November 22, 2013

Week 8 – How to find the right data that counts from Analytics

This week the students are looking at where to start with using Google Analytics reports and what information matters. If you haven’t already linked Google analytics to your website, then set up a Google account and place the Analytics code on each page of your site. Your web developer can do this for you also.

You can spend a lot of time going through data without a focus on what you need to know. Stay focused on three things: Data, Insights and Action. What you are looking for is information that will help you make decisions to improve your website and make it easier for your users to get what they are searching for. One of the topical sets of data that businesses look at, presently, is the number of visitors who are accessing their websites through their mobile phone or tablet. This insight will inform your decision on your need for a mobile friendly site. Get information that lets you better understand your website users’ behaviour to take actions that are useful and relevant.

So now what? Before you go to the extensive reports that Google supply begin with a pen and paper and write down the three main reasons why your website exists. This will give you a set of objectives for your website. Next list the things your website needs to do or what you want the visitor to do. These are your website goals. Then list the groups of people that matter most to your website. This is your target audience. With these three categories of information you are now ready to identity the data that you need. In Analytics speak this data is called KPI’s – Key Performance Indicators. A KPI might be the number of downloads of a ‘white paper’. the number of subscriptions to a newsletter or the number of repeat visits to a particular page. Put numbers on these KPI’s with specific targets and a time period to achieve them. Now you are ready to get the reports from Google Analytics. Create a dashboard with the reports that are most important to you and set a comparison on the data you get from one month to the next so you can see the historical performance of your site to identify trends in the data.

The final stage is to use this data to make useful, actionable decisions for your business. For example a company maybe focusing its efforts in one geographic location but see that their website visitors are coming from a different location. Changing your strategy to incorporate this new location will impact positively on your business.

Next week we will be looking at email as part of a Digital Marketing Strategy.

November 14, 2013

Week 7 – How to Build Links to your Website to Improve your SEO

Last week while studying SEO we looked at Keyword Research. This week we will look at three steps you can use to build links to your website that will improve your ranking on Google’s Search Engine Result Page (SERP).

1. High Quality Content

Whether it is a blog post, a news item or curated content from another source you should always have the mind frame of your reader as your focus. Ask yourself what is of interest to your customers? Can the content address or solve a problem? Organise the information so that it can be digested easily and scanned for top line news with more detail further on. Look for topical and relevant content.

2. Build a Reputation with Your Influencers

Do a search for experts in your industry. Use Twitter advanced search option to find people and companies who have built large audiences on Social Media. Use sites that rank the top blogs in your sector. Establish a relationship with them through commenting and sharing their content. Connect with them on social media by following them and posting valuable commentary.

3. Make Content Sharable and Distribute

Before you publish content make sure you add social network widgets and make them visible at the top and the bottom of the post. Consider adding Social Network ‘counters’. These are social network icons that tabulate the number of shares. Your content should encourage your readers to share with their networks. So when tweeting a link make sure you have left enough characters for your audience to retweet. Post a link of your content on relevant social media platforms such as Linkedin Groups, Facebook pages and Twitter. Create categories and hashtags so your content will show up on searches. Produce the content in different formats like posting images on Pinterest and instagram, slide shows on Slideshare and videos on Youtube including a link back to the landing page.

Check in next week when we will be learning about Google Analytics and finding the data that counts.

September 26, 2013

Week 2: Cutting through the Clutter of Planning your Digital Marketing

Marketing is notorious for jargon and Digital Marketing is no different. It is easy to get confused with processes and systems that companies follow to create and implement digital campaigns. Start by understanding the steps that are required. In all planning processes there are four key steps:

The first step is all about establishing where we are now. This is often described as Situational Analysis and for a digital marketing campaign you will need to gather information. Begin with competitors’ digital activities, consumer digital media usage and their behavioural patterns. Listening online is a great place to start. Set up Google alerts for key words that apply to your market. Use software like Radion 6 that monitors social conversations on multiple channels and search for articles, blogs and videos related to your market.

The next step is to decide where do we want to be in the future. What would success look like in that future. Set out goals and objectives that are clear, realistic and within an agreed time frame. Creating awareness and building relationships with your target audience are often common objectives. Quantify the number of connections you expect, the number of unique visitors to your website and the level of engagement you want to achieve.

The third step is working out how to meet our goals. Here we develop digital marketing strategies that fit with our objectives, target audience and products and services. Digital Marketing strategies are simply the decisions you make on the tools you need to implement a campaign. What are the channels, the message and the timing? Always check to ensure that these activities are aligned with where you want to go and are consistent across multiple platforms.

The final step is ensuring that you know if you have achieved success. With Google analytics, Insights data on Facebook and other social media platforms you can measure impressions, website traffic, engagement and sentiment. This data will allow you to amend and adapt your activities as you monitor them. Ensure you regularly collect and analyse the data and communicate these reports to the team.

On week three of the course we will look at Target Audience Profiling.

September 19, 2013

Where to Start with Digital Marketing

This week sees the start of a ten week course in Digital Marketing. Follow my blog each week to stay in touch with what we are covering in class. The course is designed to equip you with the knowledge to understand the main functions of online marketing and how companies use these platforms to meet business objectives. It starts with understanding the framework to produce digital marketing strategies and communication plans. It is all too easy to get overwhelmed by the myriad of technology, social media networks and new developments that happen on a daily basis in the digital space. The most important question to ask yourself is WHY. From the very beginning of the course you will need to shift your thinking when you see digital communication. You are no longer a consumer but a marketing executive who thinks about the objectives, the target audience and the positioning of products when you look at digital communication. Ask yourself WHY the brand or service has chosen to spend their budget on the activity. What is their goal?

At the heart of Digital Marketing is understanding your consumer. We go online to connect with friends, watch our favourite programmes, plan holidays, check bank balances and much more. Understanding our customers’ behaviour online is key to deciding what channels are best to reach them. In a world where we are now viewing multiple devices at any one time – TV, laptop and smartphone, reaching and communicating with our audience is a real challenge. Spend some time asking your customers where they go online and how they use these platforms. Build a profile of their interests, passions and viewing habits.

Networking How we communicate with our customers is the next step. Think of how you would act if you entered a room full of people you have not met before. You wouldn’t stand and announce to the room how wonderful you are and really everyone should pay attention to what you have to say. Listening to what people are talking about and joining the conversation is a much more effective way of engaging with your audience. Guiness created Arthur’s Day in order to meet their customers where their passions lie in music. Connecting your brand to your customers where they hang out and becoming an integral part of their experiences will increase the opportunity for engagement and building relationships with them online.

Next week we will look at a digital communications planning model from which we will build a digital marketing plan.

Maeve Nunan

Digital Marketing Educator

target audience

Week 8 – How to find the right data that counts from Analytics

Week 2: Cutting through the Clutter of Planning your Digital Marketing

Where to Start with Digital Marketing