negative. The solution lies in the continual use of this information over the long haul. The advantages of using this information enable organizations to see new methods, ideas and tools to improve their effectiveness. The savings over the long haul are significant in reference to both time and money.

So the question becomes…Am I using this information in my strategic planning initiatives?

  1. Identify your problem areas
  2. Identify other industries that have similar processes
  3. Data Collection (Now Available)
  4. Determine current performance gap
  5. Implement new and improved business practices

Remember: “Benchmarking isn’t just about data-culture and circumstances must be taken into account when you view the results.”

Measuring Results Online - What should you track?

Published
by
Kyle Bumgardner
 
on February 28, 2008 
in Branding, Customer Acquisition and Website Analytics
. 0 Comments

Unfortunately, I still see marketers struggle to communicate the value of online marketing and how it drives bottom-line results. Much of this is caused by a lack of standard metrics by which to measure and report impact…especially when a direct response conversion is not clearly evident.

Most CEO’s and CFO’s are focused on driving efficiency and scale to acheive revenue growth. But when it comes to marketing, they need to be able to make a connection between the work ($) that is being done and the revenue that will be produce as a result.

Bottom line.

With studies suggesting that merely 2/3 of all marketers include metrics in their marketing plans…a need for more standard measurement is very necessary. So, what do you track? The ultimate answer is Everything…but realistically, try focusing on things that will move the needle and provide leading indicators of revenue. (Stuff that C-Levels discuss).

Here are a 10 tactical examples that you might not be considering when establishing metrics for your online marketing campaigns:

  1. Brand impact (i.e., increased brand awareness, intent or favorability)
  2. Number of impressions
  3. Position of paid listing
  4. Number of clicks
  5. Ratio of new to returning visitors
  6. Amount of increased website traffic
  7. Duration of website visits
  8. Amount of increased traffic to physical store
  9. Amount of increased volume to call center
  10. Number of leads generated for products sold online
  11. Number of leads generated for products sold offline
  12. Number of immediate sales generated for products sold online

Collecting this data will create trends and insight that will translate across most organizations.

How Marketers Measure Social Media Marketing

Published
by
Eric Dudley
 
on February 15, 2008 
in Social Media and Website Analytics
. 0 Comments

Everywhere I turn the buzz is Social Networking or Social Media.  Our clients, prospects, and partners are telling us they are or going to do it and want to know how we can help lead their initiatives.

As we help our clients focus on achieving measurable online objectives and goals, we as online marketers want to ensure that any tactic we employ or test aligns and contributes to meeting goals.  The challenge is that the web analytic standards that we are use to tracking campaign performance are different for Social Media marketing.

Metrics that are more important when measuring social media marketing include:

  • RSS subscribers
  • Email newsletter subscribers
  • Activity of comments added to your blog - BTW, would you please leave a comment?
  • Monitoring blogs and forums that reference you
  • Monitoring referring links
  • Measuing brand saturation
  • Monitoring engagement of visitors

As Social Media continues to mature, it’s important for marketers to be in the know and include Social Media Marketing in the mix.

 The ASK as I end my post today, is will you take a minute to leave your comments?  Is Social Media on your radar?  Are you already employing it?

ROI In Action

Published
by
Kyle Bumgardner
 
on May 5, 2006 
in Website Analytics
. 0 Comments

Marketing ROI is clearly gaining support and funding from company executives. A company’s ability to put marketing ROI measurements and analysis into practice will increase efficiency, create competitive advantages and greatly enhance marketing’s credibility within the organization.

As reported in a recent survey by Lenskold Group, a vast majority of companies measuring financial returns on indicate that profits can increase if measurements are put in place to capture marketing’s contribution to sales.

Although the gap in funding of analytics and measurements continues to close, few have achieved a leadership in this emerging discipline, but the trend is clearly on the upswing:

Other findings from the Lenskold study that I found interesting:

* Marketers have improved their ability to measure the financial impact of marketing, including an increase in those able to link brand measures to incremental sales and profits.

* The early adopters achieving success in their measurements of financial returns are still in the minority (16%), but there is a solid base of the early majority (42%) who consider their ability to be somewhat short of where it could be.

* Marketers with the discipline to measure financial returns are using measurement methodologies (pre-post analysis, market testing, marketing mix modeling, and quantitative research) at much higher rates than those not measuring financial returns.

* The profit potential that can come from improved marketing measurements continues to be significant and is critical for strengthening marketing’s role in retaining and growing financial contribution.

* Along with the increased use of financial metrics, non-marketing executives have increased confidence that marketing investments are profitable. Marketing credibility clearly grows with increased accountability.

At WebsiteBiz, we constantly reinforce the value of measurement and analytics in all of our campaigns.

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