Time For New Year’s Marketing Resolutions

The final month of the year is upon us.  2008 is just 31 days away, which is just enough time to plan your marketing strategy for next year.  Lack of a marketing plan or failure to execute is our second biggest mistake most people make with their website.  Sometimes its a result of not knowing what to do and sometimes just a failure to put a plan together.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Don’t.

You should always be working 6-12 months ahead and you should always have a mix of marketing ideas or weapons.  Start with a 12 month calendar and note the big  events or initiatives that are on your radar.  This would include trade shows, product launches and holidays that might spur sales of your goods or services.  (Non-profit organizations might map out a plan based on fundraising plans.)

Then, work backwords to set deliverable dates related to each event.  This might include direct mail creation and mailing dates, press release dates, setup of joint ventures, website revisions, etc.

You’ll probably want to set up ongoing marketing too.  You may want to do general brand-building or awareness marketing, but I’m more in favor of marketing specific products or services.  But have a consistent plan with multiple touches (referred to as frequency).  Too many people fail at marketing because they do one event with disappointing results and conclude that marketing doesn’t work.

(Some marketing doesn’t work.  That’s why its important to test ideas and revise your plan as needed.  Toss what doesn’t work)

But understand that marketing is a direct result of a constant effort to engage your prospects and current customers.  Don’t so direct mail to 10,000 people once – send direct mail to 2,000 people 5 times.  (Or 200 people.  Whatever you can afford)

So start now.  Set some goals.  Lay out a plan over 12 months.  Test ideas.  Revise as you go.  And profit from your efforts!

Get more ideas at www.webasylum.com

How You Can Benefit From Website Metrics

I recently posted on how popular and important website metrics are and promised a follow up on some of the kinds of information that can be gleaned from web traffic reports.

This is being presented on a need to know basis.  You NEED to know this!

There are plenty of packages that can tell you almost anything about website visitors.  Today’s report on sales for "Cyber Monday" included the tidbit that 60% of all online sales were coming from work computers.  It’s easy to believe.  The media spent a good portion of the days reporting on the cost of lost productivity due to online shopping.

You may not be able to tell how many visitors are left-handed cigar afficianados with a 12th grade education and 2.2 average kids per household, but for most SMBs, there are very interesting and useful metrics to be gleaned from a web traffic report.  Bigger firms may buy a metrics package and install it on their web server.  Any ISP (Internet Service Provider) or web host should offer a package, sometimes at an additional cost, that gives you basic information.  There are free and low-cost vendors who will allow you to add a small piece of code in the background of your site for tracking certain metrics.  Google Analytics is a free service that provides a ton of information on how people find your site and how they use it.  Great information for revising your online strategies!  Many SMBs would do well learn how to use it or a similar application.

Google Analytics came on the scene after Google acquired a product called Measure Map in 2006.  The service also has some elements of a longtime metrics package called Urchin, which Google bought in 2005. 

One of the most basic of web metrics is the number of visitors to a site or "Visits."  Monitoring that can help you decide the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.  But as with many metrics, you can slice and dice your way thru this information, including knowledge of how many of those visitors visited just once and how many returned, what referring site or search engine brought them to the site, and even they keywords they used in those search engines to find the site.

Next, are Pageviews or the total number of pages all visitors viewed.  But even more telling are the number of Pages/Visit, which is simply the total pageviews divided by total visitors to see how many pages visitors look at on average.  You can learn what pages are most viewed on your site and which ones are viewed the least.  That can help you when it comes time to assessing the ease of navigation thru the site, whether your content needs tweaking, your offer modified or how landing pages are used.

Many times, the Home or "index" page is the most popular page on a site.  But we had a humane society we once did work for and found that the page listing all the dogs available for adoption was viewed the most.  Why?  Because it was bookmarked.  People would check to see if dogs had been adopted or what new ones came in without necessarily looking at other pages.  I would use that information to put some sort of callout on the Dogs page to get people to sample other pages, sign up to volunteer, donate, etc.  If they sold site sponsorship, I might charge more to advertise on that page than one less viewed.

Another useful metric is Average Time on Site.  The more time they spend on the site, the better.  It means you have something they are interested in.  Large changes is Average Time can be a good indicator or how well you’re resonating with your visitor.

In the Analytics example I’m looking at as I write this, Average Time on Site is 1:47.  Depending on your website, this can either be decent or dreadful.  But monitoring it over time is a good indication of how much people are using your site – as is the number of return visitors!

All website metrics can be viewed over a period of time or you can zero in on a particular day.  And comparing the total for a period of time (like a month) to the previous month or the same month last year can be very informative, as well.

Bounce Rate can give you insights to your site’s success.  Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site without looking at any other pages.  They just view one page.  Obviously, the lower the Bounce Rate, the better.  If your Bounce Rate is high, your Pages/Visit and Average Time on Site will be negatively affected.  There are a number of reasons why Bounce Rate is high and ways to lower it.  Contact us and we’ll tell you how.  Same goes for improving the number of visitors, average pageviews, etc.

We’ve only scratched the surface.  We’ll dig a little further in an upcoming post.  In fact, it’ll probably need to be several future posts!

Cyber Monday Mixed Reviews

According to comScore, online sales yesterday (Cyber Monday 2007) were up 21% over the same day last year.  But sales per customer were down 12%.

The first Monday after Thanksgiving has been dubbed "Cyber Monday" with many people thinking it is the biggest online shopping day of the year.

It isn’t.

The biggest shopping day of the year both on an off-line probably occurs in December.  Last year’s biggest day online was Wednesday, December 13, according to comScore, which said sales totaled $667 million.

eBay employees have coined the term "Green Monday" for the 2nd Monday of December.  eBay’s biggest days each of the last 3 years were the 2nd Monday.

Here’s another interesting item.  NetRatings surveyed 1,000 people and found that convenience is a big part of online shopping.  Respondents said they save time, can shop anytime and can make comparisons easily.  That probably has a lot to do with why more people are shopping online.  The economy has a lot to do with why sales per customer are down.

Something to keep in mind:  There will be fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas next year.  32 this year.  Only 27 in 2008.

Come December 26th, there will still be 364 shopping days until Christmas 2008.  Actually, it’s a Leap Year, so there will be 365 shopping days.

Start planning now!