Learning About Web Analytics: Part I

If you're a true marketer or a hard-core blogger (or both) you have to be into web analytics. Ok, you don't but you should and I have found some good resources.

Bloggers for the most part write because they want to be heard and your analytics justify the time that you sit at your keyboard (for the most part although my wife still needs convincing and web stats, well they just don't do it).

You may like to monitor your site traffic to see which keywords and referrers are bringing traffic to your blog or who is on your blog right now (hey - I see that you're reading this and I thank you from the bottom of my keyboard). It's also cool to see which countries are reading your blog. I wrote a post about free feed icons and I was receiving traffic from all over the world and was featured on many Asian sites - it was quite interesting but I couldn't understand the comments on those blogs. I also had a pleasant surprise last week when I found out that Brian Carrol over at Start With a Lead was linking to my blog. This caused a bit of a traffic spike and I thought my blog was broken. In this way, my blog is similar to the thinking process that an e-marketer goes through on a daily basis (or should be going through!!) : "What actions that I take will drive traffic to my site and increase conversions." Examining and understanding web analytics is key to this.

As a blogger, one of my goals is help others in marketing (specifically B2B marketing) better understand the e-marketing landscape. A very good newsletter that I subscribe to is the ROI Revolution News that is created by Google to promote its services - specifically Google Analytics. The format of this e-newsletter is interesting as instead of pushing people from an email to a regular web page, it takes people to the ROI Revolution blog. I think you will be seeing more and more of this type of format as blogs maximize the SEO effectiveness of your content (I wrote about this previously). And here's a saying that you should adhere to: If Google is doing it, it's worth trying.

I'm new to Web Analytics, Where do I start?

There are many different places to begin. With web analytics (just like SEO), it's not enough to understand the terminology. You need to jump in with two feet. If you just want to get your feet wet though , you may want to start by subscribing to ROI Revolution News. What I like are some of "Analytics Basics" articles that provide overviews to some of the key areas of web analytics that you need to understand.

For example, some marketers may be worried that their web stats are skewed because of a recent Jupiter report article that says that 58% of their users delete their cookies. This can affect historical data that you may be tracking on a certain person. The article explains the difference between first party and third party cookies as it's mostly third party and not first party cookies that users are deleting. The article of course plugs Google Analytics as it uses only first party cookies.

Google also offers free tutorials on how to use Google Analytics. What I recommend you do is to start up a blog perhaps through blogger and sign up for the tutorial. In this way, you can test out what you learn from the tutorial. One of the keys that you will learn as you get into web analytics is testing is crucial. What offers, content and/or keywords are driving content to your site? Google Analytics is also free so it's definitely worth having a look at. In the real world analytics testing is like testing out different methods to prevent your new puppy from messing up your new carpet. Eventually you will hit pay dirt but things may get a bit messy on the way there.

At the moment, I'm in the process of moving so you may not hear from me for a little while but I plan to write "Learning About Web Analytics: Part II" in which I want to focus on some key metrics that you should be keeping track of on your site. I've just finished reading a book called "3G Marketing" and found some interesting information that I'll share.

In the meantime, please let me know other resources on web analytics that you have found helpful. I've heard that Web Analytics Demystified: A Marketer's Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business is also a good start.

Until next time,

Chad H.

PS - For web analytics, one of the most important concepts is to understand that a point in time is irrelevant (i.e. number of pages on a particular day). What is crucial are the trends. Are your site visitors going up over time or going down? Why is that? Is it becuase your packing up all of your stuff and moving and don't have time to write? :)

Tags: Google Analytics, e-newsletters, ROI Revolution News, web stats, web analytics for beginners, 3rd party cookies

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Does Your Business do Podcasts? It Should

I'll admit that I don't regularly download podcasts via an RSS feed but I do listen to them the odd time. It looks like I'm not the only one. eMarketer.com reports that in August of 2006, 17 million people had listened to a podcast which is 70% more then the number of people who downloaded a podcast from April 2006. Holy crap batman, it's time to get your recording devices out! But, before you do that you need a podcasting strategy.

Podcast Strategy: It's Time to get one

One of my favourite podcasting sites is by Brian Caroll on the topic of B2B Lead Generation. Yes, his topics focus around his book and his consulting services but he provides amazing content using engaging interviews as part of his podcast. It really works and I come away from the podcast with some better insight into the sales and marketing process. If you have plans to start using podcasts, have a goal in mind as to what you want to achieve. Here are some ideas:

• Create useful content to reinforce image as industry expert. This is sometimes referred to as thought leadership.
• Drive website traffic. Like blogs, podcasts can help you in the search rankings if the content provided contains relevant keywords.
• Educate potential buyers in the sales pipeline or existing customers on new offerings
• Generate new leads via a co-registration process. In this case, the podcast could involve interviews from multiple people representing different companies

There are many other high level goals that you may use podcasts for. Let me know if I've missed any.

"I Need Podcasts Like I Need a Hole in my Head"

I hear the Mr. Busy Marketer saying "OK, we already have those goals and we are achieving them through our existing initiatives. We already have a significant amount of content on our site. What more do we need?" This is typically coming from someone in marketing who has just enough time to complete their existing marketing initiatives let alone this new podcast schmodcast stuff. "What's the point?" is a typical response.

Well if you're into online marketing and you're down with web 2.0. you know that producing new content that is engaging and entertaining is critical to generating increased web traffic and conversions. Podcasts allow you to provide content that is easier to digest for a busy executive who doesn't have time to read a full case study, in a creative format that allows you to generate a more personal experience and all at a relatively low cost.

Think of it as starting a conversation with your customers or prospects. If you allow comments (which you bloody well should) then your listeners can respond and continue the conversation you started. In addition, you don't need a fancy-pants flash developer to engage your audience - you can create the podcast yourself. Take some Tylenol, grab a cup of something that is highly caffeinated and get your marketing team in a room to start brainstorming about what type of content you will be 'casting about.

What do we Podcast About?

If you're team can't come up with any ideas, here are a few to get them thinking:

• Interview a few of your customers regarding a specific challenge that they faced and how your service/product helped them overcome this. Let your customers do the product plug. What you're creating is a living and breathing case study that is much more enjoyable then reading marketing-speak. For your next case study, consider doing both a written and oral format. If you can't do an interview, consider just having someone record an oral version of it. Have you heard of books on tape? Do a case study on tape! Why not do this for a white paper as well. This was suggested recently by MarketingSherpa.
• Interview a few people in your company regarding a new product that was developed. Besides the obvious announcement and description of a new feature , this type of podcast serves a couple of purposes. Because this podcast gets published on a live website, you're giving one of your team members some recognition for helping to develop a new product. If you're a developer, you typically get zero recognition outside of your department. This type of podcast can create some pride and well needed moral. Who better then to evangelize a new product then someone who actually helped build it (well, this can depend on their communication skills but you know what I mean). Prospects and clients also get some insight into the quality and expertise of the people that are working at your company. It may give them further incentive to work with you. If you didn't realize it, this podcast idea was like a press release but one that makes your company come alive in the minds of your customers and prospects.
• Create testimonial podcasts. If you go to a typical business website, you have a client testimonial section. Instead of having written quotes, why not record sound bites and create a podcast. Nothing sells a message like an actual voice rather then just a written quote. You could also do a conversation type of a format where you're asking your clients questions.
• Transform your existing webcasts. Here's a potentially easy one. If you have done some webcasts already that don't require that the person have access to the power point slides, turn this into a podcast. Why would you do this? If you're doing a real podcast in which you have an RSS feed, new content increases your web traffic. Some companies post an audio file on their site and call it a Podcast. Remember, it's nota true podcast unless it's accessible via RSS.

The first thing you may want to do is ask your team which podcasts they like and why. This gives you an ideas to who is doing their homework on the latest marketing and/or industry trends. You can then ask them to forward on their favourite feed or podcast to the group so that everyone can have a listen. There's also plenty of experts out there who can provide you with podcasts they like (for example, have a look at Pete Lerma's article on ClickZ).

Here's the bottom line: Get you're thinking caps on and think of ways that you can exploit this new format before your competitors do.

Before you go, let me know if there are any podcast feeds that you recommend and why. In addition, are there other ways that you have used podcasts effectively?

Chad H.

PS - Yes, I myself have yet to create a podcast but who knows what will happen in 2007.

Tags: lead generation, creating podcasts, podcast rss feeds, interviews, web 2.0., B2B podcasting, business blogs

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IBM Allows you to Chat With a Sales Representative

If you've been on IBM's site lately, you may have noticed a new feature. OK, you'll probably notice many new features it's Big Blue for goodness sake, they've patented the meaning of life! :)

The feature I'm most interested in is a new little Chat icon on the side of the page. You can see it here. What better way then to interact with potential clients then to allow them to speak with you without having to pick up the phone.

I Hate the Phone - That's Why I'm in IT

Besides those that despise Alexander Graham Bell's (he's Canadian, eh) invention and think the telephone was "so 18th century" and SMS is where it's at, there are other great uses for an online Chat feature. Picture this - you're an IT Systems Architect and you need to buy a new blade server today. The problem is that you're invited to a global conference call with other architects from around the world and attendance is mandatory. How can you use this time productively? If you answered "listen to what's going on in the meeting" you are 200% incorrect. Typically, no one cares what you have to say. Why not multitask to get your real work done and find out more information about the IBM blade server that you had your eye on. With chat, you will be able to get in touch with a Representative right away and still pretend to listen in on the call.

Chat and Customer Support - Better then getting a "Please leave a message"

Here's another scenario - you call customer support from your favourite software vendor and either no one is there or your put on hold for eternity. To avoid all this "fun", you could use online chat to ask for assistance right away. For even more enjoyment, why not call, email and use chat all at the same time? See who responds more quickly and accurately.

Using Chat for Lead Generation

When I clicked on IBM's chat button, I was told that no one was online. Besides having your web visitors initiate the chat session, what if you're sales reps were the ones that started the chatting (hey, it doesn't take much)? You see someone looking at your products, why not start a chat with them? At the very least you can ask for an email address so you can send them some personalized information. What better way to get opt-in email addresses? Perhaps point them to a new resource on your site or to a blog article. The possibilities with chat are endless for B2B lead generation. Hey, if you've invested a ton of resources on building a great website, you have an amazing inside sales team that are just waiting for the phone to ring and a ton of traffic that you helped generate from email and paid search, why not add an additional tool that is relatively inexpensive that will increase conversations and maximize your marketing investments. It's companies like IBM that see this vision and are using this technology to their advantage. You go Blue!

What do you think? Have you ever participated in online chat? What if this technology was added to blogs? Would it be called "Blat" or "Chog"?

Chad H.

Tags: IBM, online chat, lead generation, blade servers, opt-in email, blat, chog

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HP Gets it Right With Their "Change Artists" Lead Generation Campaign

Arguably the whole concept of comments on a blog make blogs authentic and entertaining. On many blogs, a web visitor may find a post with some rich interaction between the original author and some commenters. Typically the item that is being discussed is one that both the author and commenter are passionate about. The new visitor can either be satisfied with just reading the interaction or even add a comment themselves.

How can businesses capture the excitement of blogs?

I was really inspired when I saw a new campaign by HP called "Stories of the Real World: CEOs, CIOs, and change". This consists of a landing page in which a real CEO and another VP from Nestle discussing their challenges and how they solved them. Obviously they will indirectly discuss how HP helped solve their business challenges but what better way to do this then to tell a story via a video conversation with executives just like the target audience that they are going after. This is simply brilliant.

For Nestle, this gives its CEO and VP a little PR as well as making them human while enhancing HP's image immensely with a testimonial that doesn't seem contrived. The excitement of watching an interaction in an area of interest just like on blogs makes this extremely exciting.

Another cool thing is that HP uses the brand "Change Artists" and doesn't overtly advertise. In addition, the conversation doesn't focus on HP. You hear about a real story as to how they made change. This included setting up meetings, who setup the meeting, the feeling at the meeting and even what was happening at lunch. Chris Johnson the Deputy Executive VP even asked his team if they wanted his job - how real is that?

HP goes further - they include related content, a case study and podcast for busy executives who can't watch the whole video and even have a refer a friend function to promote a viral effect.

How can HP make this "Change Artists" concept even better?

This is an easy answer - place these videos on a blog. I'm sitting here watching this great conversation (I personally liked the story about the Chilean Navy) and I'm saying "Hey, I want in on this conversation too!". While they do take questions from "audience members" when the video is shot, this doesn't seem very real. There is no better way to continue the conversation then with blogs. Imagine placing this on a blog (even for a limited time) and allowing people to respond. Just like there is a Q/A following a webinar, blogs can act in a similar way in this situation. Perhaps they could have a scheduled launch date for these videos so people could be the first to watch and comment on the video and only have a limited time to add comments? Putting a time constraint works with selling products, it will definitely work with people accessing information that is informative and entertaining (I kick myself when I don't read each of the MarketingSherpa articles before they expire).

Anyways, great concept HP - keep it up! I would much rather hear a CEO talk about a real life situation then hearing them spew out a list of benefits of their products.

Have you seen any other great B2B lead generation campaigns that really stood out for you?

Chad H

PS - I'm reading Seth Godin's' "All Marketers Are Liars" which discuses how important authentic stories are in marketing.

Tags: HP, Change Artists, nestle, business blogs, video blogs, the excitement of blogs, marketing with stories, Seth Godin

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Free Online Marketing Tools for Marketers

Larry Chase at Web Digest for Marketers is an amazing source for marketers looking for tools to assist in email marketing, search marketing, surveys - you name it! Here are a few of my favourite tools from his website:

Paid Search and Organic Search

• Spyfu: Can be used to find out how much a search term is currently going for, how popular a search term is and who (which of your competitors) is currently using the search term and how they are using it. You can also see the copy of the ads they are using and what the organic search results are.
  
  In addition, you can see the additional paid search terms that competitors purchased and how much they are spending on paid search. This stuff is gold! Go there right now and type in the name of your company and see what happens. The data can be a bit out of date so don't use it to look for terms that others may not have purchased just yet. It would be interesting to see how the results compare to Wordtracker
• URL Trends: Use URL Trends to find out how many sites are linked to your site as well as how many sites you link to. You can also see your page rank and how many search results you produce on the major search engines. This is great if you want to keep benchmarks on how your SEO efforts are going.
• Marketleap Link Popularity Check: Compare your site traffic to your competitors. You can also look at benchmark graphs and compare your site to your competition.
• SearchSpell Typo Search: Want to know if people search for your company or your products but make spelling errors? Use this tool and it will let you know what are the top typos for the keywords you enter.
• Keyword Suggestion Tool: Find out how many times each of the keywords & phrases you enter has been searched on so far this month in the major search engines. It allows you to compare a few different search phrases.
• Yahoo Keyword Selector Tool: Tells you how many times a keyword was clicked on. This is not as accurate as Wordtracker as it focuses on paid search only and not organic search
  
• Web Site Keyword Density Tool: This tool tells you if certain keywords appear enough or too little on your website. This seo tool also returns the ratio of your keywords to your body count.
• SE-Tools: Type a web page address and SE-Inspector will check its title, meta tags, text, url, link popularity and keyword density. SE-Spider will allow you to see how the search engine spiders crawl your pages and follow your links.
• Yahoo CPC ROI tool: Calculate the ROI from your cost per clicks vs. sales generated.
• Keyword Difficulty Check: Determine if it's worth it to go after certain keywords. Tool will tell you how difficult it is to get into the top ranked sites for keyword(s).
• Lycos Top 50: Get an idea of which keywords are hot
• Google Keyword Tool: Makes recommendations on additional popular keywords. Shows your competition and search volume. I would trust Wordtracker over this tool.
• Google Conversion Tracking: This is a newer feature that allows you to track your conversion rate (sales or form submissions) for all of your paid search campaigns.
  

RSS Feeds

• Feed Advisor: If you're looking for web feeds to add to your website, newsletter blog or just for your personal research, consider checking this site out. It will tell you how many people have subscribed to the RSS feed. This type of social ranking provides the RSS feed with added credibility and helps you navigate amongst the millions of feeds out there.
  

Survey Tools

• Sample Size Calculator: Tells you how many survey respondents you need to generate a meaningful results.
  
• Question Pro: Allows you to create two free surveys for 100 respondents. This is an ASP model survey tool that has some excellent features. It's advanced tool also integrates with Salesforce.com
• SurveyMonkey.com: SurveyMonkey also provides a free basic survey tool which is limited to a total of 10 questions and 100 responses per survey. You can purchase a more advanced tool on a per month basis.
  

Email Marketing Tools

• Content Checker: This free tool will check the content of your email and provide feedback on how you can reduce the chances that it will hit your receipients spam box. They've incorporated SpamAssassin's™ rules.
• EzineCheck: This tool also provides feedback on any issues with your email that will increase the chances that it will be labled as spam.
  

General Marketing Tools

• Give to Get Marketing Calculators: Includes calculators for small businesses to calculate ROI, marketing results, and website visitor value.
• Calculate marketing ROI with the Marketing Lead Calculator: Calculate marketing ROI with this interactive spreadsheet by B2B sales and marketing expert Mac McIntosh. It is designed to help B2B sales and marketing professionals determine the realistic number of marketing touches, inquiries and qualified sales leads needed in order to meet your company's sales revenue objectives.
• Web Page Analyzer: Track how quickly your page loads and provides recommendations on improving page performance.
• ZoomInfo: Looking for contact information for a company? Before spending xxx number of dollars, try using ZoomInfo. It's a service that has collected data on people from information gathered on the internet
  

I hope you enjoyed these. Thanks again to Larry Chase and I encourage everyone to sign up for his newsletter. Let me know if I've missed any great links that should be added.

Chad H.

Tags: paid search, ppc, internet marketing, seo, search engine optimization, search tools, free marketing tools, organic search, ROI marketing tools, Adwords

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Email Delveriability Tip of the Day: Authentication

Not sure what authentication is when it comes to email marketing and how it relates to email deliverability? Have you seen those Visa commercials where a call centre verifies these heads that come through a computer screen? It's similar to this. How do you prove to your email recipients that the email that you're sending is actually from you? Through email authentication.

Check out this article on ClickZ by Stefan Pollard called "Marketers Still Unclear on Authentication" for a better understanding of this concept. Stefan defines authentication as the following:

Authentication helps you, as an e-mail sender, prove you are who you claim to be and that you have the right to send e-mail from your IP address. It's designed to block fraudulent e-mail that forges its identity or hijacks someone else's server or IP address to send e-mail.

You should ensure that your email provider has taken all of the necessary precautions to ensure that the email you send to your customers and prospects follows the authentication best practices.

Chad H.

Tags: email marketing, email deliverability, email authentication

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Have you Thanked Your Customers Today?

Are you saying to yourself "it's another day and I have so much to do with so little time?". I think we're all saying that so don't worry. Here are two words that you can say that are easy and will go a long way "Thank you!".

We sometimes forget that our customers are the lifeblood of any organization. Al DiGuido is his ClickZ article "The Power of "Thank You" explains that in today's world of technology, there is no reason that you shouldn't be thanking your customers. He sees email as the optimal technology to do this by using transactional emails. If someone buys your product or downloads some information from your website, send them a thank you to show that you value them as a customer or a potential customer.

You can take this concept further. Your sales team should always thank prospect for their time in a follow up email to a prospect meeting. Your customer service team should end each conversation with a "Thanks for calling and feel free to call again with any concern that you have". You can even have them send a quick follow up email with a thanks and here's how to get a hold of me. Why not add their picture to the email and really make it personal? Some companies add their sales rep's pictures to their email, why not customer service?

For all of us bloggers it's imperative that we thank all of those people out there that have either left a comment on your blog or linked to your blog. I regularly try and go out and seek those bloggers that have linked to my blog to see what they are writing about and leave a comment.

Give thanks to those that have helped make you what you are and don't ever forget them.

Chad H.

PS - I'm going to go thank my wife for allowing me to buy a 40' plasma.
PPS - Thanks for reading this blog and all of your comments
PPPS - Thanks www.caror.org for that great image above

Tags: clickz, email marketing, transactional emails, customer appreciation, Thanking your wife

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