Digital Marketing Module 9
Understand the importance of defining your goals to gain actionable, meaningful insights from you analytics data
- Analytics provides a lot of information...Overwhelming!!! -What you want are actionable, meaningful insights: -Information that [helps] influence your customer experience and overall business strategy -Information that you can respond to in a way that moves consumers through your sales funnel -According to Forrester (2016), 74% of companies report being "data-driven"4 -29% of companies are successfully acting on the information they receive -Why this matters to you: - You can decide what your actionable, meaningful insights are and define them as conversion measurements. -Conversions = when a visitor to your site completes a desirable action -A.k.a., the number of conversions (as you define them) provides you with information about visitor behavior on your website that gives you... -A meaningful idea of how you digital strategy is performing -A chance to act on your digital efforts to enhance performance that helps you meet your goals
Look at the history of your traffic that comes from organic search results.
-Remember to consider your conversions: -high-quality traffic (HQT) - visitors who performed some desirable action on your site -Low-quality traffic (LQT) - visitors who did not perform some desirable action on your site
Discuss the benefits of using analytics for segmentation
Analytics provides detailed information that can help you segment your traffic by visitor characteristics
Discuss using analytics to inform you SEO strategy
Find out what type of traffic sources you have organic, referral, direct
Convert:
Is there a consistent exit page (page that visitors leave your site from)?
Close:
What percentage of email subscribers unsubscribe after a few weeks?
Attract:
What percentage of strangers exposed to your awareness campaign are not visiting your landing page?
Attract:
Where are your initial visitors coming from? Search engines? Social media? Another site?
referral
- from any other site that's not a search engine, ads (Like the ads on this pasta jambalaya recipe page) or backlinks (like the link to Slap Ya Mama Cajun seasoning on this pasta jambalaya recipe page) - Remember that backlinks on credible website helps increase your organic search rankings; ads will not. Just an FYI
Conversion by device type
- number of conversions performed using a mobile vs. desktop
Bounce rate
- number of people who leave the site after coming to the first page/total number of visitors to the site -Gives you and idea of (1) how well your ad/SEO description/social media post is describing the landing page it links to; or (2) how effective the landing page is at getting visitors to engage further with the site -Higher bounce rates = less effective (1) or (2) -Example: The candy company from above runs the same ad, and the landing page linked to it asks visitors to first provide their email addresses to "unlock" the discount. 50 people click on the ad to visit the landing page, and 40 people leave the site once they get to the landing page. -Bounce rate: 40/50 = 80% Calculate bounce rates by ad campaign and other nonpaid digital efforts and compare. You can find out which traffic sources aren't really producing much quality traffic. It's possible that the audience for one platform might not be a good fit for your message or product, overall
direct
- user types your website address into browser or clicks on your bookmarked page
Analytics tells you which keywords you bid on are giving you the best return on your investment
-Consider the catering example from the previous slide: You bid on "Vegetarian Catering Menu" & "Catered Dinner Vegetarian", with the Ad 2 landing page only. -You find out that people who came to you from "Vegetarian Catering Menu" keyword search requested a quote 5% of the time. Those who came to you from "Catered Dinner Vegetarian" requested a quote 8% of the time. -You might need to add pictures of your three most popular vegetarian dinners with theme names to your landing page -Italian Family Supper -Fiesta Taco Night -Southern Veggie Buffet
Provide examples of actionable, meaningful insights
-Conversions/session duration -Average # of user conversions/average amount of time a user spends on your site -If low, then visitors may be experiencing difficulty finding what they need/want
Discuss the benefits of using analytics to inform digital strategy
- Can measure performance of just about any aspect of your digital marketing strategy - Tracks the customer throughout their digital journey (a.k.a. your sales funnel) - Helps you understand what is and isn't working - Enhances your audience targeting efforts - Enhances your digital marketing efficiency (i.e., minimizes the waste of resources) -Helps identify content driving your SEO results1 - Identifies outbound links (links to other sites on yours) that are creating valuable partnerships2 - Example: Allyn's baking blog provides links to sites that sell helpful baking tools. Analytics can tell Allyn how many of her blog visitors are clicking to visit those sites. - identifies backlinks (links from other sites to yours) that are creating valuable partnerships -Example: Allyn's lamp shop gets a new customer who came by clicking a link on someone else's lamp blogging site.
Provide examples of actionable, meaningful insights
- Cost per conversion - total cost of an ad campaign/# of conversions (goal of ad campaign) - Bounce rate - number of people who leave the site after coming to the first page/total number of visitors to the site - conversion by device type
Provide examples of actionable, meaningful insights
- If visitors tend to visit a low number of pages and consistently exit from one particular page, you can look at the exit page content to research why visitors realized very quickly you aren't offering the content they're looking for. - This could often be the result of a poorly written post/ad/SEO description. The visitor clicked on the link thinking they'd get one type of information, but once they got to your site, they changed their mind. - Example: Jasmine searches online for Mardi Gras masks for a party, and your search ad pops up - "Mardi Gras Masks - 10% Discount". But your Mardi Gras Mask shop carries highly-priced, antique Mardi Gras masks that are way out of Jasmine's price range. She clicks on your ad, which directs her to one of your masks, which is $100. Wondering if you might have some cheaper options she navigates to your full product display, sees prices between $85-150, and exits. Your ad probably needed to communicate to searchers that your products are high-quality decorative antiques.
Another result you might see: you're not getting as much traffic for certain keywords as you used to.
-Example: Searches for "fresh flowers" used to bring a lot of traffic to your florist site, but not so much anymore. You use Google Search Console to find out where people who search for fresh flowers are going (and do your own search as well), and notice that there are a ton of online stores that sell and ship fresh flowers now! They're killing you in organic search results. -You think about what your ideal customers would be looking for from you, and they want more than fresh flowers. They want "beautiful mixed floral bridal bouquets", "elegant floral centerpieces for a dinner party", or "pet-friendly flower arrangements". What do you do, besides designating those keywords behind the scenes on your site? -Add pages that showcase each of these three, including the keywords in the content. That content could also talk in detail about why certain flowers are best suited for each one, along with a link to the local and regional magazine site pages where your work was part of a bigger story (a wedding blog, party planner's website, veterinary clinic's "Helpful Household Tips" page feature your generous pet-friendly arrangement donation to help spread the word about plants that are toxic to house pets. All you asked for in exchange was a link to your florist site on the page
Compares performance of different ads for the same keywords
-Example: Your catering service bids on "Vegetarian Catering Menu" and creates an ad with two different landing pages using the pictures below. Ad 1's landing page is meant to show the visitor the variety of vegetarian options available. Ad 2's landing page is meant to show the visitor a complete vegetarian meal. The conversion goal for both is for visitors to request a quote using the online form on the landing page. -Analytics can tell you which campaign is bringing you the most HQT, or the most visitors who request a quote. -Ad 2 outperforms Ad 1. It may be because the landing page picture shows the visitor that it's possible to entertain a vegetarian audience with your help, while Ad 1 overwhelms the visitor with a lot of menu options that don't really do together.
Helpful uses of spreadsheets:
-Filter data to determine audience/customer characteristics10 -Alphabetically, numerically, or whether they meet some criteria (e.g., if they purchased more than $50 worth of products; if they're between 18-25) -Calculate metrics like average purchase price, number of male customers, median age of customers, count of repeat site visitors11 -Present data through graphs & charts
Analytics provides detailed information that can help you segment your traffic by visitor characteristics
-Geography - country, state, city -Device used - desktop, tablet, mobile -Visit times - month/day/time of day - Example: Your catering site gets the highest amount of HQT from visitors within 10 miles from your store, from desktop, on Thursday afternoons. However, you have high LQT traffic that comes from mobile users on Sunday evenings. Thinking that people often use Sunday evenings to prepare their schedules, and aren't on their work desktops, you might review your landing page to make sure it's optimized for mobile screens. Or, you could offer a scheduling option for mobile visitors to reserve a time for a phone call to discuss your menu items and get a quote. If your catering services can be performed for people outside of the 10-mile radius around you, consider including a zip-code lookup for visitors to learn where your services are available
Now, dig deeper by finding out which search keywords are (and aren't) bringing HQT to your site
-Google Analytics integrates data from Google Search Console to let you know what your visitors typed in the bar that brought you to them...and them to you -Remember that search engines search content throughout your website to find relevant results for searchers -You may be surprised that people find you (and a specific page of your site) using keywords you hadn't expected them to -Example: Lake Tiak-O'Khata's About Us Page 9 could get visitors who searched for Civil War landmarks (I checked; we didn't, but suppose we did). If it made sense for business strategy, LTOK could find places throughout the site to highlight its historical appeal.
How does each look now compared to 1 month/6 months/1 year ago?
-If HQT has increased, and LQT has decreased, you're moving in the right direction, but you can still enhance your results -Any other combination (e.g., HQT stays same/LQT increases; both increase; both decrease), you're probably missing something
Understand the importance of defining your goals to gain actionable, meaningful insights from you analytics data
-It's up to you to decide how you should define a conversion. Think about your goals and where you are in your business journey. There are times when the following metrics can be important: -For example, if you're a musician trying to increase you audience, and you're not selling anything as of yet, time spent on your site could be very actionable and meaningful. -However, if you're paying to promote your music through advertising, think about what you would consider to be a minimum amount of time spent on your website that converts someone from a visitor to a lead. -You also might define a conversion as the visitor's sharing your music or clicking on a link to your YouTube channel. -The number & topics of pages viewed might also be actionable and meaningful for you, if you have one page providing links to YouTube videos of your songs, another page that tells your audience about you, and another that lists your upcoming performances in the area
3 categories of quantitative analytics data
-Metrics - measurable data about user activity -Time spent on blog post -Number of unique visitors -Dimensions - characteristics of users that help describe them -Geographic location -Device type (e.g., mobile or desktop) -Conversions - data on how many users completed a desired action (defined by marketer) -Signing up for an email newsletter -Making a purchase
Provide examples of actionable, meaningful insights
-Page views and exit page - Compare the number of pages and what pages those are with the actual page that a visitor left your site from - If visitors tend to visit a high number of certain pages and exit consistently from one particular page, you can map out the process to see if you're making it too difficult for them complete their desired tasks. Example: Mark sees a social media ad offering a discount promotional code - SPRINGSALE - that will apply a 20% discount on shoe purchases over $200. He clicks on the ad, visits your shoe display page, and sees some styles he likes. He wants to see details on 5 different pairs individually because he wants to compare and choose 2. Each time he goes to a specific shoe display page, he clicks on the "back to shopping" link once he's done. But the "back to shopping" link takes him all the way back to your full product displays, which includes shoes and clothing. Mark becomes frustrated having to navigate from "All Products" > "Shoes"> "Tennis Shoes" each time he wants to look at each pair. He leaves the site after looking at 3 pairs
Identify the steps in the analytics data cycle
-Plan - identify the goals of your digital marketing efforts -Account creation -Newsletter signups -Purchases -Content Sharing -Do - Begin collecting the relevant data that reflects your objectives -Track your efforts and website performance -Check - Review the data and investigate findings -Take a look at your performance to determine what changes can be made -Act - Make changes and test your hypothesis -collect data again to see if your changes have made a positive difference in performance
Discuss the benefits of using spreadsheets to get meaningful information from analytics data
-Spreadsheet programs (Microsoft Excel/Apple Numbers) let you organize data and use automated functions to gain useful information
Identify the best charts and graphs for presenting data effectively
-Tables -Display smaller data sets to make comparisons (refer to my comparison in the Analytics, Part 2 lecture) -pie charts - display the composition of something in an easy-to-digest way12 -Bar charts - great for comparing related items in a group13 -Line graphs - great for understanding how data changes over time -Heat map - best for representing web performance by area
Find out which search engine your traffic uses to find you
-Understanding where HQT traffic comes from might lead you to invest in display advertising on high-source search engines to retarget leads.
Analytics tells you if our getting the most out of your bid for a keyword
-When you pay $1.50 per click, your ad is at the top of the search ads results, and your conversion rate (number of people who request a quote) is 4%. -When you pay $1.25 per click, your ad is the third listing in the search ads results, and your conversion rate is 3.8%. Depending on how much your total campaign cost was (number of clicks X $ paid per click), you may decide to lower your max bid, given the small difference in the conversation rates.
organic
-from a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or Bing (no private search engines like Duck Duck Go will be included, unless you used advanced settings)
cost per conversion
-total cost of an ad campaign/# of conversions (goal of ad campaign) -Gives you a return-on-investment number based on how effective an ad campaign was in getting visitors to perform a desirable behavior on your site (defined by you as a conversion in analytics) -Example: A candy company ecommerce site runs a search ad campaign (auction-style where they bid for exposure and pay per click) offering a 20% discount on 1 dozen chocolate covered cherries. The company defined 2 conversion goals: purchase and sign up for customer insider program by creating an account. The customer insiders receive biweekly emails with special offers and new product announcements. After a week of running the campaign, the cost is $100. A total of 40 people clicked on the ad; 15 of them purchased; 5 signed up for the customer insider program by creating an account. -Cost per conversion-purchase: 100/15 = $6.67 -Cost per conversion-customer insider: 100/5 = $20 -There is no absolute cost-per-conversion that tells you whether you're doing well. But there are industry averages you can compare to. Additionally, compare it to the number of conversions you get from unpaid digital efforts (SEO & social media postings). If you're getting more conversions from the latter, you might consider lowering your ad bids and focusing more on increasing your unpaid efforts.
Identify categories and types of analytics data
2 types of data -Quantitative- anything that can be numerically measured -Pulled from tools like Google Analytics -Qualitative - any descriptive information you can't put a number to -Opinions about a new product -Sentiment and language people use when talking about a brand -Gathered from directly asking for reviews/survey completion or monitoring content on social media and other sites -Both quantitative and qualitative data can be useful, individually and combined -E.g., you may find that people who say negative things about your brand tend to be younger/older, female/male, and are on a particular social media site
Convert:
: Do visitors click on certain products/sign up for emails, or do they bounce?
Delight:
Are first-time customer posting negative reviews/ratings about your products?
Delight:
Do customers come back for repeat purchases and/or share their love for you on social media?
Close:
Do leads complete purchases immediately, or after your retargeting effort?
Find out what devices your traffic is using
For example, if most people find you through mobile, but you notice that your purchasing customers are desktop users, you'll probably want to find out why mobile users bounce or don't end up converting
Identify analytics tools for enhancing your SEM strat
Google Analytics integrates Google Ads capabilities to provide lots of information about your SEM campaigns.