3 Ways to Make Your Google Analytics Account Work Harder

Posted by: Neil James // August 10th, 2012

5-Ways-To-Make-Your-Google-Analytics-Account-Work-Harder

3 Ways to Make Your Google Analytics Account Work Harder

Admit it. The very first time you got a look into the Google Analytics data for your organization, you felt a little tingle. All those visitors! Precious data on how they got to your site. Neatly laid out tables showing your website’s most popular pages. It was as close as a marketer can come to replicating the feelings of unwrapping presents as a child on Christmas morning.

But as months went on, the luster of what was thought to be invaluable marketing data began to fade. Visitor counts never seemed to fluctuate. The five most viewed pages of your website never changed from month to month. Sources of traffic rarely changed. Preparing monthly Google Analytics reports now feels like an exercise in redundancy rather than learning.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Like the hammer or the wheel, Google Analytics is one of the most powerful tools ever created. But like any good tool, however, the realization of its potential is reliant upon the skill and knowledge of the wielder.

Fortunately, cultivating the ability to extract deep insights and intelligence from Google Analytics doesn’t require enrolling in night school or attending expensive seminars. Here are three things you can do in Google Analytics to ensure that your website reports are more informative, incisive and actionable!

Track Goals

For most websites, total visits are a decent KPI. If all things are equal, getting 200,000 visits is better than getting 20,000 visits.

The problem is that not all visits are created equal. One visit from a prospect who contacts your B2B organization as a lead beats ten visits from people who glance at your homepage and immediately leave.

Every website has choices and options that represent the accomplishment of real-life business goals. For a hospital, it might be simply views of the page for a service line promoted in a recent direct mail campaign. For an engineering firm, it might be downloads of a newly released white paper.

Goal tracking allows you to specify and track desirable website actions in Google Analytics. By correlating the completion of desired goals with visits to your website, you can more effectively determine the quality of visitors you are drawing. Knowing that a recent campaign caused visitors to increase while goal completions did not move allows you to make better decisions regarding budget expenditures.

Click here for Google’s quick guide for configuring goals in Google Analytics

Always Be Segmenting

As a marketer, you’re employing a variety of channels to drive people to your website: social media, e-mail, search marketing, public relations, traditional advertising. Often times, these tactics are operating at the same time. If a recent campaign causes visits and goal completions to significantly spike, how can you tell which channels were most responsible for success?

The answer can be found through advanced segmentation. By clicking the “Advanced Segments” button at the top of virtually every Google Analytics report, you’ll be able to filter your data and identify trends occurring in any of the following:

* New visitors

* Returning visitors

* Paid search traffic

* Non-paid search traffic

* Mobile traffic

* Tablet traffic

Is the goal completion percentage of visitors who arrive via paid search higher than all other channels? Maybe it’s time to consider doubling the PPC budget! Is the bounce rate (the percentage of traffic that leaves the site immediately upon arrival) for mobile traffic twice as high as any other source? Perhaps it’s time to consider investing in a mobile-friendly website.

You’re not just limited to Google’s default segments. By clicking the “New Custom Segment” button, you can define your own advanced segments! Want to know see how a recent trade show impacted traffic from New York? Create a custom segment that measures visits only from that state. Curious if the browsers that people use impact their likelihood of buying from your e-commerce site? Create advanced segments for Internet Explorer, Firerfox, Google Chrome, and compare the goal completion rates!

By creating advanced segments and skillfully slicing your data, you’ll be better able to unearth trends and insights that might not be visible from the 30,000-foot all-inclusive view of website traffic.

Click here for Google’s guide to Advanced Segments

Look Beyond the Pageview

At its core, Google Analytics data is predicated on pageviews. Stitching together each page viewed by an individual comprises a visit, and it is through analysis of which pages are viewed that we can assemble the profile of a typical website visitor.

Websites today, however, offer significantly more rich and dynamic experiences. Visitors can watch videos, play games, download white papers, contact live chat support, and much, much more. Simply measuring hops from one page to the next only partially constructs the profile of today’s online consumer.

Fear not. Event tracking in Google Analytics allows you to capture the myriad of user interactions comprising the online experience: downloads, mobile ad clicks, Flash elements, AJAX embedded elements, video plays – the list goes on!

Through Event Tracking, Google allows you to define the category, action, label and value of an online user interaction. Marketers wishing to track plays of a newly created customer support video might define the category of this interaction as “video”. Actions could be defined as “play” and “pause”, while label might be defined as “customer support”.

Events can be tracked and analyzed across virtually all Google Analytics reports. Marketers can measure the correlation of events to goal completions. Advanced segments can define which visitors are most and least likely to perform a specific on-site user interaction.

While many marketers will be able to determine which user interactions they would like tracked as events and define classification schema, in most cases, the implementation of Event Tracking on a website itself will need to be carried out by IT or web development teams. Those interested in learning more can read the Google Event Tracking Guide for Developers.

Click here for Google’s overview of Event Tracking

We’d like to hear from you! Do you currently analyze goals, track events and used advanced segments in Google Analytics? How has it helped you? What other techniques do you use to make Google Analytics work harder?

@NeilAndrewJames is certified in Google Analytics and Google Adwords and is the digital strategist for Minneapolis marketing firm, Russell Herder

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Minneapolis Marketing Firm, Russell Herder, Achieves Certified Partner Status with Google AdWords

Posted by: Neil James // April 24th, 2012

Minneapolis Marketing Firm, Russell Herder, Achieves Adwords Certified Status

MINNEAPOLIS - Russell Herder, a Minneapolis marketing firm, is proud to announce that it has earned recognition as a Google Adwords Certified Partner.  Achieving agency-level certification, Russell Herder joins the ranks of only a handful of companies within the Minneapolis market.

To achieve the status of Google AdWords Certified Partner, Russell Herder digital experts successfully passed a rigorous set of search engine marketing exams which covered such topics as keyword research, the AdWords interface, and making the most of other various online marketing and analytical tools that Google provides.

“We are proud to add the accolade of Google Partner Certified to the agency’s credentials and accomplishments,” said Carol Russell, CEO Russell Herder. “Our clients have enjoyed measurable ROI through the delivery of Google AdWords management service for some time and now this certification will allow us to further enhance the successful strategies we’ve developed to achieve the best possible results for our clients.”

Russell Herder’s digital division provides a variety of digital marketing solutions, including pay per click advertising, social media marketing, web analytics, email marketing, search engine optimization and much more. The professional digital marketing experts at Russell Herder provide custom-tailored solutions that focus on helping clients make improvements to grow the profitability of their online marketing efforts.

About Russell Herder

Founded in 1984, Russell Herder provides integrated strategic solutions to regional and national clients. With offices in Minneapolis and Brainerd, Russell Herder develops strategies that link creative, research, advertising, public relations and digital communications into powerful, results-driven platforms. For more information, visit russellherder.com.

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Facebook King of Ad Display Market, But How Long Will That Last?

Posted by: Matthew Bick // March 12th, 2012

$1.73 billion is a pretty nice chunk of change, don’t you think?  Facebook’s display ad revenues hit that mark in 2011 and are expected to keep rising without pause for the next few years.  In fact, Facebook’s display network has grown so much that it actually rakes in more than search and display network titans Google.

Despite Facebook’s current “king of the hill” status, Google is not projected to lie back and cede the throne.  eMarketer recently published its forecasts for the online display ad market through 2014, and their data indicate that Facebook’s revenues could grow by more than $2 billion by 2014.  Currently accounting for 14% of all display ad revenues, the social network is projected to represent 17.1% of the space by 2014. 

However, while Google’s earnings currently represent 13.8% of the 2011 market, eMarketer anticipates Google could grow to represent 21.7% of the 2014 market, earning $4.76 million.  With an estimated $21.91 million in revenues up for grabs in 2014, the display market will certainly remain ultra competitive for the foreseeable future.

@MatthewBick

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Will Google’s Personalized Search Results Last?

Posted by: Matthew Bick // February 27th, 2012

Mixed feelings reigned in the wake of Google’s personalized search announcement in January.  Recent research from eMarketer shows that users might be even more hesitant than first thought about the new features.  In a recent study, only 15.5% of respondents indicated absolute interest in personalized search results. 

Google’s new features rely heavily on Google + to provide the social-based results, but eMarketer found that only 19.3% of respondents regularly used the utility.  19.5% indicated “I don’t know what Google+ is” in survey results.  eMarkter theorizes, “Google faces an uphill battle as it works to connect its social content to search results, including determining how users prefer to connect the two. ”

Twitter and Facebook have taken public exception to Google’s efforts, paving the way for more intrigue in the coming months.  eMarketer quotes a statement from Twitter: “As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results [for world events and breaking news]. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone.”  Either way, the situation will bear close watch from marketers and normal Googlers alike.

@MatthewBick

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Google Set To Begin Integrating Google+ Content in Search Results with “Search plus Your World”

Posted by: Matthew Bick // January 25th, 2012

Google has finally announced that they will soon begin displaying content from its Google+ social network in its results.  Google+ has been slow to this point to gain mainstream acceptance, but the massive search engine may be angling toward convincing more brands to take advantage of their pages.

According to an official blog post, the search engine will allow users to conduct social network searches in addition to regular web searches Using the example of choosing a vacation destination, Google states that, “You can of course search the web, but what if you want to learn from the experiences your friends have had on their vacations? Just as in real life, your friends’ experiences are often so much more meaningful to you than impersonal content on the web.”

New features include Google+ posts, photos, and profiles appearing in searches when a user is signed in with their Google ID.   Google goes on to describe that their initiatives are designed to create a broad spectrum of user personalization, from none to results finely tailored to the individual.

However, many are quick to point out that Google may have brought an anti-trust storm upon itself.  Although Google claims that Google+ is, in fact, not a social network, it would be difficult to persuade the majority of internet users otherwise.  Google using one product to promote another in this manner may be the start to a dramatic fight in Washington.  In fact, just hours after the announcement, Twitter’s general consul  Tweeted his misgivings about the news.

@MatthewBick

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Why We Won’t See the Next Facebook or Twitter Anytime Soon

Posted by: Neil James // December 12th, 2011

One of the most common questions we field given our experience with social media is “so what’s the next Facebook? What’s going to replace Twitter?” At face value, it’s a logical question. As the Roman Empire and Myspace have proven, just because an institution is omnipresent today doesn’t guarantee its existence tomorrow.

But here’s something to consider. A new study by Pew Internet found that two-thirds of online adults use social media platforms – no huge surprise. The primary consideration in their adoption of these tools, however, is connecting with family members and friends. According to Pew, two-thirds of social media users cite staying in touch with friends and family members as the primary reason for using social media.

These facts pose problems for upstarts (Google+) looking to dethrone Facebook and Twitter as king of the social networks. In order to succeed, competing social media sites can’t just attract users, they need to attract entire social networks.

@NeilAndrewJames

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The One Thing Marketers Need to Know About the New Facebook – The New Facebook For Marketers – Part 3

Posted by: Neil James // October 25th, 2011

The One Thing Marketers Need to Know About the New Facebook - The New Facebook For Marketers - Part 4

If you are versed in the principles of search marketing, SEO and PPC, you are at an advantage as a marketer on Facebook.

It’s an important point, arguably the one thing you need to know about the new Facebook as a marketer,  so let’s repeat it.

If you are versed in the principles of search marketing, SEO and PPC, you are at an advantage as a marketer on Facebook.

How?

More than ever, Facebook’s changes have been influenced by the strategic principles that propelled Google to undisputed search dominance.

For those of you old enough to remember, Google holds the rare distinction of being both their industry’s dominant player and last-to-market. Before Google, the search landscape was ruled by indefatigable titans such as Altavista, Lycos, Infoseek, and Yahoo!

Even in those glory days (the 90s) marketers recognized the advantages of having a high ranking for relevant search queries. Savvy webmasters gleefully stuffed their websites with keywords, gaming the system. Yahoo! sold off top rankings to the highest bidder.

Enter Google. While known among techies but less so by marketers, Google’s ascent into dominance was built on their commitment to relevance and the user experience.

What does a user want when they enter a search query? Relevant results.

What type of effect did the gaming and paid placement have on search engines? They produced less relevant results for their users.

Google was the first of the major search engines to recognize this fact and built a system predicated on relevance. If Google’s search engine does not return relevant results, it has failed in its mission. So successful though was Google at delivering relevant results that their very name came to represent the category of online search.

With superior relevance and user experience, Google attracted more eyeballs than any other search property. Advertisers looking to take advantage of these eyeballs were greeted by one of the industry’s most innovative and effective marketing models: pay-per-click marketing.

The rest was history.

What does this have to do with Facebook?

SEO and PPC

The new Facebook will provide visibility to brands similarly to how SEO and PPC produces visibility for brands in search engines.

Consider a search query for the phrase “Caribbean cruises.” Google will return what it believes to be the most relevant results in its organic listings, highlighted below in red.

SEO - The One Thing Marketers Need to Know About the New Facebook - The New Facebook For Marketers - Part 4

SEO: Organic Listings - Google

Attempts to improve visibility in these non-paid, organic listings is known as search engine optimization or SEO. The art of SEO is a complex one, and involves, more or less, work to convince Google that your website is worthy of higher organic rankings. SEO is accomplished by attracting links from credible sites, thorough tagging of site elements and properly sculpted architecture enhancing site visibility.

While the benefits of SEO are immense, the process is slow and arduous. Enter, pay-per-click marketing or PPC.

PPC - The One Thing Marketers Need to Know About the New Facebook - The New Facebook For Marketers - Part 4

PPC: Paid Listings

In the above image, the areas of a search engine results paid highlighted in red are purchased through Google. The art of PPC is complex as well. Ever committed to the user experience, Google does not simply allow any advertiser to buy visibility for a given keyword. Advertisers must (generally) be relevant to the keyword they choose to advertise under. PPC allows advertisers to obtain visibility as a media expenditure rather than as a function of natural relevance to a specific keyword.

Facebook Visibility

Prior to September 2011, the bulk of Facebook updates were delivered to users in chronological order. If my friend made a post at 3:00 pm, a brand I was following made a post at 2:00 pm, and another friend I was following created an event at 1:00 pm, I would see those updates in that order from top to bottom: the 3:00 pm post is most visible at the top followed by 2:00 pm branded update and and the 1:00 pm event creation.

As discussed in part one, with the introduction of Top Stories, Recent Stories and the Ticker, this is no longer the case.

Now, Top Stories, the most visible part of the Facebook user experience, is controlled by a Facebook algorithm. Based on the posts you’ve liked, commented on and interacted with in the past, Facebook figures out automatically which posts are most likely to be relevant to you and gives them prominent visibility.

Sound familiar?

Top Story - The One Thing Marketers Need to Know About the New Facebook – The New Facebook For Marketers

Top Story: Facebook Organic Visibility

In essence, brands that fail to produce relevant content, which in the context of Facebook, is content that is liked, commented upon, shared and interacted with, will be punished with reduced visibility.

Such, the analogue to SEO. The art of SEO is creating a website that, by improving relevance, promotes organic visibility in the results pages of search engine. Creating visibility for your brand’s posts on Facebook, formerly a product of chronology, will now be a function of relevance, which for Facebook, is measured by user engagement.

Sponsored Stories

Not everybody can be a winner at the organic game. What if you just want to buy visibility?

Enter Facebook Sponsored Stories.

Sponsored Stories - The One Thing Marketers Need to Know About the New Facebook - The New Facebook For Marketers - Part 4

Sponsored Stories: Facebook Paid Visibility

Let’s say somebody likes your brand’s Facebook page. This action is likely not something that will be shared or commented on, and as such, be less likely to be visible in the new Facebook construct.

By paying for Sponsored Stories, Facebook allows you to increase the visibility of this new “like”. When purchased by the advertiser, the friends of the person who liked your brand will see this “like” as a prominent sponsored story in the right hand column of the page.

“Likes” are not the only action that can have their visibility powered up by Sponsored Stories. Perhaps more importantly, if your brand issues a post about an upcoming sale, purchasing Sponsored Stories will ensure that more of your fans see this post. Specific likes or comments on posts, app uses and check-ins also can be promoted via Sponsored Stories.

Just as with Google PPC marketing and Facebook’s current ad platform, Sponsored Stories can be tightly targeted. If you’re promoting an extreme energy drink, you can create parameters that ensure your sponsored story only shows to males ages 18-34 in your targeted geographies.

Sponsored Stories are purchased on a cost-per-click or cost-per-impression basis. It should be noted that if you choose cost-per-click, which most advertisers will, Facebook is not in the business of giving you free advertising. If your sponsored story doesn’t generate a click, Facebook will stop promoting your message.

So just as Google did, Facebook is leveraging the sheer amount of eyeballs it owns to charge brands for prominent visibility.

Should You Buy Sponsored Stories?

Like any good answer to a generically asked marketing question, it depends.

With any luck, you’ve been very diligent about paying attention to the metrics of your Facebook page generated through Facebook Insights. If you haven’t, that’s okay.

If your brand posts according to an editorial calendar or on a schedule, keep a careful eye on the news feeds impressions through Facebook Insights, particularly if you have a KPI whose effectiveness depends on this metric. If you notice a decline in the number of people viewing your posts, you need to consider:

  1. Rework your posts to drive more engagement – more shares, comments and likes.
  2. Consider purchasing sponsored stories to drive up impressions, and track the subsequent results

The New Facebook for Marketers by Russell Herder

Introduction: The New Facebook for Marketers

Part 1: Facebook Ticker and How the New News Feed Works

Part 2: Getting the Most Out of Facebook Insights

Part 3: The One Thing That Marketers Need to Know About the New Facebook

Part 4: What is Facebook Timeline?

@NeilAndrewJames

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Is Your Brand Ready For A Google+ Page?

Posted by: Ben Schmidt // July 18th, 2011

Is Your Brand Ready For A Google+ Page

At the moment Google+ beta is ‘over capacity.’ This means only a select few companies are working with Google in their closed beta program. The rest of us will have to wait. Fortunately, we can count on bloggers like Eran Gefan to tell us what we need to know, minus the wait.

Writing for AdAge Digital, Gefan’s “Here Come Google+ Pages for Brands: What You Need to Know,“ notes that although Facebook and Google may be 97% the same, that remaining 3% will radically change the way people interact with brands when Google+ flips the sign in the window to “OPEN.”

@BenWritten

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Web Content – Dont Make Google Hulk Out On You

Posted by: Ben Schmidt // March 18th, 2011

Web Content - Dont Make Google Hulk Out On You

Google has announced that it will be cracking down on content farms. In doing so, pages that feature better (and original) content will now be ranked higher in Google search results. Most of us don’t write for content farms (right?), but since this news casts a fresh spotlight on the value of quality web content, it’s a good excuse to think about the quality of content the rest of us are bringing to the table. Because we wouldn’t want to make Google angry. We wouldn’t like Google when it’s angry.

SEO Springboard’s 10 Steps To Writing Better Web Content is a great place to begin. Right from the get-go, we have a very good reminder – let’s not forget we’re writing content to be read…by another human being.

Yes, SEO is important, but keep in mind it’s only one of two masters we have to serve if we’re aiming for truly outstanding work. The other is your audience. Be they C-level executives or stay-at-home dads, decision makers or risk takers, techies or technophobes, you need to know who you’re trying to talk to.

With your audience identified you can distill it down to a simple profile. Now you’ve got something to write to, increasing the chances that “Bob” or “Beatrice” won’t just see your content; they’ll be affected by it. And that’s the goal right?

It should be.

Unless you’re a content farmer.

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Google, Facebook and Apple Make the Web Go Round

Posted by: Mark Palony // January 7th, 2011

All the talk of the FCC moving toward implementing regulations governing net neutrality has people wondering who really owns the Web?

While that question is more likely to be settled by the courts rather than actual agreement, Adweek provides the answer to another; who’s driving business on the Web? The answer – Google, Facebook and Apple – isevident to many, and Adweek put together a handy reference guide showing just a few of the companies that owe their existence to one or more of the three behemoths.

One cannot step back and look at the size of the economy (Adweek calls it a micro-economy, but that might be an understatement) that has exploded around Google, Facebook and Apple without feeling awed by the ever-expanding view. Like all growth markets, however, there is bound to be a slow-down at some point, but when that is appears to still be far into the future.

@MarkPalony

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