A recent study by the Lenskold Group, a marketing ROI and measurement firm, called “2010 Lead Generation Marketing ROI Study,” has come out with some new statistics on how marketers measure their lead generation efforts.

The study, which surveyed B2B marketers, includes some interesting findings on marketers’ best practices for measuring their lead generation efforts. Some of the study’s findings were that:

• Marketers who felt they had sufficient insight to estimate the potential profit from lead generation stated that 6 in 10 expect a profit increase greater than 10% while using effective lead generation tactics. However, almost 44% of marketers feel that they lack insight into the potential profit of lead generation.
• 58% of marketers believe that their highest potential for profit lies in nurturing leads which have stalled during the buying process. 
• Lead quantity continues to be the favored measurement over lead quality with B2B marketers.
• The top measurements for lead quantity and quality are as follows:

1. Lead quantity based on the number of leads generated – 67%
2. Lead quality based on sales conversion rates – 53%
3. Lead quality based on customer revenue generated from initial sale – 38%
4. Lead quality based on sales acceptance – 33%
5. Lead quality based on total customer revenue over time – 32%

Clearly the question of whether quantity or quality of leads is more important is still a struggle for many B2B marketers. While there are many more metrics used to measure quality, the top metric to judge marketing teams’ success is still based on lead quantity.

Of course the best lead generation practice is to develop a strategy that balances lead quality and quantity. The bottom line is that while marketing may want a large, steady flow of leads, sales wants fewer, quality leads that generate revenue and become customers. So how can you determine when developing your lead generation strategies the fine line between lead quantity and quality? Testing. With every lead generation tactic you implement from website form fills, to webinars, you need to test your initiatives to try and find a happy medium between the quantity and quality of leads they produce.

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all choice as to whether your team should be measuring quality or quantity of your leads. Your choice for what to measure, or which direction you want your lead generation strategy to take should be based on your industry, your audience, and many other factors. Understanding your company’s business strategy and how your leads align with this will help you choose the most effective path for your lead generation to take.

As a follow up to yesterday’s post on what long tail keywords are and why they’re important,  today’s post will give you some of our tips on how you can choose your long tail keywords and how you can leverage them to help your overall web marketing strategy.

How can you choose which long tail keywords to target?

There are many great free tools that you can use to help you choose your keywords, but today we’ll focus on Google’s Keyword Tool because it’s easy to use and feature-rich.

The best way to get started is to open up the keyword tool and start by either searching the few words that you have in mind or you can enter the URL of your website to start bringing up relevant keyword suggestions.

You can choose your advanced options to help target the results that will appear and you can choose either show results for, “Ideas containing my search terms” or “All keyword ideas” to get some other keyword phrases that may be worth considering.

Analyze the results and you’ll be able to see the long tail in action. Some keywords will be searched for much more frequently and because of this will be highly competitive. On the other hand, there are certainly some keywords that are less competitive (you’ll have a better chance of ranking) that are still relevant for your business that still get a fair amount of traffic and there are some that get much too little traffic to bother targeting. Choose your keywords carefully based on these results and you’re on your way to getting started with successful long tail keywords.



How can you leverage your chosen long tail keywords?

There are lots of ways that long tail keywords can be used to help your overall web marketing strategy, but today we’re just going to focus on two important ones.

1. Create lots of content and syndicate it. The more content you create and the wider the variety of the topics, the better your website will rank in search engines. Having a wide range of content helps you improve your chances for ranking for the long tail keywords contained in that content. The second part of this point is to make sure that you’re pushing your content through the many web marketing channels available to you. The more available your content is, the more likely it is to rank well for long tail keywords.
2. Optimize your site for lots of keywords. You don’t have to optimize your website for just a few keywords. While some keywords should have more relevance on your website and in your copy than others, making sure that your website is optimized for long tail keywords can be an important way to drive more traffic to your website. A good way to do this is to use your website’s SEO strategy for your popular keywords and then to use channels like PPC and social media (some social media results now show up in popular search engines) to drive targeted traffic to your website through long tail keywords.

Image by Tureturillo on Flickr.

We’ve written many posts in the past on SEO and how you can effectively target keywords to drive organic traffic to your website. However there is an important aspect to keyword research that is often forgotten, long tail keywords, and today's post will help to explain the ways marketers can use long tail keywords to improve their targeted website traffic.

What are long tail keywords?

The term long tail was first used by Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, who originally used it as a way to describe how people search for products on big ecommerce websites. This theory was that popular items on these websites (the head on the graph below) get a high volume of traffic while the niche products (the tail on the graph below) get low volume.

Anderson said that as websites develop more products (and by association, grow their long tail) the proportion business from the many small, niche markets that don’t individually sell well will help rival that popular retain channels. The image below is from Chris’ blog, “The Long Tail.”



Essentially, the left hand side of the graph shows the keywords that people search for a lot. The graph shows that there aren’t that many of these keywords and then the level of organic search drops dramatically. The word “long tail” actually refers to the way that the popularity of search terms slowly fades (creating the long, thin “tail” in the graph). The graph may not show this accurately, but what it is meant to depict is that even though the popular keywords get more traffic, the high volume of keywords in the long tail often makes up for their lower search popularity and, often, account for much more traffic overall than the popular search terms.

So why is long tail so important?

While the majority of B2B organizations are working to rank well for the popular keywords on the left (with only a select few succeeding) if you understand the long tail, and leverage its possibilities driving traffic to your site, you have the potential to gain much more traffic (and subsequently conversions) than websites  that focus solely on the popular keywords.  If you let other people compete for the popular keywords, you can focus on ranking highly in search engines for the less popular ones.
Make sure you come back to read part II of this post, which will focus on how you can choose your long tail keywords and how you can leverage them to improve your overall web marketing strategy.

Marketing automation tools can help your marketing department in many different ways, but one of the biggest is with their demand generation. Automating things like lead scoring and drip marketing can help your marketers to create demand and effectively nurture leads, while at the same time being able to focus their energy on other revenue-generating tasks.

How can a marketing automation platform help your demand generation?

1. Capture more qualified leads through your website. Marketing automation tools allow you to optimize (and usually test) your landing pages and forms.  This helps you to increase your website conversion rates and capture more leads.
2. Drip Email Marketing. Automating your lead nurturing activities can help you to ensure that no leads are forgotten. Using drip email campaigns can help you stay front of mind with customers and push them through the buying cycle. 
3. Lead Scoring. Tools that can automatically score and qualify leads, makes it easier for your sales team to be more effective. By spending their time only following up on leads which have reached a certain qualifying threshold, sales reduces their time spent interacting with leads not ready to purchase. 
4. Minimize Lead Leakage. Most marketing automation tools should integrated with a CRM system to ensure that all new leads are automatically entered for sales to follow up on, rather than depending on sales and marketing to coordinate on entering leads into the CRM system. 
5. Better allocation of marketing time and resources. Rather than having your marketing team spending time doing these tasks by hand, using multiple technologies, you can automate these processes, allowing marketing to spend their time on other revenue-generating tasks that require their attention.

Image by kevinzhengli on Flickr.

In a world where thousands of people are calling themselves Social Media Gurus, Ninjas, Jedis, and Rockstars it's hard not to get overwhelmed.  Social media has very much become a part of daily life like eating and sleeping. 

Once upon a time life was as simple as Web 1.0, which was the time of the "download" where people were simply processing information on the web.  Then Web 2.0 brought on the age of the "upload" where everyday people were uploading massive amounts of content to the internet to share.  Well now we are in Web 3.0 which is very much time of "overload!"

As a web marketer it's not enough to just throw content out into the social media world.  Your audience is in "overload" and the only content that will stand out is what is relevant to them.  That being said you should follow these simple steps to ensure your social media voice is heard:

1. Study - Study your market to see where they are on the web
2. Listen - Listen to the conversations your market is having
3. Publish - Publish content that will grab their attention
4. Engage - Discover ways to engage them in their conversations
5. Influence - Influence what they decide to talk about
6. Activate - Activate them to start becoming advocates for your organization

It’s not always easy to come up with consistently compelling, interesting blog content, especially when you don’t feel particularly motivated or inspired. It’s very easy for a blogger (especially one who writes frequently) to become disenchanted with blogging on a regular basis and to just get burnt out. If you know what we’re talking about, then you’re in luck! Today we’ve put together a post with 13 different types of blog content you can turn to when your inspiration starts to lag.

So, without further ado, on with the list!  

1. FAQ. For those of you who don’t know, FAQ stands for frequently asked questions, and these are a great source of interesting and relevant blog content. Every business has questions that their customers ask them on a regular basis, taking those questions and turning them into targeted blog posts is easy, and an excellent way to educate your readers.
2. Links. Here are Marqui, we do a weekly post (on Fridays for those of you aren’t aware) where we post a collection of links to content that we think our readers will find educational, interesting and informative.
3. Multi-media. Using an assortment of different types of media in your posts is a good way to keep your audience engaged, and a smart way to get inspired. When we’re stuck for ideas on blog posts, we head over to YouTube or Slideshare, and search presentations on our favorite topics and as of yet, we’ve never been unable to find a relevant, interesting video to analyze and share with our readers.  
4. Lists. A list post (like the one you’re reading right now) is relatively easy to put together and tends to be a popular choice for readers. These types of posts collect data on certain topics and collect it in one location making it easier for your readers to consume. “Top 10” style lists are particularly effective. 
5. Guest authors. Having guest bloggers write posts for you blog helps take the pressure off you, and keeps your blog content diverse. A one-dimensional blog is never as effective as a well-rounded one. 
6. Social media. There are a lot of tools out there you can use to monitor popular topics in social media. A good example of this is searching current trending topics on Twitter. Using tools like this to write about what’s popular at the moment can help you write posts that are timely and appeal to a large audience.
7. Analytics-based. If you find yourself in a blog post writing-rut, inspiration can certainly come from checking out your web analytics. Looking to see what posts were popular in the past can help you to come up with content for posts that you know your readers want to read! 
8. Industry news. The news items that are going on in your industry are an excellent source of ideas for blog posts. Writing about what’s going on in your industry keeps your blog current and shows that you’re up-to-date on industry-related information! 
9. A series. Now this still requires you to come up with an original idea in the first place (usually) but  once you come up with one a series can keep your in blog topics for quite a while, and, if your readers like the topic, they will most likely return to see how the series progresses. 
10. “How To.” These posts are the best way to inform your readers about industry best-practices and educate your readers on using different tools and business strategies for your industry and they are also hugely popular. 
11. Case Studies. Now we don’t recommend tooting your own horn on a regular basis, that can be boring (not to mention irrelevant for readers) but, posting about success stories that show what you can do for a customer and how a customer can be successful with your product is informative, when done in the right way. Make sure that you write with your readers in mind and highlight your customer’s pain points and their achievements, rather than your involvement in the process.

Image by JeffMcneill on Flickr

Are you sabotaging your website without realizing it? There are some big (and unfortunately, common) website mistakes that we see that we would like to help make you aware of and hopefully eliminate all together!

1. Doing an unnecessary redesign. There are lots of strong reasons to do a redesign, but there are alost many bad ones. Before jumping into a complete overhaul of your website, it’s important to make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons (and because you’re bored with your current site isn’t a good reason). Just because you look at your website everyday certainly doesn’t mean that your visitors do, so it is important to look at your site through the eyes of a first time visitor and see if your site still come up lacking. If you’re trying to decide whether or not to do a website redesign, why not check out our blog post with some good reasons to redesign your website. 
2. Not using web analytics. If your business has a website, then it should also have website analytics in place. If you’re not monitoring the success of your online marketing efforts, then you can’t be sure what’s working and what isn’t, and you’re certainly not giving yourself the best opportunity you can to succeed on the web. If you don’t currently have any web analytics in place we suggest checking out our post on, “Getting Started with Web Analytics," or viewing our recorded webinar, “Web Analytics 101.” 
3. Assuming that as long as it’s there, it will be seen. This is a big mistake that we see quite often. Just because you have a corporate website built definitely doesn’t mean that you will actually get traffic to arrive at it unless you’re actively promoting it. How can you do that? First things first, implement a solid SEO strategy and start getting involved in blogging (if you’re not already) and other social media. These certainly aren’t the only ways to increase traffic to your website, but they are some of the quickest fixes. If you want to learn more about increasing your website’s traffic, you might like to attend our upcoming webinar, “How to Turn Your Website into a Demand Generation Machine,” on September 9th.

Image by Screenpunk on Flickr.

As social media continues to grow in popularity, it also continues to erode email’s use, despite the fact that it has been proven again and again that email is a reliable communication channel for engaging with prospects, leads and customers. Many people believe that social media and email can and should work together (including us) but  instead, many people are moving away from email altogether in favor of a completely social media-based approach.

We think that this is probably because in the face of the hype surrounding social media, email tends to look like an outdated option, and instead businesses are trying to connect with their audience using the newest, popular medium.

Don’t forget about email!

Email is still the biggest and simplest way for marketers to connect with their target audience. It’s also the base of many social media sites, can you think of a single social media account you signed up for that didn’t require you to have an active email address where you receive email updates and company information? I can’t.

Why is email so great?

1. It’s permission based (or at least it should be). If your email list grows organically, through subscriptions and opt-ins then they have given you explicit permission to email them with relevant information. This means that they have REQUESTED to receive emails from you and a connection is already established. If someone has asked to receive communications from you then they are more likely to open, click-through and read your emails which can lead to higher ROI.
2. It’s targeted. Because email is subscriber driven, it’s easier for you to send out targeted, relevant communications based on your subscribers’ preferences, rather than a general message that will hopefully appeal to a large number of your target audience, as with social media. 
3. It’s personalized. While social media communications reach a large number of subscribers quickly, it doesn’t have the same, personalized and segmented abilities of email which is one of the major highlights of using email communications, especially for lead nurturing. 
4. It’s easy. Sending out permission-based, segmented, personalized emails is relatively easy, especially when you’re using an email campaigns software product designed for non-technical users.

Now, we’re not saying you should ignore social media either. What we’re saying is that it’s important that you don’t lose track of the importance of email as a marketing tactic in the face of the popularity and low barrier of entry of social media. In fact, when you integrate you social media and email marketing you can actually produce better ROI than either of those tactics alone.

Image by Xurble on Flickr

Most businesses either already are, or are thinking about, taking part in social media. They've heard that social media can have an enormous impact on their lead nurturing and relationship building and that it can help them with their targeted customer acquisition, and all of these things are true, but they're not, unfortunately, a given. Many companies jump into social media without really understanding what they should be doing and as a result they often make the 9 mistakes we've listed below without realizing it. If your company is making one or many of the mistakes on this list, you may be reducing the effectiveness of your social media efforts.

1. You didn’t do your background research! It is essential when your deciding whether or not to get involved in social media that you understand several things about your clients and target audience including:
   
    - If/where they interact with social media
    - What they are looking for
    - Whether or not this information works to promote your overall business strategy.
   
   If you cannot successful determine the answers to any of these questions you probably shouldn’t be getting involved in social media in the first place.
2. You don’t define what you want to measure. Before you can develop a relevant social media strategy, you need to establish your businesses’ social media KPIs. KPI stands for key performance indicator and these are essential aspects of any marketing initiative. KPIs could be made up of benchmark data, targets or time frames.
3. You didn’t set aside the appropriate resources. Social media takes a lot of time and resources. If you can’t or won’t set aside the time, people, content developers necessary for a relevant web presence, then you’re most likely not ready to jump into the social media sphere. 
4. You don’t offer valuable content. Your social media followers are monitoring your updates because they feel like you have something to offer them. A company that does nothing but spout organization-specific content won’t garner a relevant following or build relationships. Your followers are looking for content that educates and informs them on a wide variety of industry data. Make sure you give it to them! 
5. Your profiles aren’t optimized. Did you know that you can optimize your social media profiles for SEO? If not, you can get some tips from our article on marketing your business using LinkedIn.
6. You don’t integrate your social media with your other marketing tactics. Social media alone isn’t enough. To achieve strong social media results and ROI you need to integrate your campaigns with your other marketing initiatives like email, content development and webinars to cross-promote and share your though-leadership content. 
7. You expected instant results.  Social media most likely won’t provide you with immediate ROI. The power of social media is to help you create long term, relevant relationships with prospects and customers to help you nurture leads into sales and start conversations. 
8. You’re not monitoring your social media presence.  You can’t just set up a social media account and leave it, regardless of how many “great” tools you found to automate your updates. One of the most important aspects of a worthwhile social media presence is to monitor what’s being said about you so you can respond to comments and concerns and develop real, personal relationships. 
9. You’re talking at your followers not with your followers.  You probably think we’ve already mentioned this a few times, and that’s because it is a key aspect of every part of your social media strategy. Social media is not a broadcasting platform, it is meant for starting conversations. So go get talking!

Image by Czar on Flickr

This week's post has an infographic on Google, a video from TED on marketing an phsyics from a Google Marketing Director and a presentation on how to avoid boring PowerPoint presentations.

This infographic, on Google, shows the search engine giant's taste for acquisition and it's pretty shocking (we read about it on Mashable although it was originally found on Scores.org). Take a look, it might surprise you how many (and what types) of acquisitions that Google has made over the last decade. The infographic tracks the timeline of Google's acquisitions in 3 different areas, Building Revenue Streams, Cutting Competition and "A Little of Both."

A few weeks ago we posted a quick video from TED on one of our Web Marketing Digest posts and it went over really well, so today we have another one for you. This video is of Dan Cobley, a marketing director for Google, discussing, "what physics taught [him] about marketing."

How many of you have experience a slow, "death by PowerPoint?" We're sure that you all have, and this presentation aptly entitled, "Steal This Presentation!" from Jesse Desjardins, is a great place to get some inspiration for your next PowerPoint (and avoid inadvertently killing your audience).

Image by Adam Bindslev on Flickr.

As Mashable mentioned a few days ago, Facebook has partnered with a social marketing firm, Context Optional, to build a facebook page dedicated to university resources for students and parents. As the page says in it’s about section,
 
“We started this Page to share our tips on how to best use Facebook as a student on campus.

This Page is dedicated to helping students establish an interactive presence on Facebook by engaging with their campus community.

We also want to hear from you, so please use this Page as a forum to discuss the unique ways in which you are using Facebook as a University student.”



The page already has almost 12,000 likes and a growing following of users that are commenting, and posting items to the page’s wall.

On the page students are able to find out about events, campus communities, deals for students and parents, and they are also able to post university related content.
According to Facebook, the page was developed to help get more student-created content up on the website and help give tips on how other students can and are using Facebook within their university community.

We think this is a great initiative by Facebook and there have already been some helpful information posted about everything from statistics on the amount of sleep students need for optimal performance to examples of how universities (like Kansas State) are using Facebook in the classroom. Check out the new page and let us know what you think!

As more organizations take part in social media, it has lead to a revolution in the way that companies interact with their customers. Social media has opened up new avenues through which businesses can interact with their customers before there is an issue, rather than leaving customer service until an issue arises. Now, customer service is about anticipating customer needs in advance, and improving customer retention through real-time, personal experiences.

So, how can you use social media to improve your company’s customer service?

1. Integrate your current customer service and social media strategies. Hopefully your company has both a social media and customer service strategy in place, but have you ever thought about integrating them? Social media is all about making connections and starting conversations with customers and prospects, while customer service is dedicated to having relevant conversations with customers about their questions or concerns. Doesn’t it make sense that these strategies can work together?
2. Be personal. Too much of customer service now is automated or impersonal. Social media allows you to inject some humanity into your customer service, letting your customers see the personalities behind your company and it lets them get to know the people that will help solve their problems. 
3. Listen for actionable insights. One of the biggest advantages social media has for customer service is that it allows companies to listen to how their customers feel about their brand. This can help custom relationship representatives to understand in advance, where a problem may occur and help to mitigate the results as well as letting them get a better idea of areas where the company can improve in its dealings with its customers. By listening to your customers consistently you can help to nip many issues in the bud. 
4. Real-time reactions. Social media allows customer success teams to interact with customers in real-time, helping them address their problems or concerns faster than ever before.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for incorporating your social media and customer service strategies. However, if some of these tips have resonated with you, then it can definitely help to improve your overall customer service as well as your customer retention levels.

Last week Google introduced their newest search update, Google Instant and since then there has been a lot of talk in the blogosphere about what effects this will have on web marketing.

While instant search isn’t a new concept, because of Google’s enormous popularity and usage this change is getting a lot of attention. Essentially what Google Instant does, is it reduces the amount of time it takes you to search for your queries, by providing you with search results as you type.

According to Google, “[Their] key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.”

This “technical insight” led them to believe that by providing search results as the user types it in, rather than waiting for them to finish their query, means that the user will be able to use Google’s predictions to reach what they’re looking for faster.

The real benefit of this over some other search engines is that if you’re logged into your Google account, then the results are personalized and you will be receiving faster, individualized search results.

Some further facts from Google state that:

• The typical searcher (on Google) took more than 9 seconds to enter a search term, and many times searches took up to 30-90 seconds to type. Using Google Instant  can save 2-5 seconds per search.
• If everyone uses Google Instant globally, Google estimates this will save more than 3.5 billion seconds a day. That’s 11 hours saved every second.

If you want to try Google Instant for yourself, you can do it on Google's website.

If you’d like to read some further resources on Google Instant we suggest taking a look at the posts below:

Thoughts on Google Instant (Matt Cutts)
Google Instant Search: The Complete User’s Guide (Search Engine Land)
How Google Instant Changes the SEO Landscape (SEO Book)
Google Instant: Impact on Search Queries (Google Webmaster Central Blog)
Google Instant: 10 Things Marketing Teams Need to Know (Search Engine Watch)

Recently, Karine Joly, a higher education web specialist, wrote an interesting post on her blog, Collegewebeditor.com, recounting the results of a survey she performed last year on the use of web analytics in higher education institutions. We are constantly telling our customers that if they aren’t already using web analytics, they need to get started as quickly as possible, and we think that the results of her study will be very helpful for our higher education readers.

The study found that while web analytics are still, “in their infancy,” within most higher education institutions, they can (and have been proven to) make a big difference for higher education institutions’ interactions on the web and that the reason many institutions are having difficulty implementing web analytics is because of they are more decentralized and have a hard time utilizing one set of best practices.

The study also found that:

• 95% of respondents indicated that web traffic data is tracked at their institution
• 92% of respondents who use web analytics use Google Analytics
• 72% of respondents who use web analytics spend less than 2 hours a week working on it and 70% do not have a dedicated web analyst in their institution

After reading her post on the study, we were shocked (and pleased) to read that 95% of the respondents have web analytics in place in their organization. This was much higher than we anticipated and shows us how far many institutions have come in their attempts at improving their web presences. After reading that wonderful statistic however we were disappointed to read that most of these respondents don’t actually interact with their analytics on a regular basis, and that most don’t have a dedicated web analytics in their institution. 

Especially in large, diverse organizations, frequently and regularly checking and updating your web analytics data is essential for online ROI.  Universities, often being as decentralized and diverse as they are, can benefit hugely from have a dedicated web analytics expert (or even a team) that can help to segment their information down into as many details as possible, and to really keep track of how different areas of universities main website and micro sites are doing. 

If you want to learn more about getting started with web analytics, check out our post on that topic here.

For a more detailed analysis of the survey results you should check out Karine’s post on UniversityBusiness.com

This week’s presentation has a video on top converting websites, a presentation on social media for B2B and an infographic on YouTube.

This quick video from Bryan Eisenberg talks about incorporating your value proposition on your website to help increase your website’s conversion rates.

Social media for b2b companies can be a difficult landscape to navigate. This presentation from Ogilvy gives an excellent overview of how b2b companies can leverage social media in their organizations.

This infographic on YouTube gives some great facts about its history, foundation and demographics.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about whether or not email is becoming less popular (and effective) as a marketing tool with the newer channels like social media being utilized more frequently as part of marketing strategies.

Well a new report by Xobni and Harris Interactive shows that this isn’t the case at all, in fact, we’re still overwhelmed by emails. The report says that of that 2,200 adults surveyed 72% indicated that they check email during their time off and 50% said they check it during their vacation time. Why is this?  Because many of the survey respondents felt that they had to ease their workload during the week; they had guilt, fearing that they were going to miss some relevant or important communication; or they said that they had to because they couldn’t handle the volume of emails they received if they didn’t.

While we strongly advocate taking time to unplug to help refresh your energy these statistics definitely show that email is still going strong as a communications and marketing tool (something we’ve believed for a long time). Real-time marketing tools like social media as well as the increasing use of smartphones means that we are staying  in-touch online and connected more and it doesn’t looks like email marketing isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon!

If you want to read further information, check out Mashable’s article on the topic, “The Truth about E-mail: We Check it All the Time.”

Every B2B marketer wants to increase their website’s conversion rates. No matter what the goal of your website is, to get more subscribers, to capture leads or just to educate and inform, you website has a goal, and getting more visitors to convert helps maximize your website’s ROI.

One of the best ways to ensure that your website is optimized for conversion is to make sure that you’re using web analytics properly so that you know what your visitors are looking for, and how to provide it for them.

Today’s post will discuss the ways in which you can use Google Analytics to segment your traffic data to help you get a better idea of your visitors, where they are coming from, how they are finding you, what they are looking for and their behavior on your website once they arrive. This post will only make reference to Google Analytics’ Advanced Segments, this is the tool we use here at Marqui, and the one we suggest to most of our customers because it is easy to use, has a minimal learning curve and is feature-rich.

Why should you segment your data?

The better (and deeper) your insight into your customers’ behavior, search terms, locations etc, the better your understanding of what they are looking for. The more you understand your target audience the easier it is for you to cater to them and what they’re looking for which should increase your conversion rates.
The reason that web analytics data is so important, is that it can provide you with ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS, but to do this effectively, it needs to be segmented to provide you with the most specific and precise data as possible.

As Google Analytics expert Avinash Kaushik has said after segmenting, “You’ll understand behavior of micro-segments of your website visitors, which in turn will lead you to actionable insights because you are not focusing on a “glob” rather you are focused on a “specific””.

How do you create an advanced segment?

1. Login to your Google Analytics account. Near the top of your dashboard view you will see a drop down menu called “Advanced Segments.” Clicking on the drop down, opens up a new Advanced Segments view where you can choose from a list of “Default Segments,” create a new advanced segment, or manage all of your advanced segments. For today’s post we’re going to be creating new advanced segments.
2. On the left hand side of the advanced segments menu, you can click on the hyperlink for “create a new advanced segment.”This opens up a new view where you can begin to create your segments. 
3. Being by choosing your dimension or metric from the menu on the left hand side of the screen and then drag and drop it into the “dimension or traffic” box and continue adding “or” or “and” statements until you’re happy with your segment. Name the segment and either create it, to be managed later, or create it and immediately apply it to your report.

 






How can you segment traffic data to help you measure and increase conversion rates?

Segment by Location
Depending on your business, you might work for a company that sells specifically to one region or country, or you may just want to get a better understanding of which geographical location (city, country, region etc.) the majority of your traffic comes from for better targeted marketing campaigns. Segmenting your data by location allows you to view your conversion rates by specific locations so you can measure you conversion rates per location, rather than on an overall traffic basis.
To create this segment, choose which location dimension you’d like to segment for (city, region, country/territory, continent, sub-continent region etc), drag and drop the dimension into the reporting area on the right and then name and create the segment.




Segment by Search Keywords
This is one of the most basic and crucial ways to segment your website’s traffic. You can use Google Analytics to segment by specific keywords to monitor the success of individual keywords to measure how well your optimization tactics are working. Like all the other segments, you can use Google’s default keywords or define your own. You set this up the same way as any other advanced segment under custom segments. Drag the keyword dimension into the reporting area on the right, choose “Matches Exactly” from the drop down and then enter your keyword then name and create the segment.




Segment by Content
Your content is important for linkbaiting and SEO, but it is also an important way to get insight into your website conversions. Segmenting by content is a great way to tell how well your content is converting on its own. By segmenting your data to show only visits and visitors that used individual content as entry pages you can tell how well that piece of content converted.

You can create this segment by choosing the “Landing Page” dimension under the “Content” heading, dragging and dropping it into the reporting area then choosing, “Matches Exactly” and picking the content page you’d like to segment for, and, once again, name and create the segment.



Hopefully this post has given you some insight into why advanced segmentation of your Google Analytics data is important, and a few ways on how you can get started segmenting. To once again quote Avinash Kaushik, “analyzing [web analytics] data in aggregate is a crime.”

For a great resource on web analytics, we suggest taking a look at Avinash Kaushik’s Blog, “Occam’s Razor.”

As social media continues to grow and is more frequently used as part of targeted marketing strategies, so does the need for marketers to prove the return on investment (ROI). One of the best ways to determine the ROI of a marketing channel is to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) for it and then to measure them to see how successful your efforts are.

According to a recent study by Aberdeen Group, “Social Media ROI: Customer Engagement, Brand Interactivity, and Revenue,” one of the, “top three actions associated with social media initiatives is to define KPIs relevant to measuring the success of social media initiatives.”

The study, which surveyed marketers between July and August 2010, showed that the top KPIs for measuring social media ROI are:

1.   Quality of customer insights (43%)
2.   Number of repeat visitors (39%)
3.   Quality of new sales leads (36%)
4.   Quantity of new sales leads (31%)
5.   Number of comments (17%)
6.   Frequency of postings (11%)

These results show that social media measurement is becoming a priority for marketers using this channel. What KPIs do you track to determine the ROI of your social media efforts? Do you agree that the quality of your customer insights should be you’re the number one KPI?

This week's post has an infographic on the Dos and Donts of social media for Business, a video presentation on why infographics are so important, and a powerpoint presentation on SEO.

This infographic depicts the dos and donts of social media for business via the LitmanLive Blog.

This presentation from TED, on the beauty and importance of data visualization is given by David McCandless, a journalist who creates data set for things like Facebook and media buzz. He believes that simple diagrams can help people view unseen patterns and connections and that good design is one of the best ways to help people view unseen patterns and connections.

SEO is a very complicated process, but this presentation from Critical Mass, gives a comprehensive overview of the obstacles and opportunities related to SEO and its future.

Okay, so you have a company blog and you’ve been getting some traffic, but not enough to justify your blogging efforts. Well, you’re not the only ones, this is a common problem and it can be solved with a simple fix: proper promotion.

How can you promote your blog to effectively drive more traffic?

1. Use social media. Syndicating your blog’s content through social media is an important way to make sure that your content is getting spread as widely as possible. The more people who have access to your content, the more people that are likely to come back for more in the future.
2. Get some great guest bloggers. This isn’t always the easiest thing to do, but, getting some relevant or influential bloggers in your space to write a post for you and then promote their post on their own blog is one of the best ways to drive relevant traffic to your blog. 
3. Submit your blog’s RSS feed to feed directories. Many people who read blogs through RSS feeds will search for relevant blogs in RSS feed directories. If you submit your RSS feed to as many as you can (some are free, some are paid, and some have fairly strict submission rules) then you increase the pool of people who will find your blog. 
4. Create posts that people want to link to. Ever heard of link baiting? Well, it’s an essential tactic for promoting your blog and driving targeted traffic. Link baiting is when you create content that readers like to link to because it is highly quality, interesting, entertaining, and relevant. If you want to learn more about how you can get more inbound links to your blog read our post on, “7 Types of Blog Content Readers Love to Link To.”
5. Make sure your blog is visible on your website. If you don’t promote your blog on your own website, that is the biggest mistake you can make. Make sure you blog is clearly visible from your homepage and easy to access.

Image by Thomas Hawk on Flickr

Twitter and other social media are often regarded as “marketing” tools and are usually believed to be solely part of marketing’s sphere of influence, and it’s true, marketers are the most common users in many businesses, but that doesn’t mean that Twitter can’t be used effectively by sales teams to promote relevant conversations with leads.

1. Research companies and individuals. Before calling a lead you can do some research on the company website and on their twitter accounts. Doing this kind of research can make it easier for you to find out what employees say about the company, personal preferences, and even the company’s/employees ‘ pain points so you can start your conversation off on a more relevant note by showing that you understand the company’s needs.
2. Keep track of industry news and trends. Being aware of changes in your industry and your lead’s industry is a good way to ensure that you are up-to-date and current when heading into a sales conversation. Showing that you understand what’s going on in their space and that you’re dedicated to staying on top of current events can make for a great lead conversation, especially since Twitter often breaks news faster than the rest of the web.  
3. Learn the best times to contact leads. Are you having a hard time getting a hold of a lead? Or are you just looking for the best time for an initial call? Twitter can be a great resource for inside information about leads. Are you leads going on holidays? Are they in the office? Twitter can help you figure out exactly where you leads are, and what the best time is to start a conversation. 
4. Figure out what people are saying about your company. It is always useful for a sales representative to be aware of what people are saying about your company and more specifically your sales team. Is brand sentiment towards your company positive or negative?  Does a quick twitter search show that someone thought your sales team followed up too soon? Or too late? That kind of information can be invaluable for a sales teams’ success. 
5. Learn your lessons and improve your process. One of the best ways to use Twitter to tweak your sales process is to study your critics. There are most likely always going to be people who’ve had a somewhat negative experience with your company. Studying what these people have to say about your company and where you went wrong can be an excellent source of constructive information. 
6. Take a look at your competitors’ fans. This is almost the opposite of the point we mentioned above. Rather than using Twitter to search for what is being said about your company, search Twitter and see what positive things are being said about your competitors. This information can be especially useful for getting ideas on how your team can improve and how you can remain competitive.

Image by Tveskov on Flickr