Tuscaloosa Online Marketing

A Conversion By Any Other Name...

adam@tuscaloosaonlinemarketing.com (Adam Miller) — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:51:00 +0000

What's your conversion rate? In my last blog post, I discussed the importance of having a form on your site to collect data from your visitors. When a visitor "converts" to an inquirer by completing your inquiry form, your site has generated a "conversion." If you divide the number of people who convert by the number of people who visit, you'll have your conversion rate.

But conversion rate means different things to different people. Depending on your business model, you may be tracking several different conversion rates. For example, you may have a progression of conversions - from visitor to inquirer, from inquirer to purchaser, from purchaser to brand evangelist (someone who will promote your product for free because they love what you do). So, the first step in determining the conversion rate of your website is to determine a) what action constitutes a conversion for you, and b) how you will measure that action.

Once you've determined that, you can put tracking in place to find out which traffic from which source(s) converts at the highest rate. Ah ha! Now, you can make more informed online marketing decisions! If you find that pay-per-click traffic out-performs banner ad traffic, then you can readjust your budget and spend your money more effectively to increase your conversion rate and reduce your cost per conversion. And in the long run, that means more business for your business!

In my next post, I'll discuss HOW to track traffic and conversions on your site...

Do you need a form on your website?

adam@tuscaloosaonlinemarketing.com (Adam Miller) — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:01:00 +0000

Yes.

Why? There are a couple of answers to this question. I always prefer the "because it's the right thing to do" answer, so here it is:

Not everyone who visits your website has outlook express or some other e-mail program configured, so if you just list an e-mail address, these people click your link and end up with outlook express taking 8 years to load up just so that they can then close the whole thing down again. It's a pain, and it's putting up a barrier between you and your visitors. Make it easy for them. A built-in dynamic form allows people to send you their questions, subscribe to your e-newsletter, or send you their contact information without having to go through the hassle of messing with their default mail provider.

Why else? Forms give you a measure of control over how the conversation with your visitors evolves. You can specify which information will be required and which information will be optional. For example, you may require first name and e-mail, but make last name and phone number optional. People see too many required fields as a barrier to completing your form, but if you just ask them for the info you need to help them solve their problem, then they'll be willing to share it with you. As your relationship with your visitors evolves and you offer greater value to them, they will slowly share more of their information with you. More info = greater personalization = better service = more business for your business.

You want ANOTHER reason? Oh ok. Information tracking. Typically, you can either have the info that the form collects sent to you in an e-mail, or, even better, you can have the information collected in a database that is connected to your website. There are even *free* web tools like http://www.wufoo.com/, that will generate and manage forms and submissions for you - no expertise required! Now, your form is working for you - building a database of potential customers/clients. Additionally, when someone converts from a visitor to an inquirer via your form, you can now calculate your "conversion rate." This is a key metric on any website. Among web nerds, you'll often hear "what's your conversion rate" bandied about. Do you know your website's conversion rate? If not, a form can help you find out what it is. Then you can start worrying about whether it's good or not. But that's a conversation for a future blog post!...

What are your click through rates telling you?

adam@tuscaloosaonlinemarketing.com (Adam Miller) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 01:00:00 +0000

As I've become more and more involved with online marketing, I've begun to realize that some statistics that may initially seem insignificant can be hiding important information. For example, the "click through rate" or CTR. CTR generally refers to the number of clicks that your banner ad or sponsored search engine link received, divided by the number of impressions (the number of times your ad was shown to web visitors). So, if your sponsored link on Google was shown to 1,000 people, and 10 clicked through to your website, then you have a CTR of 1%.

At first, I thought that CTR was an unimportant consideration, especially with regards to paid search campaigns. Since you only pay for the clicks, why should I be worried if 1,000,000 saw the ad, but only 10 clicked through? I didn't pay for the 999, 990 other impressions, so what does it matter, right?

Wrong. An extremely low CTR can be an indicator that your paid search campaign has not been optimized to its full potential. If your ad copy and keywords are properly aligned, then your ad should be extremely relevant to those who are seeing the ad, and therefore should be generating a strong CTR.

So what IS a good CTR? Now THERE's a good question. It depends heavily on your industry, the keywords on which you're bidding, your competition, etc. In general, however, anything over 1% is usually acceptable. I've found, however, that particularly relevant and well-placed online advertising can generate CTRs up to 8%! Try getting that kind of a response with a direct mail campaign!

Bottomline: high relevance = high CTR. High CTR means more traffic, which hopefully means more business for you!

Why Del.icio.us and Digg Matter to SEO

adam@tuscaloosaonlinemarketing.com (Adam Miller) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:39:00 +0000

If you have never heard of del.icio.us or digg.com, it's time for you visit these sites! Why? Because search engines LOVE them! Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website, which means that you can create a free account and then import all your bookmarks from your favorite browser and take them with you where ever you go. Example: You go out of town on a conference, and you're using a public computer to show a colleague a great site, when you suddenly remember that the site is saved in your favorites on your desktop at home. If you've imported your favorites into del.icio.us - no problem! Just log into del.icio.us, and there're your favorites!

So, why do search engines LOVE social bookmarking sites? Because they're searchable! Not only can you post your favorites, but you can share them with the rest of the community if you so choose and add tags to your postings. And of course, you can search other people's postings for good recommendations. You and your friends are essentially voting for the websites that you bookmark on these sites. Another reason that search engines love these sites is that they are updated all the time. Search engines want to provide their searchers with the most up-to-date information, so sites that regularly have new content get more attention.

Google and other search engines see posts on social bookmarking sites as ranking votes. Google says, "Hey, fifteen people on digg.com think that www.tuscaloosaonlinemarketing.com is a cool site that shares valuable, relevant information. When other people search for the keywords that this site has been tagged with, I think I'll move tuscaloosaonlinemarketing on up the rankings." And, as you're undoubtedly aware, higher rankings = more traffic = more customers for you!

Del.icio.us and Digg are just two of many, many different sites that provide similar services. To see more of these tools, just click the addthis.com share button below...

Multiply Your Online Presence with Chiclets

adam@tuscaloosaonlinemarketing.com (Adam Miller) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:59:00 +0000

No, I'm not talking about the gum! In the online marketing world, a chiclet refers to a small, square icon that usually indicates and RSS feed or another way to share or bookmark the content on a webpage. As I was building our website, http://www.tuscaloosaonlinemarketing.com/, I knew that I wanted my visitors to be able to subscribe to my blog, but I also wanted them to be able to bookmark the content and share it on their favorite social networks. This way, my visitors themselves would be helping to promote my content for me.

Not only is this a great way to build buzz, or word-of-mouth, it's a great way to increase your search engine rankings! Why? Because every bookmark on del.icio.us and every share on Facebook and every tweet on Twitter is SEARCHABLE. When Google sees these bookmarks and shares, it say, "Wow! Real people think this content is valuable enough to share with their friends." In essence, your users "vote" for your website's content, and Google takes that into consideration in the future when people search for content like yours. Which means more people find you, and hopefully "vote" for you, etc., etc., etc.! You can see how this could potentially become a huge snowball effect - assuming you've got content worth sharing!

So, ok - back to chiclets. Chiclets make it easy for your visitors to share your content with one easy click. But how do you add all the possible chiclets without making your page look like a stamp collection? That's where http://www.addthis.com/ comes in. They make a quick and easy solution that includes literally DOZENS of possible chiclets in one small, attractive piece of code that is SUPER easy to install. You'll find add this links on many major websites like http://www.ew.com/. So, there's a good chance that your visitors have already seen add this widgets on other pages and already know what to do with them on your page!

Chiclets are just one small piece of the online marketing puzzle, but they can make an enormous difference! What are your thoughts? Comment below...

The Moment of Relevance

adam@tuscaloosaonlinemarketing.com (Adam Miller) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:58:00 +0000

I was recently at the University Continuing Education Association Annual Marketing Seminar in Scottsdale, AZ. At the conference, Stefan Tornquist of Marketing Sherpa talked about online marketing in terms of "The Moment of Relevance." This idea really resonated for me.

So, what is the moment of relevance? It's that special moment in time when a consumer is searching for a specific product or service - one that YOU offer. The science and art of online marketing is about making certain that your product/service comes up when the consumer searches the internet. That sounds easy enough, right? Wrong.

There are a lot of factors to consider:

Have you optimized your site for search engines? In other words, have you found out what keyword phrases your customers are typing into Google at their moments of relevance, and are you then making sure that those keywords are well represented in your title, description, and page-text? Is it working?
Are you running a paid search campaign on the search engine that the consumer has chosen to use? Google has over 60% of the market share, but if you're only on Google, you could be missing out on 40% of your potential consumers?
Is your site attractive, functional, and up-to-date? If any of these are missing, it could mean missing a moment of relevance?
How are you interacting with your customers? Are you available for a live chat? Do you talk to them on your blog? Are you taking advantage of the many other ways to get noticed online like squidoo.com?

These are just a few of the many things to consider to capitalize on "The Moment of Relevance." What other ideas do you have?