Black Friday Goes Social
November 14, 2011
Thanksgiving is right around the corner, which means retailers are pulling out all the stops to prepare for their own important tradition, Black Friday sales. Most brands have already started online campaigns to get customers excited about the upcoming sales. Brands offering online deals and using the web to promote their sales is nothing new. Cyber Monday, the online equivalent to Black Friday, has been an extremely successful component of holiday sales for some time. Last year’s Cyber Monday sale set the record for the “heaviest spending day in e-commerce history” according to TechCrunch. What is new is the increasing number of brands working with social media agencies to find creative ways to incorporate a social element into their holiday sales.Keywords "Not Provided:" What Encrypted Search Means for Your Marketing Analytics
November 10, 2011
One of the many ways that marketing analytics can help you develop a smart SEO plan is by telling you which keywords bring the most visitors to your site, and more specifically which keywords bring in the customers who are the most engaged in your site. If you’ve looked at your keywords report in Analytics recently (and you should!) you’ve probably noticed a larger than usual number of visits entered as (not provided) and may have wondered what that means. Last month Google began automatically encrypting searches from people that are logged into their Google accounts. According to Google’s blog post on October 18th, this means that “When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google “organic” search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site.”
3 Tips for Starting a New Blog
October 13, 2011
Blogging is a powerful tool for marketing a small business. It’s a great way to get your name out online, and make connections with both potential customers and other business owners. With a little bit of Google keyword research, it can be a pivotal part of your SEO strategy as well. Unfortunately, the idea also seems to make a lot of people very uncomfortable. We talk to people all the time who know they need to start a blog for their business, but who tell us they are nervous about it, or that they just don’t know where to start. With that in mind, I’ve put together this list of tips to help get you get past your writer’s block and get started.
Marketing Analytics Metrics to Watch
May 12, 2011
I was asked recently asked to contribute to a discussion on the most important metrics for marketers to watch. Since a lot of my work involves tracking website usage and helping clients optimize their websites to meet their goals, I chose to focus on important site usage metrics for marketers to watch. To follow the rest of the discussion, and to learn about some important metrics to watch in E-mail marketing, check out this post by Lisa Cramer.
Unlock the Full Potential of your Pay Per Click Ads with Google Analytics
March 28, 2011
Google Adwords by itself will give you a lot of information about the impressions, click through rate and costs of your Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads. However, many businesses make the mistake of focusing too much on that information without looking at what else is available. Linking your AdWords and Analytics accounts opens up a ton of new information on site usage, goal conversion rates and ROI of your ad groups, ads and keywords. This is a powerful pay per click management tool that can help make sure you get the most out of your ad budget.Web Analytics Tips: Using Custom Segments
January 20, 2011
Google Analytics offers a lot of helpful information, but sometimes you want to answer a specific question that it doesn’t have a preset section for. This is where the Custom Reporting feature can help. Many people never use this feature, but once you get the knack of it, your custom reports can help you get the most helpful information about your website traffic. The Google Help center has a great video to get you started with the basic how-to of putting a custom report together.
Web Merchant Finally Punished for Negative Reviews
December 08, 2010
The New York Times recently ran an article about an online eyewear company that has been using the publicity caused by disturbing and sometimes abusive customer service behavior to gain search engine rankings. It is an unfortunate side effect of the way search engine rankings work that giving a company a bad review creates an additional link to that site for any terms that you use in the review, which can increase their rankings for those keywords. One review is unlikely to cause a huge change, but a lot of them can start to add up.Having Fun with Your Internet Marketing
October 28, 2010
Yesterday I noticed a particularly fun and effective Halloween-themed marketing campaign. The Sears website has put up a zombie-themed home page. The page has pictures of zombies wearing their clothing and using their products with phrases like “accessorize like the living” and “tone while you lumber.” They put a lot of thought into the page, and it has several creative interactive elements including a “zombie gift guide” to help you pick out gifts for male or female zombies based on descriptions like “hungry” or “dirty.”
#Onmouseover over for now, but not for good
September 23, 2010
Only two days after the “#onmouseover incident,” several of the users responsible are already known. According to the Twitter blog:
Web Analytics Tips- What is a bounce rate and how should I use it?
August 31, 2010
Web analytics programs provide a LOT of data, which can be an overwhelming experience. It’s good to know which metrics are relevant to your site and what they mean so that you can act on the information you get. One of the most frequently useful metrics for marketing analytics is the bounce rate. The idea behind this is that a “bounce” visitor is one who comes to your site and leaves right away without really taking anything in.
