If you’re not growing in your profession, you’re stagnating. That’s why we keep learning, learning, learning about inbound marketing! Here’s a wrap-up of the best stuff we’ve learned this week…
Analytics Blog Post Archives
Your Biggest Mistake in Measuring Social Media Success
Oct
30
2012
You think social media is a channel that it’s not, because you want it to be. All those people right there for the taking with all their interests laid out for you in their profiles. All that talk that lets you know what they’re thinking. It seems like the perfect place to make perfect customer matches. But, it’s not. At least not initially.
Final Lap for October 26: Best Online Marketing Stuff We Read This Week
Oct
26
2012
At Pole Position Marketing, we’re committed to continuous learning and growth in our industry. Here’s a round-up of what we think are some valuable gems this week on link building, content marketing, analytics, social media and more!
Keep Your Online Marketing Budget Accountable
Sep
07
2012
There seems to be a new online trend. Businesses are jumping into online campaigns and throwing money at different marketing channels because “it’s the thing to do.” They set a fixed marketing budget aside for the year and that’s it. It’s in stone until we talk about it again next year. A big reason for this kind of practice is that these companies don’t actually know what kind of return they’re getting on their investment.
How to Measure Content Reach
Jul
26
2012
No matter how creative the content, the nitty gritty is still in the numbers. At the end of the day – and, more importantly, in the thick of a content marketing campaign – you need to know if your message is going the distance and resonating with your audience.
Building Confidence (and Profit) with Website Testing
Jun
22
2012
Not testing your website is like telling your investors, shareholders, employees or other stakeholders that you already make enough profit and you’d really not like to make any more in the foreseeable future. Crazy, right? So, why don’t marketers do it? Typically, they don’t know what to test, how to get approval, who needs to be involved and how it will affect their site. But, it must be done or you will fail to do your job correctly – which is to provide an online environment that will optimally meet your customers needs.
Make Enough Profit? Warning: Don’t Test Your Website!
Jun
15
2012
Most companies don’t test their sites. Their main justification for this tends to be that they don’t have the budget to take it on. But, this is clearly a misunderstanding because free tools (like Google’s Content Experiments) make it VERY cheap. When you put that together with the logic that testing is just going to help you improve conversion on your site, not doing it is costing your more than doing it. Not doing it is like telling your investors, shareholders, employees or other stakeholders that you already make enough profit and you’d really not like to make any more in the foreseeable future. Your site exists to persuade visitors to take actions, right? Well, you don’t know how good it is, or how good it could be, until you fully embrace experimentation and testing with it.
Save Time Figuring Out Site Performance Changes: Take Notes
May
25
2012
You always hear good web analysts stressing that you can’t stop your journey of finding insights for business improvement at the “what.” For example, a “what” would be “conversion rate fell by 20% last quarter compared to last year.” If you stop there and bask in the doom and gloom…you’re doomed (and maybe gloomed, but I don’t know what that means). That fall might actually be a good thing. What?!? That’s right. The answer to the question “why” will tell you if that’s true or not. Without that, you’re taking stabs in the dark.
Metrics That Lie to You: Average Position (Part 2)
May
11
2012
We’re taking a look at how the “average position” metric lies to you (or more accurately, is misunderstood by you). In part one, we studied the reasons behind this and why distributions in Google Webmaster Tools is your sweet release for truly understanding your organic search position listings.
Let me wrap this up by showing you how to examine distributions in your AdWords account, as well. This is really important because, if you believe campaign/ad group/keyword/ad performance equals “My click-through rate/conversion rate/cost per conversion is at an average position of 3,” you’re not getting the real story. Plus, an average number is not actionable. But, if you segment positioning into distributions, you can now see performance differences in different positions on the page, draw some conclusions and take some action.
Metrics That Lie to You: Average Position (Part 1)
May
04
2012
I wouldn’t call the “average position” metric pointless, but it’s definitely lying to you. Most people approach this metric with a natural misunderstanding. It’s natural to think, “This is the average position that my organic listing or paid ad shows up at in a search for this keyword.” Sorry, but no. How could a tool just flat out lie to you? Well, the tool isn’t lying to you. It’s your understanding of what that metric is communicating that is lying to you. In a recent article titled, “The big lie of AdWords average position,” light is shed upon this subject. But, this goes beyond AdWords to organic search and many other applications in life as well.
The temptation to use averages goes along with the fact that we really like to have one number that will represent overall performance. It’s easier. The problem is that averages don’t really tell you anything about what’s going on. There are a few reasons for this…
- "Our clients often tell us we're one in a million. Turns out we're really just one of a hundred thousand or so. But what they're really saying is that we get results that increase traffic, sales and ROI! Number one of a million? Yeah, that's where we put you when we velocitize your web marketing."
