Category: Site Conversion

Are You Excited That You Are Boosting Your Own Web Analytics

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There is one person who will repetitively visit your website, you.  When consultants, trainers, or professional coaches decide to make online marketing a priority, they often begin checking in on the site to see changes or to inspire ideas.  While that level of engagement is great, it can cause false results on the analytic reports.

The last post was about critically analyzing web analytics and a good example recently came up.  A client was running three separate campaigns to boost site traffic.  The push was set up because they were testing three separate offers to see which call to action created the best conversion. At the end of two weeks the client called and said, “We’ve seen a boost in traffic of 30% this month (roughly 300 more visitors).” While a jump was expected such a marked change so quickly seemed excessive.

So we pulled up the analytics and began reviewing where the traffic came from.  As it turned out, some of the increased traffic was legitimate but about half of it was self-created.  This client had five trainers that were all being asked to provide their input on the calls to action.  As suggestions came in, the trainers would go back to the calls to action pages to review revisions.  Doing this several times resulted in the group creating a false 150 hits.

So why is this important?  The significance of the hits has two primary effects.  The first is that we never want to create false data that guides our decision making.  The campaign did have a good start but it was about a 15% increase.  Making a decision on the calls to action or traffic generating campaigns would not have had true tested data. The second effect is it can skew trends.  At the end of the second two weeks, the increase was just under 25%.  Had we not reviewed the hits it would have appeared as if we had peaked quickly and were now regressing, when in reality we were continuing to see gradual improvement.

For this particular example, the resolution was to implement filters for the IP addresses of the firm’s computers.  But as an illustrative example, it’s a reaffirmation of keeping a close eye on analytics and questioning results that seem overly positive or negative.

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Critically Analyze Your Web Metrics

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One of the biggest advantages to improving online marketing is the fact that data is instantly available to inform decisions.  However, sometimes data gets oversimplified and provides false “insight”.

Recently a client expressed concern that the referring links from their social media platforms was too low.  It was true that only a small fraction (about 2%) of their traffic was generated from their social profiles according to the website analytics.  The requested action was to get more posts on the social profiles to generate more clicks.

On the surface that seems like a reasonable response.  More activity will result in more traffic.  However, it was actually a misassignment of data and a lack of critically analyzing the data.  Most of their social posts either had no links or were linking to a blog not hosted on their website.  Increasing posts would likely have no effect on links back to the website because the posts were not set up to link to the website.

So instead of arbitrarily making posts, we focused on linking content back to the website by ensuring that at least half of the social posts included a link to the website.  At the end of the month, we had a more realistic figure on social engagement with about 15% of traffic coming from social platforms.

Misaligning web analytics is where “best practices” become a liability.  For example, a common best practice is that bounces are bad and they should be as low as possible.  That typically is true. But what if a page is promoting a social media contest with a link to your LinkedIn page?  If the page is effective, most of that pages traffic will show as a bounce.  So rather than looking at the page and saying, “it’s performing poorly”, some tracking from the site to the LinkedIn post need applied to find how many people moved on to the offer and how many left.

Avoid oversimplifying your web analytics.  A lot of “best practices” regularly get applied across the board with no critical thinking.  This typically results in wasted effort or negative impacts to marketing campaigns, or both.

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Is your Value Add Content . . . Valuable?

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A content based email or online marketing campaign relies on providing valuable insights to keep the audience engaged.  No insightful content, no audience.  In principle most trainers, consultants, and professional coaches agree.  In practice however, it’s a difficult practice for many to adhere to.  While the goal of online and email marketing is to drive leads and new business, the campaign should be careful not to over solicit.

An example of this happened to me recently when speaking with a sales training company.  I asked how their email marketing efforts had gone to date.  The owner said, “Not real well.  We aren’t generating a lot of leads or attendees for events.” So I asked how often they sent an email for an event or offer.  The owner assured me that  they only did one solicitation a month combined with two content emails a month, one was an article and one was a video feature.

I was surprised that they had so few responses or inquiries on their offers if they were consistently providing valuable content in two of their three communications.  Then he gave me a sample of his article.  To say it was a value add article was beyond a stretch.  The first paragraph touched on a sales topic briefly, in three sentences.  The second paragraph talked about what sales training courses they offered that featured that topic.  The third paragraph was a link to an upcoming event.  In short, it wasn’t an article.  It was a three paragraph commercial.  Upon seeing the article I asked for a sample of the video which primarily talked about why a person might want to attend an upcoming event.

In reality, this firm had three emails in their matrix that were solicitations and none with value add content.  While I have no doubt that the events and the offers had value, people on their lists were simply tuning out because there was not valuable content to keep them engaged.

Take some time and review your value add content.  This should be video, audio, or text that is offering insightful information about your industry or professional expertise.  If you read your value add content and find a lot of references to the work you do, things people can buy, or feature/benefits then there’s a good chance that the content doesn’t provide much value to your client/prospect base.

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Blog Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Considerations

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One of the most powerful benefits for a blog is its SEO capabilities.  Every single post can provide content to the search engines on a topic catered to your product or service.  This is extremely valuable to trainers, consultants, and professional coaches because it provides a platform to illustrate their knowledge and how they help clients.  However, a plan needs put in place so that the right content is being fed to search engines.  Setting desirable keywords and page structure is critical to maximizing the SEO benefits.

Keywords are phrases that you’d want to rank highly on search engines for.  Make that list and have it handy.  The more you can work those phrases into your articles the better.  Using those keywords in titles or links can add an extra boost to the importance search engines place on it.

A word of warning not to get carried away.  Using the same phrase every other sentence is annoying to read and first and foremost we want to ensure that the posts are valuable to our readers.  Also don’t try to cover every topic all at once.  For instance, in my case, if I write a post about blogging, I shouldn’t be looking to sprinkle in a lot of email marketing keywords.  Mix in the appropriate phrases where it makes sense but don’t force it.

After a post is written with identified keywords, an often overlooked aspect of blogging is incorporating search engine optimization features.  Truly, there is no reason to skip it as there are plugins for blogging platforms that make it easier than ever.  For wordpress, I use All in One SEO Pack  but if you are less familiar with SEO, YOAST provides a visual dashboard to rank how well the page is set up and provides suggestions to improve.

Whatever plugin you use there are 4 major areas that should be filled in.

The first is a category.  These are your overarching topics for the blog.  Using categories serves as a general keyword and on most templates will function as a navigation link that readers can use to sort articles.   Assign a category to every post, nothing should be left on the default “undefined”.

The second is tags.  Every keyword or phrase that is in the article should be tagged in your blog.  This insures that the code includes those keywords directly to the search engine so that it’s sure to be incorporated into the listing.

The third is URL name.  It’s more advantageous to have the URL include the title and/or keywords rather than be a random string of numbers, which is usually the default setting.  Most plugins will do this automatically or let you define it manually.

The fourth is a title tag.  This is an unseen section of the site but very important for search engines.  Most plugins will use the title by default but can usually be modified.  The title is a good start but if you can work in a couple extra keywords here, so much the better.

SEO is often a part of blogging that trainers, consultant, and professional coaches struggle with but it doesn’t have to be daunting.  Once you set up the tools for SEO it’s just the follow up step to writing an article.  The advantage being that it will be visible to more people via search engine and drive targeted traffic to your site.

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Have a Business Blog? Make it Count.

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I recently had someone ask me, “Aren’t blogs dead?”.  No, they are alive and kicking, they’ve just gone through a metamorphosis. Ratherthan being the single stop for readers, blogs can serve as bait.  The content can be distributed across many channels to lure people to the blog and by extension, your website. When done consistently and with quality it’s a relaible way to generate leads.

A blog can be a wonderful tool to promote your business and give people an ongoing reason to visit your site.  However, there is a tendency with business blogs to set them up quickly without having a plan in place for making the most of it.  This can be especially true for trainers, consultants, and professional coaches.  Below is a list of things that you should have a plan for:

We’ll cover each in subsequent posts . . .

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B-to-B Online Marketing Around the Holidays

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As the holiday season grows closer, many of us associate it with the busiest shopping season of the year.  But for B-to-B the inverse is often true.   While consumer shopping spikes business to business transactions often lag.  Consultants, trainers, and professional coaches need to modify some of their online marketing plans to account for the decreased activity without abandoning the time period as a lost cause.

There are two bad plans for your B-to-B marketing over the holiday period (late November through the early part of January in the US).

The first is pretending the time of year does not matter.  While you’ll want to schedule any informative content that you regularly provide, sales or offer emails are unlikely to convert well.  For example, if you run a monthly event to find new opportunities, it’s likely that registrations will suffer.  Instead of forcing your regular events an alternative “gift” incentive might be more appropriate.  For example, offer a free whitepaper download or training webinar as a thank you to people that subscribe to your email newsletter.  Make the offer simple to redeem.  Prospects don’t even need to leave their office to take advantage of either example.  The holiday period is a challenging time to get people to take advantage of more elaborate or expensive offerings, so find ways of providing simple value add incentives.

The second bad plan is giving up the holidays as a lost cause.  This plan abandons regular communications because “no one’s paying attention now.”  Your regular informative emails or newsletters are a given.  If you publish monthly or bi-weekly, then you need to meet that expectation.  True, rates will likely be somewhat lower but being consistent with your offer assures your audiences that you will deliver on your commitment.  Furthermore, this time frame is not a total lost cause for B-to-B.  Some businesses might have put off a decision until the end of the year.  If their budgeting cycle will reset, they might be primed to close a deal with a consultant, trainer, or professional coach.  Keeping your online marketing churning through this time period provides an opportunity to stay top of mind with prospects and clients.

Take the holidays into account for your online and email marketing.  It’s not the boom time that consumer businesses experience but it can be fruitful none the less.

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Is It Easy to Contact You on Your Website?

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Visitors should have a simple way of getting contact information from your website. It sounds obvious but it’s something that many business websites neglect.  Contact information actually serves two purposes.  The first is to get visitor feedback or allow them to take next steps.  The second is that providing ways for people to contact a business adds credibility that it’s a legitimate operation.

So what contact information should be available on a website?  The basics are, a phone number, an online medium (contact form or email address), and a physical address.  There are separate reasons for each:

  • Phone Number – Some people just prefer the phone and will not contact you in other ways.  Other people who have a specific question that they can’t get answered on the website will want a form of contact with immediacy.  Furthermore, a lack of a phone number can erode credibility as almost all legitimate businesses have a published phone line.
  • Contact form or email – A website needs an online form of communicating.  There’s a good chance that if a visitor finds you through your website then they will want to communicate via a digital medium.  A contact form is often useful because you can give a general layout.  For example, if you take online orders you can frame the fields to take all necessary information that a buyer might not otherwise include.  Another example is what I use for my site.  People can make an inquiry but also select their preferred method of response (email or phone).  In this way, you can cater responses to a visitor’s preference.  Email is also viable but be sure to use an email address that is checked as well as a non-personal one.  Email addresses on websites are often farmed by SPAM bots and can easily get bombarded with junk.  If it’s a specially set up email address it’s a fairly simple process to deactivate it if SPAM becomes a problem.
  • A physical address – No, people are not likely to send a letter.  However a physical address adds credibility by clearly telling people where you are located.

The most common means of neglecting contact information is by having a contact us form. . .and only a contact form.  Don’t get me wrong, a contact us form is a good idea as it’s a simple and easy way for visitor inquiries.  However, it doesn’t replace other contact methods because not everyone is going to be comfortable using it and it garners little credibility.

A good general rule is that visitors should always be one click away from getting contact info.  That is usually accomplished by including a contact link as part of your primary navigation.  If you really want to ensure that your contact information is readily available, publish it as part of you footer on every page.  Make sure your contact information is easy to get.  After all, the goal for our website should be to have visitors contact us.

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Reasonable Next Steps in Online Marketing

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Successful online marketing is part art, part science, and a big part common sense. However, when we work on our online marketing campaigns everything makes sense to us. We clearly see the value proposition and truly believe in the product, service, or offer being made. That zeal can blind us to common sense. The most common unreasonable expectation that crops up is how an audience will react to our call to action. Make sure that the call to action is suitable for what’s been communicated to the audience.

I recently had a conversation with a client who was frustrated by a lack of interest in a two day business event they run. We revued the email marketing metrics and my client stated, “See, we had 25 people click to the registration page and not one signed up. What’s going on? Our other offers consistently generate leads but marketing is not getting interest in this event.” So questions arose but 3 key questions told the tale.

How many people were ideal for the event?
About 20 was a good balance to make it a profitable event but small enough for personal interaction.

How many did they typically have register?
The events had averaged 10 people so they were operating at half the desired number.

If marketing was not filling seats how were people being registered?
On average 5 of the attendees came from personal invitations from the sales staff. The other half called in and after getting some more information about the event they would register.

So where did the call-ins come from? The assumption was that it was word of mouth or referrals but upon analyzing the dates it appeared that the call-ins were most prevalent when email communications were sent. The issue wasn’t that the emails weren’t working. It was that the audience was taking an unexpected next step by calling in.

Now correcting this situation can go down a lot of avenues. Was the landing page lacking enough information to convert interested parties? Was the sign up process unclear or cumbersome? Was the sign up process working technically? These are all valid questions but as is often the case the common sense questions are usually the most valuable.

The 2-day event this trainer was running was a $1500/person event. The email communications were largely being sent to prospects that were new to the list or only asked for basic information. The chances of converting an unengaged contact for a $1500 purchase on any online communication are slim to nil. However, the event might be of interest to them and they might want to call and ask questions. Some of the people that call to get information about the event will then decide they do want to attend, but they need that personal interaction. A promotional email just isn’t going to do it because it doesn’t intrinsically carry the necessary credibility for a purchase that size.

Any commitment over about $50 will meet with resistance unless the audience is already familiar with you or your company. My client’s future emails were sure to highlight their phone number so that interested prospects had a viable next step without having to commit to spending $1500. If you find that your conversions are performing well below expectations, it’s a good idea to review the call to action and make sure it’s a reasonable next step.

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Should I Include the Price?

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A question that pops up is whether a price should be advertised right off the bat or on a second level that people have to navigate to.  The answer to this depends on space limitations, price appeal, and communication vehicle. But as a guiding rule pricing should be included unless it’s a complex product, service, or offer where pricing is not easily outlined.

For something simple like a banner ad or a social media update a price likely shouldn’t be included unless it’s a selling point.  The reason for this is purely functional, there’s not enough room to focus on anything but incentives to click.  However the landing page should display pricing clearly if possible so that users aren’t frustrated in finding it.

For website pages or detailed communications the answer is yes, unless it’s a complex product or service where pricing models would be unreasonably complex.  It’s frustrating for users to see a straightforward offer or product and not see pricing.  Furthermore it becomes a headache for the site owner because they will be flooded with, “how much does x cost,” questions.

Basically the answer is to include a price as soon as it’s feasible.  If you are offering something simple and have a defined price it’s best to include it early.  Your audience is going to want to see pricing so it’s better to be direct rather than make additional steps that can appear like it’s trying to be concealed.

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