A case study and examples of reviewing content marketing effectiveness in Google Analytics

In our 2 previous posts on selecting the best KPIs for reviewing content marketing effectiveness we looked at the best types of measures to use. In this post, I get into the details of how to check some of these KPIs in Google Analytics and in particular to show your efforts in creating content impact leads or sales. Remember that we need to isolate the effect of particular content you have invested in in creating incremental leads or sales. To help do this, it's best if your site structure is setup right to measure effectively - I use the engineering term DFA "Design for Analysis" to prompt site designers think about this. I'll take some examples from ClickThrough Marketing who I have helped provide content for - around a year ago we created a series of printed 101…

An introduction to selecting the right B2B social media options

Most business-to-business (B2B) companies are already employing some form of social media as part of their marketing mix. But how many B2B marketers really think about their customers, who they are, what they look like, what they like and where they congregate, before selecting and using social media tools? And which are the right tools to use? I think there's a danger that companies feel they have to use everything, but fail to prioritise on the social media networks that matter [Editor's note - you discuss with colleagues what to prioritise with our Digital Marketing Radar].

The social media business conundrum

Using social media and selecting the right tools is the urgent marketing challenge facing B2B marketers. But they are faced with huge challenges that their B2C colleagues are not. The immediate and emotional nature of the B2C purchase compared to the complicated,…

We introduced Google +1 on our Google updates page back in March when this was announced, but it only became live in the UK on June 29th. So it's time to take another look and think through the implications for marketing.

June 30th update: When I originally wrote this post, I asked about methods of measuring +1 interactions, well Google were on the case and next day announced methods to measure +1s which I've linked to at the end of the post. This is a fantastic new feature in Google Analytics since it also shows Facebook and Twitter interactions - both on your site and in the network. Google's original announcement explains how it works, but let's take a look at an example from when it went live - not many yet. You will have seen that Google has a new interface with a grey bar and a "+1" icon to…

A brief update on Google's Facebook competitor

Well, Google's latest project to grab a greater share of our online social interactions has finally been unveiled. We may soon have to talk about five major social networks which are a priority for online marketing: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube AND Google+. This will likely be THE biggest development in 2011 for digital marketers to think of new marketing approaches for, although I suspect it won't go live until 2012. Will that be fast enough? There have already been several in-depth, breathless, mostly sycophantic writeups from Google briefings to Mashable, Searchengineland and Techcrunch. Each of their headlines positions it squarely as a serious competitor to Facebook. So I thought we'd focus on the essentials you need to know to answer questions from colleagues. Everyone will be forming their own impressions, these are mine so far :) Let me know if you think different,…

Hitwise data reveals the importance of Facebook marketing for online retailers

In a recent post Robin Goad of Hitwise reminds that "Facebook is the second most visited website in the UK after Google and is now the second biggest source of traffic to other websites as well. 1 in every 6 page views from UK Internet users goes to a Facebook page, and 20 million hours are spent on the website every day from UK users alone." So far, so good - we know Facebook is big! There's no question of the importance of social media, content and inbound marketing, with Facebook being an important part of that ecosystem. The Hitwise research data stresses the value of Facebook for multi-channel marketers. According to Hitwise, the same names are dominating - Topshop, ASOS etc - the majority being own or one-brand online retailers. The context here is…

A reminder to dive deeper into your email testing results

Split testing of email campaigns is a great way to learn and improve your results. Testing works by changing particular campaign elements, sending both the orignal (control) and new version (treatment) and then measuring the difference in results. However test results can be ruined when there are additional factors that impact one test cell's results but not the other test cells. When this happens you can pick the wrong winner and end up decreasing campaign performance and revenue. I was recently running a test and was hit by an external factor that without correction would have meant wrong conclusions were reached. When diving into the results of one test cell I observed that one email address had clicked five times on every single link in the email. Upon investigation it turned out these clicks were not clicks from a human but clicks by a…

New UK rate card salary survey for digital marketing

I've been a big fan of the Econsultancy agency rate card survey and have pointed many people towards it when I have questions about salaries. But their  last survey was in 2008. So it was good to see an alternative published last week by New Media Age. This is published as part of a Digital Professional Supplement which you can read in full here. It is based on responses from 2,000 people working on digital media in the UK. It'a useful since it has sections for both client-side/brand and agency jobs (click to enlarge):

Average company salaries for digital marketing roles in UK 2011

Average agency salaries for digital marketing roles in UK 2011

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A genuine framework to operationalise your inbound (or content) marketing We're big fans of the marketing that Eloqua do, much of it with designers JESS3, they do inbound/content marketing so well - it's gold standard stuff in terms of best practise. Check out their Revenue Blog, Revenue SlideShare and their Revenue Stream. One of their most popular, highly effective, awareness generating pieces of content (this blog being a case in point) is their Content Grid, which has just had a refresh, see below. This v2 builds upon the original (see right at the bottom) - illustrating the connection between content type and distribution channel. It now adds on the perspective of the buyer, the concept of a multi-stage conversion funnel, and a comprehensive collection of KPIs, we blogged something related to those KPI's earlier this week for content marketing. As Eloqua remind,…

For the past couple of years I've enjoyed checking out the annual Email Marketing Look book from Chad White of the Retail Email Marketing blog. This year it's part of Responsys, but still looks great and I think will inspire email marketers at different levels, for example, how to use Email marketing to... Build a brand and develop relationships Personalise through contextual or behavioural emails Support different devices and platforms - support for mobile and tablet devices are to the fore in this years examples - important given the evidence of the increased importance of mobile email reading/scanning. The only disappointment was examples of social media integration were a bit thin. You can download the LookBook for the full-set, here is my selection of what inspired me most:

Nike UK Enewsletter which gets the Sell-Inform-Entertain balance right

Volvo UK email with responsive design…

A reference of major Google updates we think marketers involved in SEO, Pay Per Click or Social media need to know about

Each day Google makes many changes and updates to its different tools and it does a great job of announcing them through all its blogs and feeds, but it can be difficult to keep on top of what matters and what doesn't, particularly if you're a generalist marketer or digital marketer rather than a search marketing specialists. So on this page we try to help by being selective for you to update you on Google's algorithm updates, new tools, policies and changes to Google makes we think everyone working in digital marketing or marketing needs to know about, even if they're not a search specialist! Hopefully SEO or Adwords specialists will find it useful too and can let us know what we're missing!

June 2011 Google updates

June 29th: Google+1 recommendations buttons live…