This article will help you pick out some useful data to begin tracking with Google Analytics. The assumption is that you are interested in tracking web traffic trends over time. Other types of analysis are possible with Google Analytics (i.e. information architecture), but are not covered in this article. We’ve also included some pointers on how to interpret the data you are tracking.

The information below will help you analyse your aggregate site statistics, but you can also use the same methods to track particular pages within your website, especially those which you want to drive traffic to. A big part of really making web analytics work for you is to set clear goals and then decide upon specific metrics to track those goals. The specifics of how to craft goals and tracking schemes are not covered in this document, but XTmotion does offer consulting in this area.

1. Establish A Baseline

The first thing you must do in any data analysis is establish a baseline of data to compare future data to. You do this so you can positively identify what the impact of various communications campaigns on traffic to your website. Below are a series of metrics to record before we look into analyzing the data.

Suggested timeframe: last six months or year-to-date, whichever is longer

VISITORS

Use the Initial Value column to record values for your baseline period. Then use the Subsequent Value column to record values for the period you wish to compare the baseline to (i.e. 3 months later).

TRAFFIC SOURCES

CONTENT

2. Analyse The Baseline

Once you have a data set recorded, you can do some preliminary analysis of your site visitors. You have to make educated guesses, but with your data in hand you should be able to make inferences about:

• What are some attributes of your site visitors?
• Are they familiar with who are you and the work you do?
• What websites refer traffic for you? Do you have a relationship with them?
• Are visitors finding your site mainly based on your org name, or based on the content on your site?
• Is your high value content being viewed? How are visitors finding that content?

There isn’t room here to fully explain how to think through each of these questions, but let’s consider an example. We’ll try to answer the question: who is visiting your website?

3. Repeat Data Gather And Compare To Baseline

After spending some time with your baseline data, you should take a second (and ideally third, fourth, etc) look at the same metrics. There’s no hard rule about how long you should wait before sampling your data subsequent times. Unless you’re getting a lot of traffic or are engaging in several communications campaigns at once, anywhere between 1 and 3 months should be good.

During subsequent data sampling, it’s a good idea to take note of any significant new communications that your organization has engaged in. Anything from Facebook posts, to email campaigns, to a major public event would qualify.

Record these events in the table below to help you with your data analysis. You are trying to determine what effect each of these events might have had on your web traffic. Pay particular attention to page on your site that you linked to from emails, Facebook, twitter, a blog, or other channel. You’ll see that you can drill down to a single page and check the referring traffic sources.

4. Deeper Analysis With Navigation Summary

Now that you have gained some experience with Google Analytics, let’s dive a little deeper and take a look at one of the most useful features, Navigation Summary.

Navigation Summary let’s you look at any page on your site and see what page visitors came from to get to that page, and see what page they went to afterward. This lets you do some powerful analysis around navigation paths (also called clickstream). In doing this analysis you can look for engagement opportunities where you know your traffic is spending time.

Should you require assitance with understanding or anaylising yoru Google Analytics, please conatct us.

Jen explains how to identify the right technology for the design, whether it is CMS-driven or static, and how to organize content and graphics. She shows how to create a project proposal that includes pricing and milestones that demonstrate to the client that work is being done. She also discusses how to measure the success of the design through analytics and user feedback.

How do you succeed in content marketing?

• Create content that sells
• Create a content map
• Optimise content for search
• Repurpose content
• Learn to succeed even in situations with little or no content

We need content for nurturing, as a lead solution, for lead scoring and risk mitigation. A lot of people don’t even consider the risk mitigation aspect – by publishing content and making people feel like your company is providing great information and is a leader, they’ll choose you. Without content, you’ll never even have the chance to be found.

What is content?

Content is not just white papers – it’s videos, it’s blog posts, it’s real-time updates, it’s FAQs. B2B businesses need to think beyond just white papers. Early when people are just learning about your product they are looking for different types of content. For example, early in the buying cycle they may find you through blog posts. Later on, they want demo videos or perhaps reinforcement about their decision from an analyst or third party.

The bottom line: you need to carefully consider all the pieces of content you’ll need to create throughout the buying cycle.

6 rules of great content:

• Non-promotional
• Relevant to reader
• Closes a gap
• Well-written
• Relevant to your company
• Gives proof

And – equally important – don’t forget to promote. Good content is not enough – you should be using a mix of channels from email and social media to PR and search engine marketing to promote your content. You have to help it spread, good content isn’t going to get anywhere on its own. You have to do everything you can to put the right material in front of the right people at the right time.

Free your content

Many B2B marketers will only put content up behind a login form. But, you should actually use forms only when you really need them. Consider removing forms from early stage content in order to make it accessible and get others to share it. It’s so much more important early-stage content gets in the hands of everyone because even if it’s not directly applicable to them, they may share it with the right people at an organization. Further, with forms use only what you really need on them – asking less is key to getting more form completes.

Secret to testing with content: even though testing on the web is pretty easy, you still need to know exactly what you’re testing for.

Content mapping

Content mapping is a vital part of the process – consider segmenting content for different buying stages – early through late. Further, you also need to consider buying profiles when developing content, including industry, role, company size and geography.

When you do map, keep the following in mind:

• Map your existing content
• Blank cells determine your content roadmap
• Short content is good and can be very effective, don’t always create long format content
• Test and optimize
• Start small, think big and adapt quickly

Optimise for search

Optimise your whole site categorically it for search.

• Instead of grouping by “video, article and white paper” group by specific keyword concept
• Optimise keywords in content, meta descriptions and title tag
• Ensure meta descriptions aren’t just for search engines, make them compelling so users actually click through

If you’re going to create content, it is imperative you optimize it so people actually see it. There’s no reason if you’re creating content online you shouldn’t consider search – it’s too important a channel to ignore.

Making content social

Add ratings, comments and ability to sort in order to let users decide the most popular content on your site. Further, ensure you have share and bookmarking options on all content (and to networks that matter to your users).

Consider that social media is also more than just Twitter and Facebook. Find the areas that are most important to your brand in social channels and spend your time there. In many cases it may not be the most popular networks, especially if you are in more obscure categories.

Social sharing – customise your emails and landing pages so they have social options. If you’re driving a lot of push traffic to pages, do everything you can to increase organic traffic as well.

Social validation – adds transparency and credibility for your brand. If people are saying good things, leverage them as social proof by re-using them in other marketing materials and making sure they are visibility to prospects. This can include quotes, endorsements, subscriber numbers, etc.

Social monitoring – start by monitoring the most popular social media sites, but figure out a way to monitor across platforms. Make the best use of alerts and be sure you keep queries running on the terms that matter.

Final takeaway – learn the three 3’s R’s of content optimisation:

Reorganise – take old content and be sure it’s organised and categorised. If you remove a landing page, for example, be sure to redirect it (and use 301 redirects).

Rewrite – Rewrite content into different formats so you have maximum impact across channels. For example, a webinar becomes a SlideShare becomes a blog post. Optimise each for slight variations on the same topic.

Retire – when content is dated, be sure to archive but it does not need to be actively promoted any longer. Move on to creating additional fresh, relevant content.

Most businesses online understand the need to capture leads through ebook, seminar and email newsletter sign-ups. Depending on the service you use the technology that drives these forms almost always redirects the subscriber to a success or thank you for joining kind of page. More often than not these pages are default generic pages created by the email service provider and left so by the user.

In my mind this is some prime wasted web real estate. Think about it, the person just decided what you were offering on your site or landing page was worthy of them paying with their email address (even free is more like paying these days.)

You haven’t produced the kind of trust that would call for an all out sales message, but you can use that thank you page to gently talk about a few more things you think the reader might like or make a low cost offer with some special one time bonuses to move them into the buyer category.

It’s also a great place to set the expectations for what’s to come or give out some bonus information. This is your subscriber’s first experience so make it rich, add audio and video instructions so you can make a deeper connections.

Adding some personalisation to your thank you page by passing the name of the person that enrolls can be a nice touch. Some services offer this but it’s pretty simple to do.

You might considering using the form to ask for feedback, particularly if this is a thank you for your order kind of page.

This is also a great place to offer the free ebook or newsletter subscription of a strategic partner – in return of course for the same. The key is to keep this relevant and not too over the top, but still use it as a marketing tool.

Source: J Jontsch

The top 10 challenges for B2B marketers now are:

1. Greater difficulty getting quality leads
2. Generating volume of leads
3. Longer Sales Cycle

B2B Marketing Challenges

What do you think? Is this your top three?

Would you maybe add a struggle with social media ROI or maybe an internal struggle with sales regarding follow through as your biggest challenges?