Today, virtually every business has a webpage, sometimes multiple pages. Not to mention social media accounts. But, while getting your name and your brand online is a crucial first step for raising awareness and preference for what you have to offer, it’s just one piece of the marketing puzzle. To be truly effective, you need to develop a process and method of tracking how effective your online marketing actually is.
Gathering Data
One of the great things about online marketing is the wealth of data that can be gathered about who is visiting your site. There are a number of effective tools, many of them free, that can help you collect information on your website traffic.
With all of that data and the tools to gather it so readily available, there’s no excuse for not taking advantage of this wealth of information. You should be constantly collecting and analyzing data on your website and social media performance to help you identify opportunities for continuous improvement.
Carefully Selecting Metrics
While there are a number of tools to collect data and many, many ways to look at that data, you need to be thoughtful—and strategic—about which options you choose.
In an article for the Content Marketing Institute by Andrew Raso, titled “How to Measure Engagement the Right Way,” Raso proposes some variations on traditional metrics for assessing customer engagement.
For example, a common metric used in online marketing is time on page; however, Raso suggests this statistic is flawed for multiple reasons:
- Time on page is based on visitors who did not bounce. So, those who come to, and quickly leave, your webpage aren’t taken into account for this metric. That skews the overall result, making time on page seem longer than it may actually have been.
- The time on page calculation, Raso says, “is calculated on the time between the visit to the first page and the next page. This would be fine if we all browsed a site in a single-session, linear mode – clicking links to other pages and leaving when we’re done. But we don’t.”
- Think of how you interact with a webpage. If you’re like most, you’re opening multiple tabs—and may be leaving them open. That can inflate the time on page metric.
So, what metric should you use instead? Raso suggests “scroll depth” as a measure of true engagement. If a visitor to your site is scrolling to the bottom of a blog you’ve written, presumably they’ve read it, suggesting at least some interest in what you have to say.
Regularly Review and Revise
For those who aren’t particularly tech-savvy or just don’t find online marketing that interesting, setting up a website and social media accounts can be a real chore. But it isn’t a one-and-done activity. Online marketing is extremely dynamic and requires regular monitoring and upkeep. Gathering data and using the proper metrics is interesting, but not very useful if you aren’t acting on that data. You should regularly and consistently set aside time to review your metrics and revise your online content and strategy as needed.
Having an online presence is an increasingly necessary part of your marketing activities. But a presence alone is far from sufficient. You need to be able to effectively measure the impact of that presence and react accordingly.
Looking for help with analyzing, building and maintaining a strong online presence to boost your business results? We can help!
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About Us
Strategic Communications, LLC, works with B2B clients to help them achieve their goals through effective content marketing and management with both internal and external audiences. We are adept at evaluating and analyzing communication efforts and working with clients to plan, create and publish high-quality, unique content, through both on- and offline media to achieve desired results. Our background in business journalism, marketing, PR/media relations and online communications makes us well-positioned to serve the needs of 21st-century marketers.
We serve clients who are looking for help creating content for a wide array of channels—from social media posts to full-length manuscripts, and everything in between. We focus primarily on service-related B2B topics and work with a number of independent consultants interested in building their thought leadership through online channels. For ongoing content management, our first step is to fully understand your goals, objectives and competitive landscape.
Then we’ll conduct a thorough analysis and assessment of your digital presence, compared to competitors, and recommend a communication strategy to achieve your goals. But, we also regularly take on individual projects – white papers, blog posts, contributed articles, etc. If you’re interested in learning more, let us know!
(Strategic Communications is certified as a Woman-Owned Business Enterprise through the Wisconsin Department of Administration.)
Recommended Reading
The Everything Guide to Customer Engagement
Tags: analytics, data analysis, measuring marketing effectiveness, metrics, Social Media, social media analytics, web site analytics, website analytics