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Which Internet Marketing KPIs Should Every Business Monitor?

Playing parlor games, like pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey can be fun, but trying to track internet marketing performance based on analytic KPIs without clear examination could lead to errors. Gaining a solid perspective on internet marketing performance isn’t a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game.

Let’s start with the basics: the usual of internet marketing performance metrics that businesses should monitor, and the associated KPIs.

Measuring Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is a combination of online presence, visibility, and authority, and as such is an integral facet of internet marketing and branding. If you want to track how your brand is doing, you can start with these KPI:

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New visits – The most obvious metric to keep an eye on when it comes to brand awareness is the number of new visits. The week-to-week or month-to-month increase or decrease of new visits is an established indicator of how effective your search engine optimization practices are, among other things. Sometimes, some many businesses get stuck on new visits, giving it more importance than is due.

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5 Dos and Don’ts of Effective A/B Testing

Ready to perform some A/B testing on your website?

The concept may be simple, but A/B testing’s role in inbound marketing is so significant that you should always know what you’re doing. Here’s a cheat sheet of “dos and don’ts” pointers:

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Do: Start with the Goals, then Test

This might seem like trivial common sense, but it’s in fact a frequent mistake that derails the entire effort. Without direction, your A/B testing is meaningless; and your goals dictate your direction.

Don’t: Set Goals Not Aligned to Current Needs

Always align testing goals with inbound marketing improvement. Even if you have set goals, but they’re not aligned to desired improvements in your inbound marketing, then the results of your A/B testing efforts won’t be useful until such time as it can be employed to improve one facet of your marketing or design.
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Testing 1, 2, 3: the forgotten key to your Internet marketing success

Testing is the hidden key to your Internet marketing success

I’ve worked on a lot of online marketing initiatives over the past decade or so, working with everyone from 1-person law firms, to big marketing agencies, to some of Canada’s largest corporations. And many have been very successful. But even the most successful campaigns could have been better.

Here’s where I see marketers and agencies missing a huge opportunity for better results from their Internet marketing.

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Do you know what your visitors see when they come to your site?

New predictive models bring advanced online marketing research within reach of small and mid-sized businesses

Eye Tracking Heat Map Example

Do you know what your site visitors see when they come to your site?

Unless you’re a marketer with a Fortune 500 company with an Internet marketing research budget of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for user experience research, chances are the answer is “no.”

Without a huge budget for research, small and mid-sized businesses used to have to rely largely on educated guesswork and, potentially, months’ worth of A/B testing in the real world to optimize their Web site’s ability to generate leads.

But now Fruition can help you start to optimize your site pages, with evidence-based research, before your site has even launched. And at a price – this is the game-changing part – that small and mid-sized businesses can afford.

Here’s the deal.

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5 ways to make your online marketing really work

Internet marketing word cloud box package

Last time, I wrote about how, as owner of an online marketing company, I get to see first hand how many agencies – and many a digital agency to boot – fail with their campaigns because they fail to understand how the Internet has changed the buying process. (You can read the article here).

Now I want to talk about a new model of marketing that wins by connecting with customers’ new ways of choosing and buying.

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Performance Pricing and Building True Client Partnerships

I recently came across a post on DigiDay.com, which is fast becoming one of my new favourite blogs, called Agencies Must Embrace Performance Pricing.

The gist? Old-school agencies, be warned: your clients want you to put your money where your mouth is.

The article argued that the shift to performance pricing is inevitable.

Business leaders and their marketing heads expect more from their marketing dollars. They want partners who truly understand marketing’s responsibility beyond just impressions. Those who can build a brand by directly building revenue and market-share are the agencies that will endure in the 21st century. [Read more…]

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3 Reasons to Relax About Your New Klout Score

Angry Twitter post about new Klout scoring algorithm

Klout, the online tool that tracks your social media activity and claims to rank your influence there, retooled the way they calculate those rankings last week. The change resulted in a reported thousands of Klout users seeing major drops in their Klout scores. And that has many of the site’s users freaking out.

The concern is misplaced, though. Here’s why.

Read the rest at Technorati.com

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Measuring SEO — why you should think beyond your search ranking

Search-Engine-Marketing

Most businesses that I talk to about Search Engine Optimization have only one objective and one success metric in mind when they’re planning SEO campaigns — they want to be in the top X results for relevant searches.

On the face of it, that makes sense. The top results for the top searches have the most visibility, so they should drive the best Return on Investment, right?

Sometimes.

Maybe.

But not always.

Here’s a story to illustrate what I mean.

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Is Your Website Converting Leads into Gold?

Approx. reading time: 2-3 min

Fact: Every business must generate qualified leads that, ultimately, convert into sales.

I know this because the topic always comes up in conversation with clients. That’s why we’re always improving our ability to help clients generate leads via our online marketing services.

For example, a Google Certified AdWords Professional (on our team) manages the AdWords campaigns we run for clients. We do this, not only because it’s a recognized stamp of approval from Google, but mainly because the individual who is certified is an expert.  She’s an Adwords ninja. When it comes to increasing traffic and click-though rates, she’s one of the best.

Unfortunately, having a Google Adwords ninja on your side is not always enough. The problem is, too many clients want to focus on just the traffic generation side, and overlook the conversion side.

In other words, they aren’t willing to go the extra mile to optimize their website or landing page for lead conversion.

The conversion issue, however, can often be an easy one to solve. In some cases, paying attention to the following areas might be all that is required to increase conversion (in addition to plenty of split A/B testing).

Are you credible?

Everything on your web site must foster rapport, trust, and credibility. Real contact information, real photographs, and FAQs that answer real questions. Small detail matters, even things like hosting your site on your own domain and how frequently you update your site.  People do business with those they like and trust. Include details that make you an interesting and authoritative source, but most important, make sure you come across as credible.

Convincing copy that inspires action

If you want leads that convert into business, it comes down to copywriting. Practically everything you do online comes back to this core skill. Without the ability to convince people to act, you come up short in most online marketing strategies – including Google Adwords campaigns.

Many people know how to write technically, but they don’t have the copywriting skill to generate conversions.  And if you’re missing this one practical skill, nothing else you do online works.  That means you risk ending up on the online marketing merry-go-round, spending thousands on traffic generation and not seeing a single conversion. Without good copywriting, everything’s harder, takes longer, or doesn’t work at all.

Bullet proof your call to action

Make sure you’ve clearly told visitors exactly what to do. On the other hand, are you asking your prospect to make too many choices? Confused people don’t act. You should have at most two or three options to choose from. Also, don’t be afraid to repeat yourself on several or all pages. Prospects often don’t read every word of your website. Find creative ways to restate your call to action and the most important benefits.

Have your own favorite conversion strategy that you didn’t see here? Let me know about it in the comments.

About the Author:

Mitch Fanning is VP of Strategy & Business Development for Fruition Interactive, a professional member of Social Media Club, and founding member of Social Media Club Niagara. He’s spent 10 plus years working with businesses of all sizes, from global brands to some of Canada’s fastest growing Internet companies ranked in the PROFIT 100.  Follow Mitch on his adventures in new media here at [mitchellfanning.com].

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How Do You Create Value?

Anyone who sells anything knows all too well their product or service is (or might be) commoditized, meaning they’re increasing competing on price alone.  To escape commoditization you must be unique in the way you create and deliver value.  You must have an edge over your competition that “protects” the price you can charge for your services.

When you create unique value for someone, you’re able to charge what it’s actually worth without worrying about what your competition is doing.  What tends to be missing, however, from most of these discussions is how one actually goes about creating unique value.

Value Creation Begins with Asking Questions

Before we create unique value for our clients, we first must have a meaningful conversation with them.  During this conversation we ask questions - questions with meaning.  The kinds of questions that have the ability to transform someone’s thinking and how they do business.

What makes us unique are the kinds of questions we ask at the on-set of any relationship.  Nobody can have the same conversation (similar, perhaps, but never the same), because nobody else is, well, us.

Our conversations aren’t canned or boiler-plated.  Our questions educate and inform.  They help us arrive at a set of tangible goals with clear deadlines and a plan to get there.  Our questions come from a combination of direct experience and industry best practices.

Together, all of these questions form the basis for a meaningful conversation that help us create unique value (and results) for a client and differentiate us from the competition.

So, what kinds of questions are you asking?

About the Author:

Mitch Fanning is VP of Strategy & Business Development for Fruition Interactive, a professional member of Social Media Club, and founding member of Social Media Club Niagara. He’s spent 10 plus years working with businesses of all sizes, from global brands to some of Canada’s fastest growing Internet companies ranked in the PROFIT 100.  Follow Mitch on his adventures in new media here at [mitchellfanning.com].

Photo credit: e-magic