Your website is not simply and information providing resource. It can also provide a lot of data that can benefit a company. This post will discuss how to analyse such data and what the data can tell you.
Digital Analytics
Any quantitative or qualitative data that can be derived from a digital medium/digital media which can be analysed can be your digital analytics. The following video will help you to understand the importance of Digital Analytics:
Some of the basic analytics that you can get from your website are as follows:
Website visitor traffic
Locations they visit from
Average time spent
Pages visited
New Vs. Return Visitors
Browser/OS used
Device used
Bounce Rates
These metrics can make you understand the relevance of your content, The most popular pages, responsiveness required, visitor flow, etc... Google Analytics is one of the best and free tools that can be used to analyse such data. You can find training and support resources for Google Analytics by clicking here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/4553001?hl=en
E-mail marketing is generally considered as intrusive and a
push method of getting your message across. However, its success has been
questionable as it is considered as Spamming method which has low results.
However, with proper management and execution an e-mail campaign can be a very
successful pull campaign to generate leads. This post will discuss some of such
Do’s and Don’ts to focus on:
Do’s
First we need a good email Database
to start with. What do we mean by “Good”, a database which is accurate and segmented
according to the requirement. An organization
should collect email addresses with the consent of the email owner and for the
intended purpose (If it is for updating of new product information it needs to
be used specifically for that purpose.)
Design an attractive responsive
(Platform independent) emailer. The design needs to be tested on multiple email
platforms to be sure it would be viewable.
Each emailer should have a link to
display out of the email platform in the case of non-displaying and to
unsubscribe from the database (And active for 30 days) if required and felt
intrusive.
The name of the emailer has to be
shown with the physical mailing address
Use tracking code for your email
campaign to access the success rate of the campaign. You can use free scripts
from Google Analytics
Whenever you have in-links (URLS
to specific content of your website or landing pages) use Google URL Builder
to track.
Refine your campaigns based on
success and use A/B Testing to find out the optimal designs
Search
Engine Marketing (SEM) is yet be exploited in Sri Lanka. There are a lot of
companies who talk about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) but the truth is no
one can fool Google. You can optimise as per Google webmaster tools but if you
want a successful lead generation method the best is to focus on SEM ( For
Google use-Google Adwords).
It may sound
simple but it is a process that needs to be well thought through and hence it
is important to spend some time in understanding the concepts and the
tools available. Ex: via Google Adwords account.
Following
are some steps to be followed in order to have a successful SEM Strategy:
Identify your Digital Marketing
Objectives
You need to identify what you want to achieve from your SEM campaign.
Also, the objectives you identify needs to be measurable. Hence, develop SMART
objectives.
Prioritise on what you want
You may have many things you want to achieve but identify the most
important of them and focus on them.
Identify your target audience
Your target audience plays a major role as they will be the receivers of
your products/services. Hence, you need to identify them by Gender, Location,
Age, Interests, etc... This will help in getting better results from the
campaign.
Identify the keywords relevant
to your product/service/brand
It is critical to know what your Target Audience would type on Search
Engines to find your product/service/brand. These are commonly known as
Keywords as they are the words that your target audience will make a mental
relation with your product/service/brand. There is a key word tool Google
Adwords provide which will help in identifying the best keywords to bet on.
Identify the placement sites
Google allows you to select websites, You tube videos, etc.. in order
for you to target the Ad. These are known as Placements and Google calls the
network of such sites as Google Display Networks (GDN). It is always good to
know where you will have to place the Ad as it will help in running an
effective campaign. You may use Google Trends and sites such as Alexa to see
the rankings of webpages.
Create unique/catchy,
text/image/video which you would use as the Ad content
No matter what strategy you create
it is important to have attractive Ad content. In order to get your clicks your
Target Audience needs to get attracted or generate interest on your content.
Create Call-for Action.
Call for
action can be to download product details, register on a form, request for information/call, etc..
8.Launch
If you have followed the above steps then you are ready to launch your
campaign.
9.Monitor
There is no point of any campaign if
it is not monitored and measured. You need to make sure whether the intended
results were achieved. Measure the clicks achieved, the enquiries made, the
visits to the target location, etc... If you do notice a gap, go back to the
above steps and change certain parameters. The best way to learn is by tweaking
and meddling around.
All
the best with your campaigns and please leave any comments and I will try my
best to respond!
Following
are some good links which will give you more insights on the topic:
"Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably."
-The official academic definition from CIM (The Chartered Institute of Marketing).
It is important to understand the consumer
buying decision process before understanding what marketing is supposed to do. This process has the following steps:
Need Identification
Information Search
Evaluation of Alternatives
Purchase Decision
Post-purchase Behavior
In every stage of the decision process a marketer has to
establish the brand/product. The
communication model of AIDA is important.
Attention
Interest
Desire
Action
Today’s customer can be influenced not only via Above the
Line (ATL) Marketing and Below the Line (BTL) Marketing but what is known as
Through the Line (TTL) marketing which brings an interactive form of
communication. The online world plays a big role in this aspect.
Websites, Social Media, Search Engines, e-mails and online advertising
play a big role in helping in the consumer buying process whether it is by
creating a need or to support any stage of evaluation/research resulting in a
call to action.
Need for Accountability
Marketers are in general having been seen at the other extreme
end of accountants as they are known to be big spenders and cost centers.
Whilst in some companies Sales & Marketing is handled by the same team, it
may require to be two independent teams working together to achieve a common
goal. Marketers are known to hate
numbers and to answer questions related to accountability specially as they
tend to spend in areas where Return on Investment (ROI) cannot be determined.
Traditional advertising
will mostly talk of Reach, Circulation, Mind share, Viewership, Listenership,
etc… which is mostly based on representative research questioning the accuracy
of the measures. This ambiguity and the return on advertising which is linked
with sales cannot be always attributed towards marketing effort as external
factors such as economy, business environment, competitor action, fiscal
policy, etc…
However, with wafer thin margins and high costs in marketing
activities, many companies have put restrictions and measures on Marketing
expenses. Continuous struggle of efficiency and effectiveness has not only put pressure
on marketers but also, created a need for monitoring tools.
Marketing Automation
The common question asked from Marketers is "How do you justify your Advertising spend?" This question can be now answered by Marketing Automation.
In essence Marketing Automation provides the required process to influence the Consumer Buying Decision Process for creating Attention, Interest, Desire & Action (AIDA).
A blog in simple form is derived from the words Web+Log. It is a website or few web pages one may use to log personal information or to share information/knowledge. A Blog is generally frequently updated and will be popular if it reaches an audience of interest.
Why Blog?
For several reasons. It can be a substitute for a diary if you want to maintain it personally. It can be used to log you daily activities which you want to maintain for record purpose. Or it can be used to share your knowledge/experience. Several reasons for maintaining a blog is as follows:
To share information/knowledge/experience
To be updated, as the more you write/type the more you will research and learn
If you are in the academia or in a senior position of career it might be a requirement and/or a community service
If you have a knack for writing and maybe you want to publish your work
Finally, maybe to monetize as a good blog can be a good revenue source.
You can read more about why you should maintain a blog through the following articles:
WordPress is an Open Source online publishing platform that is preferred by millions. Like Blogger, WordPress has hundreds of themes which can be selected and provides good SEO and mobile friendly features. However, Free features are limited and a plan is required for some of the features.
Weebly is a very user friendly platform for creating a website/blog. It has nice drag and drop features with many themes and features. Following are some features:
Wix too has some nice features that makes it a very attractive Web platform that can be used to create a Blog. Following are features highlighted by Wix:
The stunning templates, easy blog editor, social & promotional tools, video & photo galleries, etc.. makes it attractive. However, it too has Wix Branding for the Free service and Custom domains only in the paid versions.
Based on above comparisons following would be the comparison of each Blogging platform:
Features
Blogger
Wordpress
Wix
Weebly
Easy of signing up
1 Step
6 steps
1 Step
1 Step
User friendliness
5
4
5
5
SEO
5, Uses Google platform
4
4
4
Custom Domains (URLs)
Allowed Free
Not available for Free version
Not available for Free version
Not available for Free version
Google Analytics
FREE
Only through Business Plan
Only through a Plan
Only through a Plan
Rank
1
4
2
3
*Some of the cells above uses a rating from 1-5 where 5 is the highest and 1 is the lowest. Except in the Rank Column
The highest Rank is on Blogger.com . Whilst the merits of each platform is different one should use the best platform that suits the requirement. Please feel free to share your comments and opinions in the comments column below.
If you have a Gmail/Google Login creating a blog is straight forward. Just visit- Blogger.com login and click on New Blog and you will get a screen as follows:
Just type in a Title a new address mine is sasay.blogspost.com and I have created a custom domain -Yasas.me and linked it to this blog. However, if you want more information check the following video...
This would be a dream to see what people searched on Google through out the year of 2015 and it actually has been put to a video. Hope you will like it?
