So far we’ve discussed basic ways to promote your corporate brand online, drive quality traffic to your company website and launch a site which converts more of these visitors into business opportunities. But unlike many other marketing spends, digital marketing offers B2B companies a way to actually measure ROI. In the final part of our 4-part series, Internet Marketing: 101, we’ll discuss how to measure ROI from online campaigns.
Remember George Orwell’s classic novel, 1984? It’s required reading for most high school students. In this chilling novel, Orwell introduces us to the enigmatic dictator of the fictitious state of Oceania who ruthlessly controls the population using total surveillance by the authorities. Big Brother’s image appears on huge telescreens all over the state broadcasting propaganda to reinforce the central message “Big Brother is watching you.”
Put “Big Brother” to Work
Although we may not like it, much of our web browsing is being tracked by the sites we visit in a number of ways. If you could track your prospects and customers on your site and find out what they were searching for, would you want to call them and drive home a sale? Used wisely, that’s the power of website activity measurement and analytics.
Industrial companies may understand the importance of having a website. They may even agree that driving good traffic to it is vital. But too often their engagement with the internet ends with cosmetically “updating” their sites. In order to truly leverage the power of the internet, industrial suppliers need to step into the role of “Big Brother” and implement a site “surveillance” system which provides sales intelligence they can use.
Not All Measurement Is Created Equal
Perhaps your internet service provider (ISP) has been sending you your site reports that end up in your recycle bin. Most companies don’t have time to review a list of “hits” which are too often “misses”. That’s not the kind of tracking I’m talking about.
If you want actionable analytics, the first thing to find out from your ISP is whether you have server-side or client-side tracking on your site. The industry-standard is client-side tracking. Unlike server-side tracking, client-side tracking only counts the human eyeballs that visit your site, not the hits by the Googlebots – because no one ever sold anything to a bot!
Google Analytics or Hitslink are examples of client-side tracking tools. My own clients use Web Traxs, an excellent analytics tool which comes as a complimentary part of the online strategies I create for them.
There’s Gold in Them Analytics Mines
Once your client-side tracking tool is implemented – usually a one hour job involving cutting and pasting a javascript tagging code onto every page of your site, your “telescreen” into your website’s conversion rate turns on. With a good tracking tool you can:
- Discover who is visiting your site
- Track referring sources such as banner ads and links from other sites
- Learn the keywords customers used in searches that led them to your site
- Capture IP addresses and learn whether visitors represent companies, government or educational institutions
- See which pages have the highest “bounce” rate (i.e. exit rate after viewing only one page)
- Uncover how deep visitors are going into your site
You can leverage what you learn to make your website more profitable for your company and more useful to your customers so that they’ll return to your site again and again.
Connecting the Digital Dots
A decent analytics tool on your website along with consistently asking callers how they found your company, allows you to connect the dots between the dollars you invest on digital campaigns and the customers they bring in. It keeps your website accountable as an effective sales partner and allows you to make smarter online marketing decisions.
For more information on initiating an online strategy with Web Traxs, please feel free to contact me. Comments are always welcome. Follow me on Twitter for more online marketing tips.
Photo Credit: Dirac3000
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