Costco Travel and Google Analytics

Costco Travel, a wholly owned subsidiary of Costco Wholesale Corporation, has been using Google Analytics as its web metrics program upon the launch of its website in 2008.  The subsidiary has been providing Costco members with vacation packages, cruises, hotels and car rentals since 2000 (“Costco uses Google Analytics,” n.d.).

It is extremely important for Costco to ensure that online behavior is tracked properly to ensure success. A big challenge for Costco Travel and other online travel sites according to the “Future of Airline Distribution Report, A Look Ahead to 2017”, is that the typical traveler visits 22 websites in “multiple shopping sessions” before booking a trip. (“Online Travel Market, 2013).  This can definitely impact a conversion funnel’s path to purchase (see below for more on funnels) by showing a lot of dropout customers.  By metrics alone, it can appear that customers are abandoning the site without making a purchase, but they are coming back at a later time to complete the purchase after conducting research. Another trend amongst travel buyers is that they are using online travel sites such as Expedia for research and then going directly through to the hotel to book (MacKenzie, 2010).  This translates can translate to a lot of repeat visits but no sales.

Audience Overview Report
From the Audience Overview report in Google Analytics, it is important for Costco Travel to look at visitor and unique visitor traffic.  Costco Travel accommodates the Costco member—a consumer who is looking for leisure travel deals. Most take one or two vacations a year (if that), resulting in a high churn rate. As a result, unique visitors and new visitors are both important metrics to track. Additionally, Costco Travel must ensure that new customers are coming to the site continuously and purchasing travel services. Visitor traffic can be used to track seasonality in order to prepare for those looking for pre-holiday deals. In turn, Costco Travel can launch promotions in the months leading up to the holidays (“The Audience Overview Report,” n.d.).

The Audience Overview report is important when gauging traffic to the What’s New page. It has been redesigned, to keep visitors engaged and coming back for new deals (“Costco uses Google Analytics,” n.d.).

Goals
The Goals report in the Conversions section in Google Analytics can provide important data for Costco Travel. Improving the purchase process and eliminating funnel dropouts for vacation and cruise booking services are priorities for the company (“Costco uses Google Analytics,” n.d.). Monitoring this path and making adjustments can increase sales (Mackenzie, 2010). Goal urls should be set up to monitor various funnels in the purchase process. Visitors have many options to create various vacation and cruise packages which make funnels a necessity. Costco Travel can set up funnels with the booking confirmation page as the goal and the intermediate pages and homepage as part of the funnel.  I think that tracking the funnel path is extremely important for travel sites because people can abandon during a step in the path to purchase. Due of the nature of the product, a vacation package cannot just be added to the cart and evaluated to see if the cart was later abandoned. On travel sites, users create their own travel packages with various options to create their unique product (“Costco uses Google Analytics,” n.d.).  At the end, they do not add to a cart, but they “book” a vacation.

 According to “About the Goal Flow Report” in Google Analytics, to effectively evaluate the funnel, it is important to ask the following:

·         Is there consistently higher traffic through some pages than others?

·         Do some pages funnel visitors on to the shopping cart better than others?

·         Is it a case of some products just being better than others, or is there a difference between the page designs that might account for the difference in traffic volume?

·         Do the better performing pages offer more information about their products, more customer reviews, or more options for visualizing the products before adding them to the shopping cart? (“About the Goal Flow Report,” n.d.).

Ecommerce
The Ecommerce report can provide Costco Travel with a lot of sales data, down to the product and transaction level. Products, quantity and revenue can be measured. Perhaps there is a destination package that has not sold well online and based on the data, Costco Travel decides to remove it and tests a new package in its place. Without site analytics, they would not be able to interpret performance in order to test new products.  Details regarding specific transactions can also be captured. For example, revenue from a specific sale can help determine ROI. Time to purchase is another metric found in Ecommerce Reports. You can see the number of days and visits it takes to purchase. This is especially significant because if Costco is finding that it is taking customers a few visits to the site before they purchase, it can be concluded that this is due to site design or functionality. Or due to the nature of the industry, people are visiting the site numerous times while comparison shopping before they make a purchase. This gives Costco Travel the opportunity to tweak a few things to see if that moves the purchase process along (“About Ecommerce,” n.d.).

Event Tracking
Event tracking is one of the more important measures Costco Travel relies upon for insight into the path to purchase.  This function tracks visitor actions that do not correspond directly to pageviews, such as a pdf download for example (Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism, 2013). A tagging audit conducted in 2009 found that the site was designed to utilize Ajax server requests, which meant that a search page url would not refresh while a visitor was using certain elements on the homepage. For example, there are no unique urls while a user creates and modifies a search for a package from New York to Cancun. This is all conducted on one webpage, which means that all the actions needed to select a travel package are not recorded individually. A function called _trackPageview was implemented to track these events as pages in Google Analytics (“Costco uses Google Analytics,” n.d.). This information is helpful to Costco Travel because the form on the homepage allows customers to choose the specifics of their trip via form fields and dropdowns. Event tagging shows Costco Travel which products people are selecting the most. This is important information because it can drive which products the company offers based on its audience preferences (“About Ecommerce,” n.d.).

Campaign Tagging
Costco Travel must promote campaigns for different vacation packages. To track the effectiveness of campaigns, the campaign tagging function from Google Analytics must be enabled.  Campaign tagging would allow Google Analytics to associate activity with different sources of visitors and marketing campaigns. ROI would determine if such promotions would continue in the future.   Campaigns can be broken out by channel (email, paid search, affiliate, online ads), source (traffic source within a channel), campaign (roll up of all parameters), content (creative) and term (non-AdWords paid search) (Cohen 2008). The biggest hurdle in tagging campaigns (e.g. a “Visit Home for the Holidays” promotion) is ensuring that campaign tagging is correct. Many companies do not tag properly and this can be largely attributed to the number of those involved in the campaign such as affiliates and email marketers, to name a few (Knook, 2011).

Measuring the effectiveness of the Internet is tricky for online travel sites and can increase the difficulty to determine ROI. Although the focus of my essay is to discuss how Costco Travel is using analytics and how they should use Google Analytics to improve success.  I would be negligent not to mention that information from Google Analytics is part of the bigger picture in terms of measuring bookings both on- and offline.  There are many plans that are researched and begun online but then completed offline. Companies like Costco Travel need to figure out how they would attribute these sales (Thomases, 2005).  

References:

“About Ecommerce.” (n.d.). Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&utm_id=ad&answer=1037249

About the Goal Flow Report. Retrieved from http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2520139&topic=1649581&ctx=topic

Cohen, A.L. (2008). Campaign tagging with Google Analytics. Digital Alex Blog. Retrieved from http://www.alexlcohen.com/web-analytics/2008/03/26/campaign-tagging-google analytics/

“Costco uses Google Analytics to grow Costco Travel, its online travel business.” (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.google.com/analytics/customers/case_study_costco.html

Knook, K. (2011). Want better Google Analytics data? Learn to tag your campaigns. Search Engine Land. Retrieved from http://searchengineland.com/want-better-google-analytics-data-learn-to-tag-your-campaigns-97962

MacKenzie. Re-think your metrics: travel booking isn’t linear. hotelmarketingstrategies.com. Retrieved from http://www.hotelmarketingstrategies.com/re-think-your-metrics/

“Online Travel Market.” (2013). NewMedia TrendWatch. Retrieved from http://www.newmediatrendwatch.com/world-overview/91-online-travel-market?start=1

Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism, West Virginia University. (2013). Lesson 7 – Advanced Google Analytics. Retrieved from https://ecampus.wvu.edu

Thomases, H. (2005). Travel, tourism & hospitality the challenges of online marketing, tracking and measuring ROI. webadvantage.net. Retrieved from http://www.webadvantage.net/webadblog/travel-tourism-hospitality-the-challenges-of-online-marketing-tracking-measuring-roi-566

“The Audience Overview Report.” (n.d.). Retrieved from http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1144406

Knowledge is Power 

Google Analytics’ goals, funnels and filters reporting provide a more detailed look into a website. These metrics help track visitor’s behavior against business goals (Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism, 2013). It is imperative that business and digital goals are aligned to achieve success.

Goals

“A goal is a web site page that helps generate conversions for your site,” (Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism, 2013). Goals are instrumental in measuring objectives. (“About Goals,” n.d.). For example, a goal can be an order confirmation page displayed after a sales transaction (Sparks, 2010). Another example is an email sign-up confirmation page after a visitor has signed up for a site’s email newsletter. Goals reporting can help monitor performance by tracking the following information:

·         Conversions (goal completion).

·         Goal value (assigning a monetary value to a goal).

·         Audience Overview as it pertains to goals (“About Goals,” n.d.).

There are four types of objectives you can choose for a goal: url destination, visit duration, page/visit and event which are described below (“About Goals,” n.d.).

Url destination- This goal keeps track of specific urls. A goal is triggered when a visitor lands on the specific subdomain.  This is perfect for thank you pages, confirmation pages and PDFs. Keep in mind that this tracked at the subdomain level (Lofgren, 2012). For example, I have a blog, christinelara@blogspot.com. I do not have any subdomain pages, but if I did, I would be able to set a url destination goal. For instance, if I had an ebook I wanted to sell on my blog, I would track the sales confirmation page which theoretically would be christinelara@blogspot.com/ebooksaleconfirmation. Google Analytics would track the /ebooksaleconfirmation subdomain. If goal completions were reported as zero, this would mean that no one is purchasing my ebook and I need to devise a way to market it to increase sales. 

Visit duration- This goal tracks how long visitors are on a page. The site administrator can determine a set number of pages for this activity. In Google Analytics, you have the choice to make the threshold greater than or less than a specific time.  For example, to measure engagement, choose “greater than” and to measure how fast your support site provides helpful information, use “less than.” The time selected should be realistic or it might skew results. An average is five minutes. “For the best data, have a time that not everyone reaches but some people do. If too many people activate the goal, you won’t be able to figure out how to improve your site. The same thing will happen if only a few people reach it,” (Lofgren, 2012).

My site is a blog so I set my time at three minutes. People do not typically spend a lot of time on blogs so I do not expect a lot of visitors to meet this goal. Plus, I do not have a lot of content since it is a new blog. If I had a more complex site with a lot of content and ecommerce capability, I would set it at five minutes. If I saw that most traffic did not hit this goal, it would lead me to think that the content was amiss or that referrers were not driving the correct traffic to the site. This might indicate my search engine optimization strategy needs some tweaking.

Page/Visit- This goal tracks the number of pages each visitor sees before exiting the site. Each visitor is tracked for the amount of pages they view per visit. The goal is completed if they are above or below the number set. I set the number at two for my blog (Rocheleau, 2012).This goal can be a bit tricky. If visitors are spending too much time on your site, it could mean your site is engaging or it could mean that users are spending too much time because they cannot find what they are looking for. This number alone cannot provide enough insight to make a complete analysis (a funnel visualization can provide more data). The exception is support sites. In this scenario, people typically do not spend too much time on a site because they find what they are looking for and leave (Lofgren, 2012).  

I have a blog with one page so I do not see visitors viewing more than one page at this point. Even when the blog grows, I do not anticipate users reading a lot of pages. Blog readers typically come to the site, read the latest post and leave (“Bounce rate demystified,” 2010).

Event- A visitor can trigger an action you have defined as an event (“About Goals,” n.d.). Just about any element visitors interact with can be set up as an event. Some event examples are: external links, downloads, time spent watching videos, social media buttons and widget usage (Lofgren, 2012).

I have found events to be very useful on sites that have a lot of content and are not ecommerce-oriented. Events are useful for tracking actions since there is not a sale measure success for the site. For instance, I used to work for a company that would continuously promote partnerships on the web. It would be a challenge to measure the effectiveness of the online partnership because we would post an article which would include at least one external link. Sometimes we would include external links to registration forms for a contest or to an interactive experience on the partner’s site within our own content. They only way to track external traffic would be to set up an external link as an event. An event goal would be important to implement for a blog since blog content tends to include a lot of offsite links (due to reciprocal link building).

Funnels

“A funnel represents the path you expect visitors to take on their way to converting to the goal. Defining these pages allows you to see how frequently visitors abandon goals, and where they go,” (Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism, 2013).
Every site defines a conversion differently. It can be a sale, a newsletter sign-up or ebook download, to name a few. Whatever it is, a visitor must go through steps in order to complete this goal. “A funnel lets you specify a path you expect traffic to take to reach a destination goal. When you specify steps in a funnel, analytics can the track where visitors enter and exit the path on the way towards your goal, giving you valuable insight about your site,” (“About Goals, n.d.).

According to Eric Fettman on the Kissmetrics blog, funnels can help:

·         Determine what steps are causing customer confusion or trouble.

·         Figure out what language or copy might be altering our customer’s emotional behavior during checkout or sign up.

·         To be aware of bugs, browser issues and other technical nuisances (2012).

For example, say you wanted to track the path that leads people to sign up for email updates. First you would set up your url destination goal which would be the email update sign-up confirmation page. I recommend assigning a goal value so you can put a dollar amount to the action. Before saving the goal, select the option of adding a funnel.  Add the urls and names for the funnel steps. For example, the first step you might want to track is the page that explains what is included in email updates. The second step would be the form to sign up. If you saw that you had a lot of visitors to the url in the first step but most of the visitors did not sign up, this might indicate a few issues. Maybe the description what the email updates entail is not well written so people do not move to the next step. Or maybe the link to the actual sign-up page is broken, stopping users from signing up. Whatever the case might be, this can help you asses any problems with this process (Fettman, 2012).

Filters

“Filters are applied to the information coming into your account, to manipulate the final data in order to provide accurate reports. These filters can be set up to exclude visits from particular IP addresses, to report only on a subdomain or directory, or to take dynamic page urls and convert them into readable text strings (Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism, 2013).

I have created a filter to exclude tracking from my domain so that I can get a true picture of site traffic. Until I created this filter, most of my traffic was coming from my domain. This is a common practice; otherwise, you will see that a decent amount of site traffic is generated from your domain or a range of domains. At work, we are constantly on our site troubleshooting and testing. Internal traffic only clouds the true picture of visits to the site. Most importantly, filters help further segment data.  Data can be diced and sliced to show visitors by country or by new or returning visitor to see how each subset behaves on the site. If you have a site and a blog that is linked up to the site, you can use a filter to show only blog traffic (Lewis, 2011).

As a site grows and becomes more complex, goals, funnels and filters are important to help ensure you are meeting objectives. These metrics provide profound insight as to how an audience is interacting with your site. Armed with this data, you can improve the user experience and achieve success.

References:

“About Goals.” (2010). Retrieved from http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1012040&topic=1007030&ctx=topic

“Bounce rate demystified.” (2010). Kissmetrics.com. Retrieved from  http://blog.kissmetrics.com/bounce-rate/

Fettman, E. (2012. The Google Analytics funnel conversion guide. Kissmetrics.com. Retrieved from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/conversion-funnel-survival-guide/

“How to apply a Google Analytics filter for quality results.”(2009). Begginerblogger.com. Retrieved from http://www.beginnerblogger.com/google-analytics-filter/

Lewis, A. (2011). The benefits of multiple Google Analytics profiles. Koozai.com Retrieved from http://www.koozai.com/blog/analytics/the-benefits-of-multiple-google-analytics-profiles-and-filters-722/

Lofgren, L. (2012). 4 Google Analytics goal types those are critical to your business. Kissmetrics.com. Retrieved from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/critical-goal-types/

Lofgren, L. (2012). Why you shouldn’t set pageviews and time on site as goals in Google Analytics. Kissmetrics.com. Retrieved from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/pageviews-time-on-site/

Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism, West Virginia University. (2013). Lesson 6 – Successful approaches  in Google Analytics. Retrieved from https://ecampus.wvu.edu

Rocheleau, J. (n.d.) A guide to: goals and funnels in Google Analytics. Honkiat.com. http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/google-analytics-goals-funnels-tips/#Thinking_About_Great_Goals

Sparks, D. (2010). Google Analytics in depth: goals and funnels. Sixrevisions.com. Retrieved from http://sixrevisions.com/tools/google-analytics-in-depth-goals-and-funnels/

Blog Metrics and Goals Belong Together

In order to have a successful blog, goals and planning are imperative. Having a plan in place to track the healthiness of a blog can help it grow and flourish. There is no point in creating a blog if people are not aware of its existence, and more importantly are not reading it. Goals should be revisited regularly to ensure the blog is on the correct path in order to make any modifications to increase readership and visibility. Google Analytics is a major part of this process by providing detailed site data. “Blog metrics are all about attracting the right audience and getting them to take appropriate action as the result of reading your posts,” (Cohen, H., 2012).

As an author of a fledgling blog, I want to wrap my head around my traffic and audience. Knowing my readers behavior can provide insight in order to keep them coming back for content. This information will also provide insight as to how to attract new readers. If the intention is to maintain and increase readership in order to meet additional goals (e.g. increased sales or income), the Audience Overview report is important. The Audience Overview Report details the following: visits, unique visitors, pageviews, pages/visit, average visit duration, bounce rate and percentage of new visits.  Metrics are more than just numbers; they are valuable insights as to how your readership is interacting with your blog. I have listed a few of the more significant numbers to review in this report.

·         Visits – Visits track the total amount of people who visit the site (and thus read your blog), including new and repeat visitors. Visits are important because if you have a low visitor number, it might reveal a technical issue with the blog or may perhaps indicate the need to market it more aggressively (Georgieva, 2011). So far, my blog has six visits. A next step for me would be to connect it to my Google+ profile to get some social traffic. I should also share posts on my Twitter and Facebook to increase traffic.

·         Unique visits-This metric counts the number of times a new visitor reads the blog. My number is at four out of a total of six visits. This shows that there are new visitors coming to the blog. Note that this metric does not include repeat visits (“About multi-channel funnels,” n.d.).

·         Pages/Visit - This shows how far readers dive into your blog.  It indicates whether or not your content is being read. This number should be high, over 3-4. Currently, my number is 1. A solution is to include more article links on pages and add other related posts to the bottom of my articles (Deane, 2013).

·         Average Visit Duration – This number should be over 2-3 minutes. “The longer visitors are on your site, the more content they are reading and the higher chance you have for them to sign-up for your mailing list, click on affiliate offers or ads,” (Deane, 2013). Mine is zero. Obviously no one is spending the time to read my posts. Maybe my topics are not of interest or I need to modify my post titles to grab the audience.

·         Bounce Rate – Typically, a high bounce rate is a negative indicator and means people are not finding what they are looking for on your site. Either a specific topic searched for was not found or the content did not meet expectations. According to Google, the average bounce rate for a web site is 40% whereas a blog is 70%. The reason is twofold: “Blogs often have a high percentage of search engine visitors that are looking for an answer, they get it and move on and 2) blogs often have a high percentage of regular readers that only come to read the latest article published, as they've already read previous articles,” (Deane, 2013). My bounce rate is 100%. This is too high which tells me I need to really re-evaluate the blog and figure out why so many readers are bouncing. Again, it could be a technical issue or maybe my content is not captivating.

 

Above is a snapshot of my Audience Overview report in Google Analytics.

The Traffic Sources Report is as equally important as the Audience Overview. This report can provide good insight as to how marketing efforts surrounding the blog are performing. The report is chock full of information, but I have highlighted a few of the more important metrics to watch.

Overview –This report provides a big picture of how traffic is coming to the blog; breading it down into three categories: search, referral and direct. 

·         Search engine metrics are important because you want to make sure people who are searching the web with specific keywords are directed to your blog. The blog should be optimized for these keywords. Search engine traffic tends to click on ads so if you are running an AdWords campaign, this is a plus. This percentage should be about 50%. My blog’s search engine traffic is zero. Maybe I should create an AdWords campaign or reevaluate my search engine optimization strategy (Deane, 2013).

·         Referral – What other sites outside of search engines are driving traffic to your site? Is it a social media or affiliate campaign? Or an email campaign (Deane, 2013)? If you are executing these campaigns and do not see much referral activity then they must not be effective and require some attention to engage the audience.

·         Direct-This is people typing your domain directly into their browser or accessing a bookmark (Deane, 2013).  This stat demonstrates a real following and tells you that people are interested in what you have to say.

Another section to pay attention to in the Traffic Sources Report is Social Media (a sub-section under Traffic Sources) (Deane, 2013). Why is this important? Social media can drive a lot of traffic to a site (Pencak, n.d.). Nowadays, just about everyone is on social media sharing content and opinions which proves to be a powerful force. You can view a variety of social media stats in this report but for my intents and purposes, visits from social sites are important. I have one social referral which indicates I need to become more active in social.  I could tweet my blog posts or share them on Facebook.

In summation, Google Analytics possesses important metrics that can help gauge blog success. These metrics, compared to blog goals, should evolve along with the blog itself. I recommend reviewing performance at least once a week. In the fast-paced world of the blogosphere, you need to see immediate results so you can tweak here and there if you find that your metrics are not up to par. Naturally, this will impact the way in which you prioritize metrics. As you monitor analytics and achieve goals, you must determine the next set of goals to get the blog to the next level. For instance, as a newbie blogger, I am interested in generating new traffic and getting creating word-of-mouth buzz about my blog. As time marches on and I decide I want it to grow and generate income, the Conversions report in Google Analytics will assist in gauging blog success. This report can set up goals to see the values of conversions, track activities and monitor sales (“About multi-channel funnels,” n.d.).

  

References:

“About multi-channel funnels,” (n.d.). google.com. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&utm_id=ad&answer=1191180

Cohen, H. (2012). 65 metrics to track blog success. heidicohen.com. Retrieved from http://heidicohen.com/blog-metrics-to-track-success/

Deane, L. (2013). Using Google Analytics for your blog-audience overview. Side Income Blogging. Retrieved from http://sideincomeblogging.com/analytics-for-your-blog-audience-overview/

 Georgieva, M. (2011). 5 critical metrics to measure business blog performance. hubspot.com. Retrieved from http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/29315/5-Critical-Metrics-to-Measure-Business-Blog-Performance.aspx

Pencak, D. (n.d.). The importance of social media marketing. mymagneticblog.com. Retrieved from http://www.mymagneticblog.com/the-importance-of-social-media-marketing/

“The Audience Overview Report.” (n.d.). google.com. Retrieved from http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1144406

Create Content and they will Come

Content is king in the world of social media. Albeit conversations surrounding content are just as important, maybe even more important at some point, but a company first needs compelling content to get the conversation started. To join a conversation, one must have a topic to discuss; otherwise, it might not continue. The same applies to online conversations.  In order to participate, there must be content to keep the dialogue going to reach your company’s goal (which is most likely to either sell a product or service). Content is king because it greatly affects other areas of the online space: reputation management; the opportunity to demonstrate thought leadership; and customer acquisition.

Reputation Management
Regardless of whether or not your brand is company is online involved with social conversations, others are already having them about your organization. A company might as well take charge and get involved by posting and sharing engaging content to “kick start” conversations (Weinberg, 2009, p. 17 ).  Additionally, you want to manage your reputation regarding any negative conversations and sharing the appropriate content can help demonstrate your expertise (Weinberg, 2009).

Thought Leadership
Thought leadership applies to business-to-business in regards to content and social media. As a business trying to market to other businesses, you want to flex your expertise whether it be through informative blog posts, white papers or ebooks. A business needs to promote their knowledge to gain more business and social media is a viable channel. However, it is important to share the right type of content with your audience. Otherwise, they might not feel that it is valuable enough to share with their network. As an organization, it is not appropriate to share pictures of a pet or post a joke (Gebauer, 2012).  According to Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute, merely “pitching” is not an effective tactic.

In short, instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information
that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the
belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers,
they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty (“Getting Started,” n.d.)

Customer Acquisition
Sixty six percent of blogs that post weekly have acquired a new customer and that number increases as the number of posts increases (“The 2012 State of Inbound Marketing,” 2012).

Source: “The 2012 State of Inbound Marketing.” (2012). HubSpot. Retrieved from http://www.hubspot.com/download-the-2012-state-of-inbound-marketing/

I believe that a company is only as good as the content it posts on their blog (if they have one). Customers can see through thin content that is aiming to score a sale. As quoted by Joe Pulizzi earlier in this post, delivering quality content breeds loyalty and I am an example. As an online marketer, I frequently download HubSpot’s ebooks, white papers and read their blog. I know that the company sells  inbound marketing software. HubSpot is taking the “content is king” approach by sharing their information via social channels and avoid bombarding its audience with a hard sell. If the need arises, which it might due to the nature of my profession, HubSpot would be one of my first vendors to call for this type of software. Since I utilize their information, it is natural for me to call on them if I need such a product.

In conclusion, content is king. Without content, companies would not have much to speak to in the social space. For example, HubSpot is active on different social channels such as Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere. The company effectively leverages these channels by sharing their blog posts, webinars, ebooks and white papers.  HubSpot is not doing this as a kind gesture. They are doing this to build loyalty and credibility to increase sales.

References:

“The 2012 State of Inbound Marketing.” (2012). HubSpot. Retrieved from http://www.hubspot.com/download-the-2012-state-of-inbound-marketing/

Gebauer, S. (2012). 8 reasons why content is king in social media. Business 2 Community. Retrieved from http://www.business2community.com/social-media/8-reasons-why-content-is-king-in-social-media-0256277

Getting Started. (n.d.). Content Management Institute. Retrieved from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/getting-started/

Weinberg, T. (2009). The new community rules: marketing on the social web. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly Media Inc. 

Google AdWords or Facebook Ads: Let Your Goals Decide

Google Adwords and Facebook Ads are two popular paid digital advertising platforms. Before choosing one of these platforms, I recommend having a firm knowledge of your audience and well-defined campaign goals in order to choose the appropriate one. Although the goal of both is advertising to grow a business, they are different in functions such as ad display, ad type/composition, ad creation/type, audience targeting, bidding/budgets and reporting (Sharp, 2011). The features of each campaign are described below in more detail.

Ad Display

Google displays ads actively and passively. Active ads are shown in relation to a search query that is entered into the search box. Ads are also displayed passively which means an ad is displayed based on the content viewed by the visitor. For example, if you are searching for children’s toys, you might see ads for amazon.com or Toys R’ Us if the company is targeting a keyword you entered into the search box.  Facebook’s approach uses the company’s Opengraph objects to show ads. This formula is based on a profile’s likes and additions and edits to the profile (Sharp, 2011).  For instance, if you are a millennial living in the New York City area and indicate as such in your Facebook profile, you might see ads for night clubs.

Ad Creation/Type

Although AdWords and Facebook ads can be created quickly through a web interface while logged into each respective program, they both look different.

AdWords ads are plain text ads of no more than 70 characters which can click to any url. The character restriction can be limiting but a campaign can run more than one ad. Google runs these ads in rotation so you can see which ones are doing well or need improvement (Price, 2011). Facebook ads have the ability to show an image or show a video.

AdWords Example

Source: Thompson, A. (2012). Facebook ads or Google AdWords: Which one’s for you? Problogger.com. Retrieved from http://www.problogger.net/archives/2012/07/26/facebook-ads-or-google-adwords-which-ones-for-you/

Facebook Example

Source: Thompson, A. (2012). Facebook ads or Google AdWords: Which one’s for you? Problogger.com. Retrieved from http://www.problogger.net/archives/2012/07/26/facebook-ads-or-google-adwords-which-ones-for-you/

Audience Targeting
Facebook’s method of targeting an audience is a bit more intricate compared to Google AdWords. A user can select an audience by location, demographics, likes and interests, education and work and connections. This information is used to determine “reach.” Reach is the number of people who will see the ad.  Facebook’s targeting tool can assist with narrowing down the best audience for your campaign (Facebooktutorial, 2010). Google allows you to target by location and does not have the capabilities of targeting down to Facebook’s level (GoogleBusiness, 2009).  Adwords can target by location but ads are found through specific keyword searches (GoogleBusiness, 2009). Targeting by keyword is a topic I will explore in more detail under bidding and budgets.

Bidding/Budgets
Facebook advertisers can pay by impression (CPM) or by click (CPC or CTR). CPC may get you more clicks since Facebook appears to advertise these higher on the page compared to CPC.  However, to decide what is best for your campaign, it is recommended to test your them (O’Neill, 2010). You can also select a daily budget for your Facebook campaign. The more spend, the higher the reach (Facebooktutorial, 2010).

In Google Adwords, a good keyword list is crucial. A keyword list is entered by the advertiser into the system when the campaign is created. Keywords help your intended audience find your ads. There are other advertisers bidding on the same keywords. It is supply versus demand regarding keywords. The more popular a term is, the higher you will pay. Each keyword is assigned a Quality Score that determines how relevant the ads, keywords, and landing page are to a searcher (“Check and understand quality score,” n.d.). AdWords’ keywords can be edited to enhance a campaign that might not be doing so well.  Similar to Facebook, Google allows you to set a daily ad budget which can be modified at any time. Search traffic is unpredictable and to account for this Google will show your ad more frequently on days when traffic is higher. In order to not deplete account funds, you can borrow from other days where the budget is lower and will only charge a certain overage amount if necessary to protect your ROI (“Why costs might exceed your ROI, n.d.).

Gleaned from my own AdWords experience, I can tell you that keyword bidding can be expensive. Especially around the holiday season if you are online retailer. Other companies bidding on the same keywords can increase keyword costs.  The costs of our holiday campaigns were driven higher by competitors bidding on our branded (terms using our company name) keywords. This is unethical but by the time you discover this has occurred, the season has passed.

Reporting

Both platforms are easy to use and report generation can be done rather quickly. However, based on my experience, Google AdWords provides more analysis since the campaigns can be synched to Google Analtyics. This can provide a bigger picture of campaign performance so an advertiser can perform tweaks as necessary. Facebook Insights is not as detailed, but can provide a high level of how a campaign is performing.

In conclusion, you should define your advertising campaign goals before choosing a platform. If you have a short-term campaign and selling a specific product or service, AdWords is the answer. People visiting Google are further along in the sales cycle and use the search engine to find a specific item or service (Pluth, 2012). Additionally, if your target demographic is one not active on social networks, Google Adwords may be a better alternative.  

References:

“Check and understand quality score.”( n.d.). Retrieved from http://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2454010?hl=en

Facebooktutorial. (2010, April 5). Facebook tutorials: how to advertise on Facebook [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jOBDIql4yc

GoogleBusiness. Getting started with Google AdWords, June 15, 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx2L6EGa9DY

O’Neill, N. (2010).  CPM vs CPC: Which is better for facebook ads? round 2. AllFacebook. Retrieved from

http://allfacebook.com/cpm-cpc-facebook_b19249

Pluth, L.  (2012). Facebook Ads vs. Google Adwords: Who wins. Lifehealthpro.com. http://www.lifehealthpro.com/2012/07/20/facebook-ads-vs-google-adwords-who-wins?t=sales-marketing&page=2

Price, D. (2011). Google Adwords vs. Facebook Ads, part 3. Above the fold and socially acceptable.  http://blog.intrapromote.com/google-adwords-vs-facebook-ads-part-three/

Price, D. (2012). Google Adwords vs. Facebook Ads, part 6. Above the fold and socially acceptable.  http://blog.intrapromote.com/google-adwords-vs-facebook-ads-part-6/

Sharp, B. (2011). Google Adwords vs. Facebook Ads, part one. Above the fold and socially acceptable. Retrieved from http://blog.intrapromote.com/google-adwords-vs-facebook-ads-part-one/

Thompson, A. (2012). Facebook ads or Google AdWords: Which one’s for you? Problogger.com. Retrieved from http://www.problogger.net/archives/2012/07/26/facebook-ads-or-google-adwords-which-ones-for-you/

“Why costs might exceed your ROI.”( n.d.). Retrieved from http://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375423

It’s All in the Look  - Google Snippets and Authorship

Have you noticed that some of your Google search results have gotten a facelift? For those smart enough to listen and make some changes according to the almighty Google, their results have a new look, which to the end user, makes it easier to identify the pages most relevant to their search.  Snippets and authorship have been introduced. Snippets are a few lines of text that appear under every search result, providing insight as to why the result is relevant to the query. (“Rich Snippets…,” 2013). Authorship is displayed in results by inserting an author’s image and links into search engine results for their work, which must be verified through a Google+ account (Antkowiak, 2012).

In the grand scheme of things, these changes do have a domino effect on search engine optimization (SEO) and online marketing. Below I will outline how snippets and authorship improve SEO and online marketing.

Snippets
It would behoove any company to install snippets. First and foremost, you are providing users with the most-pertinent information about your content even before they click through to the page, empowering them to choose the most relevant result. Secondly, sites that use snippets have higher click-through rates (CTRS). Many companies that have implemented snippets claim an increase of 20-30% in CTRS, which can be attributed to the aesthetics of the format. (Narayanasamy, S., 2012).

Additionally:

·         Snippets bring more qualified traffic to a site. If a user knows exactly what they are getting when they click on your page via a snippet, the less likely they are going to bounce and spend more time on your site.

·         Results with snippets have higher visibility within the search engine results pages (SERPS).

·         Products, reviews and prices are displayed within the snippet. (Narayanasamy, S., 2012).

Snippets resemble free pay-per-click ads, thus enhancing visibility. It’s a win-win for any marketer. I can see how Google’s constant changes can be annoying; especially if you are a business with limited resources, but it’s a shame to throw away free marketing.  Snippets will be the norm are part of semantic web, where the web will know exactly what you are searching for (Neubarth, M., 2012).

Authorship
Another recent Google enhancement is authorship. Of course, to enable this feature, you must be verified through Google+. Before you let out a big sigh, membership does have its benefits. “These enhanced results receive a higher click-through rate compared to more traditional results because of three factors: Visibility,Placement, and Trustworthiness,” (Antokowiak, 2012).

Source: Antkowiak, D. (2012). Google authorship: are you taking full advantage of it? Searchenginejournal.com. Retrieved from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-authorship-are-you-taking-full-advantage-of-it/51142/

·         Visibility: People are visual and results with images are sure to garner more clicks (especially if the author is good looking) (Antokowiak, 2012)!  From a marketing perspective, I think users will feel a more personal connection if there is a face attached to a name and in the long-term can increase loyalty if the user feels a kinship.

·         Placement: Seventeen percent of Google results include at least one instance of author verification within the first 100 search results (Antokowiak, 2012). 

·         Trustworthiness: Author-tagged results look exclusive. Only 9 percent of tech blogs implement it correctly (Antokowiak, 2012).

  

Here are some links to get you started: https://plus.google.com/authorship#authorship and http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170. These simple updates can help you get ahead of your competition by marketing your pages in a more user-friendly manner. And, with the advent of the semantic web, this may not be an option in the future, but a requirement to make sure you are indexed in Google.

References:Antkowiak, D. (2012). Google authorship: are you taking full advantage of it? Searchenginejournal.com. Retrieved from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-authorship-are-you-taking-full-advantage-of-it/51142/.

Narayanasamy, S. (2012). A visual guide to rich snippets. Seomoz.org. Retrieved from http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-visual-guide-to-rich-snippets.

Rich snippets (microdata, microformats, RDFa, and Data Highlighter). (2013). Retrieved from http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170.

Neubarth, M. Rich snippets: http://www.business2community.com/seo/rich-snippets-the-wave-of-the-future-for-seo-0133386