An Introduction to Marketing your Business Online

In order to develop a consistent and powerful online presence, a business owner needs to understand why people go to the Internet in the first place. While each person is different, in general, people are online looking for information. Not only are they looking for information, but they are looking for something helpful. At the core of any online marketing campaign should be useful content that will delight your niche market. This can be in the form of text, images, video or pretty much anything else as long as it benefits your prospects and customers. In essence, you must find a way to provide value to your customers without making them pay for it. The following are all components that, when used in combination, form a strong web marketing campaign.

Start a Blog:  If you don’t have one already, start a blog. Develop an editorial calendar that you can follow and post at least once per week, although more is better. Generate content that your target market will like or that they will find useful. The purpose of the blog is two-fold: First, you can drive more traffic to your site if you host a blog on your domain and provide engaging or otherwise useful content. Second, you can effectively target more keywords when you have a blog post because each post can serve as a new page were you can target a new keyword. You can also link text in your blog posts to inner pages of your website, which gets more traffic for parts of your site that may not be seen as much.

Social Media:  You knew I was going to say it, and these days, it’s pretty much a necessity to be on some sort of social network. I’m not saying that you should rush out and join every new or popular network. In fact, many businesses do themselves a disservice by rushing out and joining a social network before “listening” to see if their target market is even present on a platform. This is the worst thing you can do because if you are spending a lot of time on a network where your core market is not represented, you are wasting time and resources. Odds are, unless you are a defense contractor, your target market is probably active on some social network out there. Find out which one it is and create a profile there. Promote a link to that profile on any other property you can from your website to your Google Place page.

Its also not enough that you are just present on a network, you also have to interact with people there, or at least post on a regular basis. Businesses that are not engaged with people on a social network experience little or no benefit from having an account there. Post things that encourage a response from people. Respond to others posts, follow others and otherwise participate like you would if you were on the platform as an individual. Post content from your blog or links to your website pages on occasion. Use the platform to promote deals or special events. Encourage people to share your content.

SEO: Optimizing your site for search is a great way to market it online. If you do all the work yourself, it’s also a great free way to market your site online. There are tons of great resources out there to help you learn about SEO. Building up organic exposure for your website can be a great supplement to your other web marketing efforts. It is definitely not the fastest or most precise way to get more traffic to a website, but its effects can be long-lasting.

Video:  This is a good one and by far my most favorite tactic for marketing a business online. Aside from social media websites, people spend the most time watching video online. Coming up with a catchy, viral marketing video is a great way to get exposure for your website. There are also a lot of cool things going on with video like the ability to annotate and embed links. People love sharing short, punchy videos that tell a good story or are entertaining and informative.

Infographics:  These are a great way to spread awareness of a brand online and also to build backlinks. If you can create a quality infographic, people will share it and embed it on their own websites. That is very powerful for branding and if you have links in your infographic, it’s also very powerful for SEO. Infographics are also a very helpful form of content. People love seeing useful information displayed in an attractive way.

Email:  Email marketing is one of the older forms of online marketing, but it’s still effective. Email is great for supporting a content-based web marketing approach. For instance, you can set up RSS feeds for people to subscribe to a blog via email. You can create white papers or other content that people can exchange an email for in order to download. You can then reach out to those same people and let them know about more content that may be of interest to them. You can also use that relationship to promote special offers. There are lots of good strategies for leveraging email in your online marketing.

Any one of these tactics used on its own can be effective, but using them all together and to help support or complement each other will make your online marketing efforts that much more powerful. There are two main themes to being successful with an online marketing campaign. One of those is making quality content and the other is developing a consistent presence throughout the web. If someone is just typing in your brand name, you should be the only company that appears on the first page of Google. An effective campaign reaches out through many channels online to maximize the amount of exposure a brand can get.

What are your favorite methods for online marketing? Do you have any tips or tricks that you have found to boost traffic significantly? Drop us a line or let us know in the comments section below.

What is a PPC Campaign?

I didn’t ask this question of Chris, but thought I would touch on the answer briefly before we dive in.  A PPC, or pay-per-click campaign, is a form of paid online advertising where ad buyers pay a fee to a provider every time an Internet user clicks on an ad displayed by that provider. One of the most popular PPC providers as of late is Google, who offers both search and display advertising. There are many, many other PPC providers including private websites that sell ad space.

Q: How can PPC be used to promote a business online?

A: PPC is one of the most effective ways to advertise online for any new business because you can immediately obtain targeted traffic to your website. It levels the playing field because most use an auction-based price system, and the higher bid typically wins. SEO takes time, and it is very difficult to compete with older websites with thousands of pages indexed and already-established website authority. With PPC and competitive keyword research, you can buy traffic you can afford. It becomes a numbers game to obtain a return on investment.

Google derives most of it’s money from PPC ads, so it makes sense that they would give the best virtual real estate to the paid ads on their search engine results. The PPC ads take up nearly 75% of the screen above the fold on most queries, so even with a #1 position in the SEO results, you may receive a higher ad impression share from a #1 PPC position.

Q: How much do you have to spend in PPC advertising to be successful?

A: It depends on the niche and location. For example, most of my experience is with law firms. A criminal defense lawyer may spend $75 or higher per/click in LA compared to only $25 per click for a criminal defense lawyer in St Louis. It’s very important to set up conversion tracking so that you have the most information on your ad spend. To break it down into simple terms, you want to make more than you spend. Conversion tracking is how you determine ROI.

Q: Does pay-per-click only mean advertising on other websites?

A: Google AdWords has two main PPC options: Display Network Advertising and Search Network Advertising. The Display Network uses the Google Adsense partners. It allows anyone to put ads on their website and receive revenue sharing from a Google AdWords campaign. The ads found on the Search Network are the ones that are displayed after a search query is entered. They are most often in the top and right hand side of the page. So, to answer your question, “Does pay per click only mean advertising on other websites?”…no, you can advertise using the Search Network.

Q: What are some key things to know to be successful with PPC advertising?

A: I’ll give you the top 5 things you need to know:

1. Do keyword research and find out how much traffic potential there is and approximately how much it costs. I use the Google Keyword Tool.
2. Have appropriate landing pages for each keyword you decide to bid on.
3. Set up and use conversion tracking.
4. Maintain a very detailed negative keyword list. Here is a comprehensive guide on negative keywords for lawyers, but any industry can use it to get ideas.
5. Optimize bidding & positioning. If a keyword is receiving a very low CTR, increase bidding, change keyword match types or pause the keyword.

Q: Besides ads, what else should be optimized to be effective at PPC advertising?

A: Optimize match types between “phrase type,” [exact match] and +broad +match +modifier. Many times there is a level of progression I personally use for optimization. Let’s say I start with a phrase match keyword, “Portland injury lawyer,” and it is receiving a poor CTR. Change it to broad match modifier: +Portland +injury +lawyer. Broad match modifier allows my ad to trigger if all three words are in a query, but they do not have to be in any order like phrase or exact match. If broad match modifier does not work, I will then move on to exact match [Portland injury lawyer], and if I still have a low CTR, I will either try to improve the landing page or pause the keyword and target a different keyword. So, here is my progression:

“phase match” > +broad +match +modifier > [exact match]

It’s also very important to get rid of any queries that will not convert into business. For example, if someone typed in “free Portland injury attorney,” that would be a terrible keyword to trigger my ad on because it contains the word “free.” “Free” would be an ideal word to add to most negative keyword lists. For attorneys, “pro bono” is another auto-include for most campaigns. You can also improve your negative keywords by going through your search query report. Add keywords that are profitable to your campaign and exclude keywords that will not return value.

Q: Are there certain kinds of websites/businesses that aren’t good for PPC advertising?

A: That’s a tough question to answer. In some cases, a niche may be very expensive and difficult to get a ROI in. That is why conversion tracking is very important. My ego wants to say no, lol, but I’m sure there are some niches that are too difficult to dive into without an already-established web presence and brand identity. My advice is to take the necessary steps to become Google AdWords Certified and learn everything you can about Google AdWords before jumping in and spending a lot of money.

Q: What if my website doesn’t have a way for people to convert online — is PPC still good to use?

A: It can be a great tool to improve your brand recognition to help improve conversions in the future. If you’re wanting to be seen online for any reason, then PPC can help if you’re willing to spend the money.

Q: What is the best way to get people to click on my PPC ads?

A: Google wants ads and their destinations to be as relevant as possible. They are looking for the absolute best user experience. If you want to get an ad clicked, make sure it has compelling copy and a call to action, you’re in the top 3 ad position and it is extremely niche-targeted.

Q: Are there any resources that I could look to for PPC advice?

A: The absolute best thing anyone can do is take the time to become Google AdWords certified. It’s currently $100 total to become certified. The preparation and study guides Google AdWords provide are very helpful.

Q: Isn’t all online advertising PPC?

A: It definitely seems that way if you put a price on your time. SEO is so difficult to do anymore with ever-changing algorithms, social metrics, link building, content development, etc. I love Google AdWords PPC because there seems to be more control on results. It’s just a big numbers game.

We would like to thank Chris for taking the time to enlighten our readers on PPC. A big part of being successful with online advertising is attaining real-world experience and getting your feet wet. Tutorials can teach you a lot, but having someone share their experiences is much more powerful. Thanks, Chris!

What questions do you have about PPC? How do you learn to manage your campaigns more effectively?

Writing Good Content is SEO

I have young children who are starting to ask complicated questions about the world. They want to know how fish breathe under water or they ask how far the sun is from the earth. It’s probably no surprise that I do not own an encyclopedia or any kind of reference material on these sorts of things, so I do what I have been doing for the past decade. I do the same thing when I need to know a phone number for a local business or when I need to know the answer to a complicated math question — I go to the Internet and search for the answers that I need. In the back of my mind, I know that there is always the potential that what I’m reading could very well be the most inaccurate piece of information out there, because anyone with a computer and enough ambition can publish content online. For those who consistently write or otherwise produce content that is valuable, accurate, informative and otherwise “good,” that is the content that travels to the top of rankings. The pages that focused on writing SEO content may enjoy good rankings as well, but their chances are smaller for staying at the top of the charts for long.

A Balance Between Optimization and Quality Content

Now that I have prefaced this post with a phenomenon endemic to the modern Internet, let’s talk more about how we balance good content with the notion that it must be configured in a way to make it easily found online.

Writing for Users Should be the Primary Goal for SEO

I have discovered both in my own experience as well as from other leaders in this industry that the main goal of any kind of marketing online is to be helpful. In terms of content, the main goal should be, first and foremost, to produce a quality, well-researched piece. Think of those people out there searching for information about how far the sun is from the earth and how they depend on content producers to get it right. So, when you go to write your content, ask yourself if what you produce would be something that others could depend on.

Here are some tips for getting that good content

• Primary research (things you discover on your own)
  • This means interviews, studies, trials or surveys. Data gleaned from these resources can be very valuable.
  • Secondary research (standing on someone else’s shoulders)
    • Researching information others have produced is also an acceptable way to generate good content. Whatever you are writing about, find resources like trade journals, published studies and papers, other well-researched blog posts, articles from authoritative sources or statistical information from authoritative sources.

The idea here is that before the Internet, those who published content only did so because it was both high-caliber and accurate. Now that the barriers to publishing content have been eliminated by the Internet, it’s much easier to publish (and for the public to consume) misinformation. Follow the same steps to the end goal that traditional content distributors did in order to make your website an authority in its niche and deliver good content to users.

Writing for Search Engines Should be The Secondary Goal

Writing great content is all well and good, but if you want it to get found, you must do some search engine optimization. This is the trickier part of the whole SEO profession. There is not really a set of rules that says, “place your keywords here, here and here and you will rank number one” — “Build your site according to this template, and the traffic gods will smile upon you.” It’s really a science and an art form. As far as your onsite optimization goes, these tips should help to make content easily found and highly relevant to their related queries.

• Front-load title tags and meta descriptions.
  • Place your most important keyword phrases first.
  • Use only those keywords in your copy.
• Re-write URLs to include target phrases
  • If you have ugly URLs or ones that don’t relate to the content the page, rewrite them. You may have to pull off some tricks with redirects in order to preserve links.
• Optimize one page of your site for each keyword that you are targeting
  • Use one keyword per page (and its variants).
• • Place the keyword phrase in the header above paragraphs and then in the paragraphs themselves.
  • Be mindful of keyword density
    • A good range is around 2%. Don’t put in a keyword too much, and definitely don’t make your content sound unnatural.
• Canonicalize your URLs
• Make your home page links no-follow
  • Search engine bots follow links. If you have bots following links back to your home page, this is not good because chances are this is how they entered your site in the first place. Although dated, Matt Cutts has an interesting post about sculpting PageRank from within a website.

As marketers in the online world, we must be positioned as anthropologists and objective reporters more than sales people out to push a product. People don’t go online to be sold, they go there for information and they go there to buy. Providing web users with helpful information that will help them buy should be the primary goal, and any SEO form should follow that function. Good content makes the provider of that information look like they know what they are doing, and it gives visitors confidence that they have found the information they need to make their decisions.

How do you balance SEO and content production? Do you often find yourself writing for search engines? I know I sometimes do!

Be Specific in Setting your Marketing Goals

There are two negative consequences of not setting specific objectives when it comes to marketing. The first is that when things get confusing, hard or just tiring, it’s easier to quit because there was no clear goal in the first place. The second is that if you don’t know where you are going, you’ll probably end up someplace else. That second negative consequence may not turn out negatively, but when you are spending your company’s money on marketing plans that don’t pan out, management tends to get pretty upset when they learn there was no real objective in the first place, or any plan to recoup an investment. So, when you set your goals, make sure you are as specific as possible. Here are a few tips:

• Use hard data whenever you can:  This could be from your website, from market research, from information in company databases or whatever. Set your goals based on hard numbers wherever possible, and not on gut feelings (although there is something to be said for intuition in some cases).
• Write down your objectives:  When you do this, it forces you to be specific. It’s much easier to think in your head, “Ahhh, I want to create awareness of our brand,” but when you write it down you start thinking, “Well, if I’m gonna check that off, I need it to be more specific.” You could go one step further by getting input for your objectives, typing them up and posting them where you and your team can see them all the time.
• Utilize S.M.A.R.T. goals:  this is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-driven and Time-bound. Ideally, all your goals should be modeled in this way, but that isn’t always possible. For instance, you may really have a broad goal to build awareness of your brand; however, that isn’t always completely measurable. At any rate, you should strive to meet these criteria in all of your objectives for your marketing plans.

Get Organized with Project Management

One of the largest enemies to success is a lack of organization for broad goals and large tasks. If you have any experience working in a large organization, maybe you have been in a meeting where there are a lot of high-minded ideas. Perhaps even in the weeks after the meeting, some things get done, but eventually sight of overall goals gets lost. A clear strategy for managing a project not only moves an overall task along, but it holds members of the project accountable for their individual responsibilities. Here are some basic themes that you can follow:

• Identify your broad marketing goals:  Examples might be launching a campaign, determining ROI, defining a value proposition or all of these things combined. What are the large tasks that you want to accomplish?
• Break large tasks up into smaller, manageable tasks:  If someone told you to build a house in a day, you probably wouldn’t even try. You might feel the same way about some of the goals you thought about above. It’s ok — it’s natural to feel that way. When broken up into many small tasks, however, building a house can be completed rather quickly over a span of time. Approach your broad goals in the same way. Break up large tasks into small tasks and identify which ones you should be working on first based on importance or another task’s dependence on their completion.
• Assign tasks to people:  Undoubtedly, you have at least one or two or maybe more people working in your marketing department. Assign tasks to them based on the skills they have and those required of the tasks. Have team members and project managers estimate how much time each task might take, and assign enough tasks to an individual or group to fill a work week or period of time during the week they will have available to work on tasks.
• Get visual:  Create a visual representation of all the things outlined above. Write down tasks on note cards and create a calendar with all team members’ allotted work week time on it. Place the notecards on specific days when they are estimated to be finished. This way, everyone can see what everyone else is working on, and it also gives people a sense of their progress and what they have to do.
• Meet regularly:  Another obstacle in the way of completing broader goals is lack of feedback and support. Team leaders and managers cannot give adequate support if they don’t know what is going on, and not all employees feel comfortable tracking down superiors when they are needed for whatever reason. Have weekly or bi monthly meetings to allow everyone to show what they have been working on in the previous time period. This gives people a chance to speak about any road blocks they have encountered, and it allows project managers to broadcast overall progress of broader goals. Another function of regular meetings is that problems can be brought to light in a timely manner instead of when it is inconvenient.

In case you haven’t noticed, these are all themes related to agile project management. There are tons of literature on the topic, and I have seen it work wonders for businesses tackling large projects or trying to implement broad goals with long timelines. If you are interested in more information on management practices like these, this page has tons of great resources on it.

How do you go about setting and meeting marketing goals and objectives in your organization? Do you have any additional tips that others might find helpful? Let us know what you think by sending us a message or commenting below.

What is eCommerce Tracking?

This tracking configuration for Analytics is a combination of profile settings and code deployed on a website in order to track eCommerce transactions. Normally, when a visitor comes to your site, a pageview is recorded by the Analytics tracking code. This data is then sent to Google to be processed. With eCommerce tracking, instead of the pageview data being processed, eCommerce data is sent to Analytics. Google gets this data by individual website owners using a collection of tracking methods installed manually on elements of a website.

ECommerce tracking is used for (you guessed it) keeping track of transactions on a website. Important data related to transactions can be captured and reported by Analytics. Things like transaction numbers, product numbers, product descriptions, shipping information, purchase price, tax information, store name and affiliate ID are all examples of data that can be captured. This tracking configuration is also instrumental for measuring remarketing success.

Using data from eCommerce tracking, you can make correlations among the elements of your site and visitor behavior. For instance, you can determine if your price point is appropriate or if you are charging too much or too little for shipping. You may be able to infer if your checkout process is too long or if the product pages on your site are too difficult to use. Of course, these are just examples, and you must make your own assumptions based on the products or services that you sell and your own website configuration.

Enabling eCommerce Tracking

ECommerce tracking is not enabled by default, so you must turn it on in the profile of your choice. Follow the steps below to enable eCommerce tracking.

1. Log in to your Analytics account
2. Click on the “admin” tab in the top right corner of the screen
3. Choose the profile that you wish to enable eCommerce tracking on
4. Click on “profile settings”
5. For the section that says “eCommerce site?” select yes
6. Click “apply settings”

You now have eCommerce tracking enabled, but there is some more in-depth work ahead. You also have to install additional tracking code on your site. For these steps, you must have access to the source code of your website. If your website is administered by someone else, you can provide the code to them and instruct them where to apply it.

Adding eCommerce Tracking Code to Your Website

Note:  Make sure to inspect which version of the Anlaytics tracking code you are using as methods for installing eCommerce code will vary depending on what you are using.

eCommerce Tracking code (ga.js)

In most cases, you will configure your code on the final page of an eCommerce transaction to send data to Analytics. Here is a complete example of how eCommerce tracking might look on your HTML “thank you” page. Note that the code example below is the asynchronous code, and is installed in the head section of the page.

<html>

<head>

<title>Your eCommerce Thank You Page</title>

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var _gaq = _gaq || [];

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);

_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

_gaq.push(['_addTrans',                  //This is your tracking object.  There are many different kinds

'3456',           // transaction ID – required (This is a required element of your tracking code)

'Your Business',  // affiliation or store name

'13.99',          // total – required (So is this)

'1.29',           // tax (Note that everything after the preceding line is not required; however, the more information you can provide, the better it is for your overall tracking efforts.)

'5',              // shipping

'a city',       // city

'a state',     // state or province

'USA'             // country

]);

// add item might be called for every item in the shopping cart

// where your eCommerce engine loops through each item in the cart and

// prints out _addItem for each

_gaq.push(['_addItem',

'1234',           // transaction ID - required

'DD44',           // SKU/code - required

'your item',        // product name

'description of item',   // category or variation

'price of item',          // unit price - required

'some quantity'               // quantity - required

]);

_gaq.push(['_trackTrans']); //submits transaction to the Analytics servers

(function() {

var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true;

ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’;

var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);

})();

</script>

</head>

<body>

This is where the content of your page will go. Note that all the tracking code goes in the head section of your web page.

</body>

</html>

Note that the first function _addTrans() initializes or starts the transaction. The second function _addItem() associates an item with the transaction by way of the ID number. The last function _trackTrans() sends the information to the Analytics servers to be processed. These functions must be placed in this order to work. For example, you cannot send information to Analytics before it is stored by _addTrans().

Another notable element of the code is the presence of _trackPageview(). Earlier, we talked about how eCommerce tracking sends transaction data and not pageview data to Analytics servers. While this is true, it is a best practice to include the _trackPageview() function so that you can track your eCommerce pages as you would any other page on your website. Should you exclude this from your page, you would not be able to associate transaction data with other reports in Analytics.

This is a basic example similar to the one provided by Google in its eCommerce tracking tutorial. There could be many different ways you set up eCommerce tracking depending on your particular configuration.

ECommerce Tracking (analytics.js)

For analytics.js, you must load the eCommerce plugin (which speeds everything up by not loading the entire analytics.js library). You do this as follows:

ga(‘require’,’ecommerce’,’ecommerce.js’)

Installing the analytics.js version is a bit trickier, and requires a little bit of PHP knowledge. A common snippet might look something like this:

<?php

// Function to return the JavaScript representation of a TransactionData object.  This is so Analytics can interpret the data.

function getTransactionJs(&$trans) {

return <<<HTML

ga(‘ecommerce:addTransaction’, {

‘id’: ‘{$trans['id']}’,

‘affiliation’: ‘{$trans['affiliation']}’,

‘revenue’: ‘{$trans['revenue']}’,

‘shipping’: ‘{$trans['shipping']}’,

‘tax’: ‘{$trans['tax']}’

});

HTML;

}

// Function to return the JavaScript representation of an ItemData object.

function getItemJs(&$transId, &$item) {

return <<<HTML

ga(‘ecommerce:addItem’, {

‘id’: ‘$transId’,

‘name’: ‘{$item['name']}’,

‘sku’: ‘{$item['sku']}’,

‘category’: ‘{$item['category']}’,

‘price’: ‘{$item['price']}‘,

‘quantity’: ‘{$item['quantity']}’

});

HTML;

}

?>

Then, in a script tag, output the data for the transaction:

<!– Begin HTML –>

<script>

ga(‘require’, ‘ecommerce’, ‘ecommerce.js’);

<?php

echo getTransactionJs($trans);

foreach ($items as &$item)

{

echo getItemJs($trans['id'], $item);

}

?>

ga(‘ecommerce:send’);

</script>

Notice how the syntax is different. In the first example, functions were written as _addTrans() and _trackTrans(). In analytics.js, they are called with ga().

Viewing eCommerce Data in Analytics Reports

To look at the data you have collected, log in to Analytics and go to the profile where you have eCommerce tracking enabled. Under “conversions” go to “eCommerce.” There, you can see an overview report, product and sales performance, transaction data and time to purchase data. You can do all the same things to these reports as others in Analytics, such as exporting or filtering them.

ECommerce tracking is a great way to get more detailed data for transactions happening on your website. The default setup for Analytics does not provide this information, and with a little copying and pasting of code into your website, you can unlock a whole world of information about your business. Using that data, you can improve your sale processes, product pages and your overall online business activity.

Do you use eCommerce tracking?  How do you use it to make your online business better? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Getting Sales Involved

A major theme in this year’s report revolves around integration of marketing initiatives throughout an organization. Hubspot reports dozens of statistics relating to how integrated the companies they surveyed report to be. Businesses that have clear agreements for shared responsibility between sales and marketing enjoy better lead generation results as well as lower cost-per-lead levels than organizations that have not taken these steps. The report claims that adopting a marketing-sales agreement saves companies with more than 200 employees an average of $195.84 in acquisition costs per customer.

One of the best parts about the success of inbound marketing is that it can be far more powerful if everyone gets involved. Having employees become brand evangelists and contributors to the conversation allows for that much more exposure for a business. The expertise of these groups in their respective fields is also very important for generating quality content. Conversely, marketers need to understand how sales people work and how marketing can help support their activities. These tips can help you get started setting up a sales-marketing integrated approach to inbound marketing.

• Set up a meeting with sales teams and learn about what is needed to make a qualified lead. What kind of information do they need? How does the lead want to be contacted? How much time do they require to follow up on leads?
• Create an agreement. The Hubspot report mentions a Service Level Agreement, or SLA. This is traditionally an IT term; however, no matter what you call it, you should talk with your sales department about what it is you could do to help them do their jobs better and what they can do to make sure marketing’s efforts are not going to waste. These two departments should not operate in a vacuum, but should complement each other and work together as a sales engine.
• Develop a communication plan. Set up weekly, bi weekly or monthly meetings to discuss your progress. Don’t just meet once and then never again, because chances are nothing will get done. Routinely meet and report on your progress in terms of any agreement that was laid out or initiatives you have started.
• Walk in each other’s shoes. Try to uncover ways that sales can participate in marketing activities and vice/versa. This could be as simple as having sales reps share links to company blog posts on their own social networks, or encouraging the marketing department to tailor value propositions for sales landing pages.

Delighting your Customers

One of my favorite parts of this report is the focus on content-rich strategies for inbound marketing. We are currently in a state where search and social and most things online have reached a boiling point of sorts. For a long time, we have put up with mediocrity on the Internet, and we are seeing a shift in consumer demand for high-quality, well-written, well-produced, educational, knock-your-socks-off content. Some of us are so attuned to what makes good content that we can smell poorly made content almost as soon as we visit a web page.

Hubspot’s report revisits this concept again and again, often referring to it as “delighting your customers.” As marketers, we must educate our buyers. We must also provide value without asking for anything in return (at least not directly). We have to be the authority that they are looking for online, and well-made content is the way to do that. This could be video, writing, infographics, data, case studies, tutorials or anything that educates, enlightens, empowers or brings value to our target market. When a company does this and does it well, all sorts of opportunities and benefits open up. Not only do people see a business as an authority in its niche, they buy from it, they share its content, they link their websites to its website, they look to it for advice and they send their friends there for advice. Here are just a few ways that you can start doing that:

• Start a blog and contribute content that your target market will find valuable
• Make videos that your market will find valuable, entertaining or useful in some way
• Share information through social media that your market will find useful
• Do research that your market will find useful and publish it online
• Do almost anything that you can to provide a small amount of value without asking for anything in return

Tracking Return on Investment

ROI, which stands for Return on Investment, may be the acronym of the year, and Hubspot’s report mentions that many marketers have goals of improving the return on their activities this year. Many companies are already doing this successfully; however, it can be a very big challenge. This is especially true for products and services with long sales cycles, complicated conversion funnels or where customers do not transact online.

Many respondents to Hubspot surveys report a lack of metrics for reporting on ROI. Many sites report improving ROI as a primary concern in 2013 as they try to justify spending for various inbound activities. Hubspot reports that 25% of marketers surveyed are concerned with proving ROI of inbound marketing for 2013. An underlying prediction in the report is that inbound will no longer enjoy the rapid increases in budget and growth that it has seen up until this year. The only way companies are going to spend more money is if they can see that inbound activities are making them money.

Some of these numbers are not surprising as more and more businesses are starting to pay increasing amounts of attention to Internet marketing strategies in an effort to get more bang for their marketing bucks. Inbound marketers should not be too sanguine because the 25% reported by Hubspot is probably much larger in reality. Online marketing and the presence of business in social media has been growing at an exponential rate, and the meteoric rise of this activity is eerily reminiscent of the .com boom in the 90s. Everyone was rushing to stake out their claim of Internet gold, but they didn’t stop to think about sustainability.

One difference between then and now is that many marketers will most likely be able to set up functions for tracking the return of their online advertising spends. You can follow some of these tips to guide you in tracking your own online activities.

• Set up tracking:  If you don’t have tracking such as Google Analytics or some other platform already installed, do it ASAP. These platforms are the foundation for how you will track ROI on your website. In some cases, you may not be able to track an entire conversion funnel on your website, but you can combine this data with other data later on to make a case for your efforts.
• Track everything:  It doesn’t matter if you are using banner ads, post cards, PPC, search advertising, email marketing, or promotions on social media. Implement some way to track people who have interacted with these marketing pieces. Place QR codes with trackable URLs on post cards, build special links for your emails, banner ads, and off-site promotional offers. Even if you can only collect some data, do it.
• Communicate with sales/production/customer service etc.:  You need to maintain an open line of communication in your organization with the people who are processing your leads down the line. For many companies, this will be sales, but it could also be customer service, production, order fulfillment or any other department in your company that can give you data on money that was made. Communication with other departments may end up being the crucial piece of information you need to complete your ROI puzzle.
• You aren’t alone:  This isn’t really a tip for tracking ROI, but more of an encouraging statement. With all of the buzz surrounding the Internet and online marketing, it may feel like you are the only person who can’t show that your or your department’s activities are having an impact on the bottom line. Realize that many marketers in even very large organizations are challenged with figuring out how their online initiatives are making money. The important part is that you do not give up.

I highly recommend reading the 2013 “State of Inbound Marketing Report” from Hubspot. It has a ton of very detailed information on inbound marketing in general, as well as benchmarks for where other companies are located in the grand scheme of things. The main themes in this post seem to be consistent throughout Hubspot’s report. They underscore the challenges and opportunities that marketers have this year in building brands in the Internet space.

Have you read Hubspot’s report? Are you facing any of the challenges outlined there or in this post? How are you meeting those challenges head on?

Options for tagging your URLs

When you set up tagging, you have the option to either enable auto-tagging or tag your URLs manually. There are pros and cons to both approaches.

Auto-tagging

• Less work:  You won’t have to manually tag all the URLs you want to track
• No errors
• Discrepancies in data from using both auto-tagging and manual tagging
• More detailed reporting in Analytics
• This method provides many more data dimensions than manual tagging

Manual Tagging

• Can be used on websites that do not allow for arbitrary URL parameters:  Some websites display an error page when the URL used to reach the page contains parameters that do not match the destination file
• When you want to customize reports with specific data

In most cases, Google recommends to its users that they enable auto-tagging. This feature provides a wealth of data on your AdWords account activity and keywords in your Analytics reports. You’ll be able to see the match type, the ad group associated with the visit or conversion, the destination URL, the network the ad was on (whether search or display), as well as the placement domain if it was the display network.

Enabling Auto-Tagging in Google Analytics

Before you can enable auto-tagging on your ads, you must link your Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts so that data can be shared. This also assumes that you have an Analytics property set up and collecting data on the website you are advertising.

1. Log into your AdWords account
2. Click the tools and analysis tab
3. Click Google Analytics
4. Click the Admin tab
5. Select the Analytics account you want to link your AdWords account to.
6. Click the Data Sources tab and then click the link accounts button.

Conversely, you do not have to log into your AdWords account to gain access to Analytics. You can simply visit google.com/analytics and follow steps 4-6 above.

Benefits of URL tagging

Auto-tagging your URLs allows data to be pulled into Analytics from your AdWords account. This opens up a wealth of information from your AdWords campaigns that can be viewed in your Analytics reports. You can also see what people did after they clicked on your ads and came to your website. Google does this using the gclid parameter appended to the end of the URL that is your landing page. For example, an appended URL might look something like this:

www.example.com/?gclid=86578hgyu

Naturally, the characters after gclid will be randomly generated, and this is the parameter that allows AdWords and Analytics to share information with each other.

Checking to See if Auto-Tagging Will Work on Your Site

There are some scenarios where auto-tagging will not work on a website. For instance, server-side redirects can cause parameters to be dropped resulting in missing visit and CPC data. You can test whether auto-tagging will work on your website before it is implemented.

A simple test on a URL that is redirected:

• Take the destination URL from your AdWords campaign and paste it into a browser
• Append a test parameter as follows to the end of the URL: ?gclid=123-abCD
• Hit enter or click the browser’s go button for an address entry. If the parameter above disappears, it was lost due to the redirect
  • Note:  If you are using a landing page that is not redirected, you shouldn’t have to worry about this phenomenon. Also, if you already have parameters in your URL that begin with ?, you should use the & symbol instead of the ? after your initial parameter but before any manually applied URL tagging
  • You can troubleshoot redirect problems with auto-tagging here.

Viewing Your Data in Analytics Reports

Once you have some data accumulated, simply log into your Analytics account to look at it. You can find data related to AdWords reports under Audience -> Advertising -> Adwords. You can see overview progress for any campaigns you have running, keyword data related to your campaigns, and data related to your destination URLs among other metrics. One of the most powerful aspects of these reports is your ability to view keyword performance in relation to ad position in search engine results pages. From these reports you can determine whether some keywords are more effective at enticing users to click than others. You can also determine if users who clicked on your ads found your website content relevant by using metrics like time on site and the number of pages visited.

Importing AdWords data into Analytics is a great way to get deeper insight into how your campaigns are performing. Google can do this easily through auto-tagging on AdWords campaigns. Remember to test your URL parameters before setting things up so you can be sure that data is aggregating appropriately in your account.

How do you use auto-tagging to improve your ad performance? Do you know of any benefits to manually tagging your campaign URLs that aren’t offered with auto-tagging?

We discussed a few of the most popular marketing automation solutions in the previous post, but we barely scratched the surface of the options that are currently available. In this post, we’ll go over the consensus picks for the top ten marketing automation tools. Some of these software platforms will be familiar from your research and exposure to the web, but others will not. Additionally, there may be some platforms that are left out of the list. That doesn’t mean that they are necessarily any worse than the picks highlighted here; it just means that they do not combine functionality, usability, price and popularity in a way that would give them a space on this list. So, without further ado, here are the top ten marketing automation platforms on the web today:

Hubspot

Hubspot is well-known around the web thanks to the company’s excellent marketing of its own products. The platform’s software is comprehensive and incredibly easy to use, plus there are numerous training and educational modules available for registered users. The company was launched in 2006, making it one of the more recent entrants into the marketing automation landscape. However, Hubspot has grown quickly. Currently, the company boasts more than 6,000 active clients and more than 100 employees. For a reasonably priced, comprehensive solution for your marketing automation needs, it’s hard to argue against Hubspot.

Eloqua

When it comes to sheer popularity in the realm of marketing automation, there’s Eloqua, and then there’s everyone else. Eloqua was able to get a head start on other companies, though, which is why it can boast more than 50,000 users. It has existed since the earliest days of marketing automation as a concept, and it has continued to attract users with its friendly interface as well as its ability to make the job of marketing as simple or as complex as end users desire. As a completely comprehensive platform, it is able to help you with everything from lead capture to completing final deals. Although it can be used in businesses of any size, Eloqua is best suited for medium-sized organizations.

InfusionSoft

When looking at a matrix that includes factors such as the number of customers, number of users, total company revenue, Google searches, Twitter followers and other ranking data, InfusionSoft is thought to be the second most popular marketing automation platform after Eloqua. The company specializes in offering solutions for smaller companies, and its price is more affordable than some of the industry’s behemoths. However, InfusionSoft does not provide management or hosting of websites. If you are in charge of a smaller business, and you are looking for software to help you enter the realm of marketing automation, InfusionSoft might be an ideal choice.

Marketo

Fans of Marketo’s automation platform are very vocal about their love for the software. A favorite of technology companies, Marketo offers software that is straightforward and easy to use. The company offers a couple of different solutions for marketing automation. Its flagship platform is ideal for medium-sized to larger companies, while its Spark platform is perfect for businesses that are just starting out. Although Marketo offers tremendous functionality and it is a major player in the industry, some users feel that the company charges too much for its services. Regardless, Marketo’s software is a viable solution for any company that requires more streamlined management of its marketing.

Pardot

If your focus is on B2B sales, you should consider Pardot seriously. Its software is designed to help businesses over the long term with sophisticated capabilities that help marketers capture, nurture and convert leads. Interestingly, the company requires no contractual term for its users and customers. However, it retains 96% of its customers in spite of that fact. Pardot was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 2007, and it was ranked as one of the city’s fastest-growing companies in 2008. The software platform has a client retention rate of 90%, plus it scores points for its quick implementation time. If you are looking for a contract-free solution and you don’t have extensive time to learn a new software platform, Pardot could be the ideal choice for you.

Optify

Optify is often compared favorably with Hubspot, and one look at its friendly, easy-to-use interface helps you understand why this is so. One of the more appealing aspects of Optify is the fact that it has a highly manageable learning curve, unlike some of its competitors. Many marketers are reluctant to start using marketing automation software because they don’t want to let leads and other business slip away while they learn new software. Optify soothes these fears by allowing users to jump in immediately and start using the platform in a meaningful way.

Net-Results

Net-Results might not be one of the more notably popular names on this list, but the company has established itself as a major player in the industry by providing exceptional service and results. The platform often finds itself at the top of various customer satisfaction surveys and lists, and it has an excellent client retention rate of 95%. Net-Results, which was founded in 2003, is a comprehensive solution for any marketer’s needs, and it scores highly when it comes to the ease of implementation.

Genius

This company chose wisely when it decided to call itself Genius. The company’s software platform is perfect for small businesses, particularly if they are just starting. The Genius software is incredibly easy to learn, and its interface makes marketing look easy. The best part about this software is that the basic version is completely free. Unfortunately, the free version does not include email marketing or website hosting. However, users can always upgrade to a “Pro” account for greater functionality and a larger set of tools.

LoopFuse

Like Genius, LoopFuse offers its basic software package free of charge. LoopFuse is not the best-known marketing automation platform, but it is growing quickly as an increasing number of small businesses and entrepreneurs turn to it for solutions. Although LoopFuse does not offer website hosting, SEO or landing page creation, it gives users the opportunity to import 500 contacts. It also allows for 1,000 emails and 10,000 page views. Additionally, the software features excellent lead capture capabilities and fantastic marketing analytics. If more contacts are required, you can pay $450 per month for up to 10,000 contacts. If you do not deal with a high volume of clients, LoopFuse might be the ideal solution for you.

Act-On

Act-On provides a simple, cloud-based platform for its users, and the software is notable for its no-nonsense approach. While many people love the software for its simple, utilitarian aesthetic, others find that it is not as easy to use as some other platforms. That being said, if you prefer a simple, yet comprehensive solution for your marketing automation needs, Act-On could be the perfect platform for your needs and the requirements of your organization. Pricing plans are also quite simple, with the basic package starting at $500 per month. This package covers up to 1,000 active contacts. Prices rise with additional contacts, and there are no hidden costs.

These ten marketing automation solutions represent the best that the industry has to offer. If you perform a bit of research on your own to determine your specific needs, you should be able to find a winner from among these choices. Of course, you can always try a platform for a month free of charge to determine if it will work for you and your organization. As long as you are attuned to your needs and goals, you should be able to find the perfect match when it comes to the marketing automation platform that will help you streamline your work and make you more successful.

We’ve covered ten of the top marketing automation tools in this blog post. What are your favorites? Are there platforms that you feel should have been included in this list? Please let us know what you think by posting a comment below. We’d love to hear from you.

The following services not only cater to businesses of every size, but they’re also affordable, provide a robust set of features, and cover a wide range of networks. Although current pricing is included below, many of these services offer customized solutions with a relevant cost structure.

Hootsuite (http://hootsuite.com/)

Spend a few hours touring Hootsuite’s interface and you’ll quickly see why so many people love it. This social media management system is ideal for executing social campaign tasks across multiple networks, as well as identifying and growing your online audiences. In addition to geotargeting functionality, Hootsuite allows for team collaboration, conversation tracking, post scheduling, and performance measurement.

The service also offers the most extensive social network integration you’ll find in a tool like this. Besides Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ Pages, Hootsuite offers integration with content apps and platforms like Instagram, Flickr, Slideshare, Reddit, Tumblr, Youtube, Nimble, Hubspot, and more. One negative aspect of the software is that there are additional fees for analytics reports, as well as for adding more users than a plan covers. Make certain you keep these expenses in mind when budgeting for Hootsuite products.

Price: Hootsuite’s Pro plan is currently set at $9.99 per month while its Enterprise plan starts at $1499. There is a 30-day risk-free trial period, so you can easily test out the service before committing to it. Also important to note is that you can cancel or change your plan options at any time.

Sendible (http://sendible.com/)

Manage, engage, and track—exactly what one of the best social media management tools should do. This great service effectively combines email, social media, and SMS capabilities to help individuals and businesses grow, monitor, and track the results of their brands.

Sendible offers a comprehensive suite of features, including those that enable you to manage multiple social accounts in one place, monitor conversations about a brand, manage workflow approvals, measure every piece of content, as well as analyze and track email and social media campaigns. Users can access the platform via a web-based dashboard or mobile app.

Price: Sendible packages range from $9.99 for Solo to $99.99 for Corporate. Their Marketer and Business packages are perfect for those who need a little more than the basics but don’t want to break the budget. A 30-day trial period is available for all solutions, so feel free to try it out with zero obligations.

SproutSocial (http://sproutsocial.com/)

This social CRM and management tool offers a rich collection of features that help you minimize your time on social media while maximizing output. Its functionality includes account management, customer relationship management, lead discovery, and content publishing across multiple networks. Although SproutSocial is a little more expensive than some of the other tools available, it can be customized in ways that other tools can’t.

Price: SproutSocial’s Standard plan is $39 per user/month, its Deluxe plan is $59 per user/month, and its Premium plan is $99 per user/month. Like Hootsuite and Sendible, you can test-drive the platform for a free 30-day trial period. You can also upgrade, downgrade, or cancel your subscription whenever you want.

ArgyleSocial (http://argylesocial.com/)

Designed for clever B2B marketing, ArgyleSocial helps you nurture relationships on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ Pages, and LinkedIn. The tool merges social data with marketing and sales data for greater engagement, improved lead generation, and better relationship building. It also offers social monitoring, automatic publishing, social tagging capabilities, and web analytics integration. Whether you’re an individual in a small marketing firm or a big marketing team in a large organization, ArgyleSocial’s software is definitely worth a second look.

Price: The service offers three main packages. The Marketer package starts at $200 per month, the Professional package starts at $600 per month, and the Enterprise package starts at $1100 per month. These plans include both marketing automation and social media management features.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Radian6) (http://www.salesforcemarketingcloud.com/)

As one of the best social media management tools available, Marketing Cloud has become a popular tool for both established enterprises and small businesses just entering the social media game. The service offers an impressive social marketing suite that includes social listening, workflow and automation, real-time reporting, social advertising, social content, and engagement features. It also supports multiple networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Youtube. Even though this tool is a little pricey if you’re just starting to implement a social media marketing strategy, the features you gain access to are well worth it.

Price: The pricing starts at around $600 per month for a Basic plan and increases as you upgrade to the Professional, Corporate, and Enterprise plans. Tailored solutions are also available, along with customized pricing.

With the tools mentioned above in mind, it’s important to realize you’re not going to find everything you need in a single piece of software. While the best social media management tools offer publishing, engagement, and measurement capabilities, they do differ in terms of features, sophistication, and price point. Therefore, it is critical to test tools and find a perfect blend of free and paid solutions that not only provide the features and data you need, but that you’re also comfortable using.

What do you look for when you evaluate potential social media management tools for your business? We’d love to know how you make your software decisions, as well as what you love and hate about the tools you’re currently using. Share your thoughts below.