2. Use Analytics to drive the strategy
Now that Google Analytics has dedicated reporting for mobile, it’s easier than ever to assess the current landscape of your mobile traffic. You can quickly identify which devices and operating systems are accessing your site most frequently and also segment Key Performance Indicators within those reports. Using Analytics will help understand what is currently happening and also allow you to create realistic goals for mobile in the future. This can include creation of new mobile sites, mobile apps, and running mobile marketing campaigns.

3. Make it easier…not harder
Occasionally, as marketers, we have a grand vision for how things “should” be which can slow down what “can” be. With regard to Mobile Marketing, there are a lot of quick and easy ways to optimize the mobile strategy. Tools like AppMakr allow you to quickly and easily create a template mobile app with no coding required. If the strategy does not include the need for heavy customization, this is a smart first step toward a mobile strategy. If the strategy includes a mobile version of your website, there are many tools that make this process easy including Mobify and MobilePress (you may recognize this if you are a fan of WordPress). Also, Google’s AdMob tool helps to monetize mobile apps with ads.

4. Identify available options for Mobile Search and determine what’s right for your business
Targeting and technical capabilities for mobile ads have increased dramatically recently. There is tablet-only targeting, geographic targeting, click-to-call, click-to-map, click-to-download and expandable ads. For more information, check out the Google Mobile PlayBook.

Before marketers can determine the goals of a social media marketing strategy, they need to join the conversation by listening to what their customers and competitors are saying in the social sphere.  Google Alerts offers a free and on-demand service for doing just this.  Go to Google.com/alerts and create customized alerts for your company, competitors, top products and keywords.  Select how often to receive these alerts, choices include: daily, weekly or as they happen.  Then – start listening.

2) Social Mention

Social Mention, a search engine for user-generated content, includes blogs, comments, videos and images.  There is an email alert system as well as a brand buzz widget.  Use the widget to display real time buzz about your company or brand on your website.  Just grab the free code from Social Mention and paste it into your site – no programming needed.

3) Buffer App

Buffer App is a free application, which installs a tool on the browser (I prefer Chrome).  The little buffer icon can be clicked to share a tweet from the page currently being browsed.  With Buffer App, select a few scattered times throughout the day and Buffer will automatically schedule your posts to those times of day.  If you prefer to post something now, just click the Post Now option from the Buffer App.  This is a great tool for content marketers who want to share interesting articles or blog posts with their followers throughout the day.  Buffer allows scheduling 4 posts per day for 3 days in the free version.  A paid upgrade includes additional scheduling flexibility.

4) Roost (by Vertical Response)

While Buffer App is a great tool for Twitter, Roost works well for publishing one post to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  Roost provides suggested topics and articles based on posting history and a “Link Library” and “Quotation Library” to inspire great posts.  It also offers a helpful moderation tool for feedback and comments.

5) Twitter Counter

Twitter Counter is the top site for aggregating Twitter data.  It boasts access to over 10 million Twitter users and provides graphs and charts of analytics data.  Twitter Counter also offers free widgets and buttons for adding to your blog, website or social profile sites, showing recent Twitter activity and number of followers.

6) Zooshia

Although it is relatively easy to incorporate a Twitter feed onto a website or a Facebook profile, it is a lot more fun to create a customized widget.  For this, we like Zooshia http://www.zooshia.com.  Just add the feed for the widget (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) then customize the colors and themes.  Zooshia will automatically generate code to be pasted to the website or blog for your own customized widget.

1) Search
Search is easily the most reliable, trackable and ROI focused channel for online marketing. If you are interested in showing up when people search for your products and services, then a search marketing strategy is a must. For more information on SEO and Paid Search, visit our website.

2) Blog/Digg/Tumblr/Content Marketing
Content marketing refers to the strategy around creating interesting and compelling written resources for a specific target audience.

Typically, this will include blog posts, white papers, tip sheets and many other forms of content. Content marketing can help build subject matter expertise, can increase search engine visibility and serve as a repository for social media marketing channels.

3) Facebook
Facebook pages for businesses can be very effective at improving engagement, assisting in customer relations, and providing a unique experience for customers. Facebook also offers a rich and targeted advertising that is cost-per-click. Facebook also has a nice viral component with both its “share” and “send” functionality. With over 800 million users, and 50% logging in daily, Facebook is a smart place for marketers to be.

4) Twitter
Twitter provides businesses with the opportunity to develop a relationship with their customers. Businesses have the ability to customize their Twitter page and to join lists and add photos to tweets. These features plus many others can help make Twitter a strong channel for creating a following or community around the business or products that you offer.

5) YouTube
Posting videos within a website or a social network can cause slow loading times leading to user frustration. If your business encompasses product demonstrations, customer testimonials or employee / product information sharing, YouTube may be a good fit. YouTube offers free and highly customizable channels for personal and business use.

6) Flickr
Is your company delivering products or services that are creative and visual in nature? If you are an aesthetic or visual company, Flickr is a great way to compile, organize and share your images. You can send people to your Flickr page via your website, Facebook and Twitter.

7) LinkedIn
LinkedIn is an excellent resource for companies who are in high growth mode and have a need for recruiting new talent and employees. Also, LinkedIn offers a group function as well as a Q&A section. Ask yourself and your colleagues if you will be focused on bringing in qualified candidates or if you are looking for a way to create groups or communities around a subject matter. If these strategies are important to your business, LinkedIn may be a powerful resource.

1. Mobile Traffic
With the continual increase of smartphone and tablet adoption, mobile will become an even more important marketing channel in 2012.  Using Google Analytics, you can easily identify traffic coming to your website from a mobile device.  You can also determine which type of device, service provider, and operating system they are using.  As these numbers continue to go up, it’s crucial to optimize the mobile marketing initiatives around this data.

2. Flow Visualization
According to the Google Analytics blog post announcing this new report on October 19, 2011, “Our goal is to help marketers and analysts better optimize their visitor experience by presenting the ways that visitors flow through their sites in an intuitive and useful way”. With Flow Visualization, you can graphically visualize how visitors use the website, including entrance and exit points and goal conversion.  This report is highly interactive, providing additional information when hovering over certain nodes within the Visual Flow.  Click here for more information regarding Visual Flows.

3. Multi-Channel Funnels
With the new version of Google Analytics also comes the addictive reporting referred to as Multi-Channel Funnels.  These reports allow you to identify not only the last click leading to a conversion, but also the preceding clicks – or “assists” – which influenced a desired action.  For example, a customer may ultimately make a purchase through a CPC ad. However, prior to making the purchase, they may have interacted with an email campaign or a display ad.  Now, using Multi-Channel Funnels, you can view this rich data set in an easy to absorb graphical display.  For a video with additional information about this type of reporting click here.

4. Real Time Reporting
Up until now, Google Analytics has done a great job reporting on past performance of the website.  Now, you can actually see what is happening currently with the website traffic. This new report was rolled out toward the end of 2011 and has been a lot of fun for marketers to begin using.  A few key things we can track using real time reporting include new vs. returning visitors, pageviews per minute or per second, top keywords, top active pages, and top locations.  Real time reporting allows you to access analytics before and during your marketing campaigns critical launch phase.  You can also easily identify which channels are sending your traffic into the site, in real time.

1. Create Urgency
   Utilizing tools such as Google Alerts, Social Mention or Radian6 can help monitor the social media “misses” that are most likely already happening. Frequently, we can spot missed opportunities for engagement around the brand through this listening process. Simply set up alerts for the mention of your company’s brand name or products. This will demonstrate that the conversation is already taking place.
2. Competitors
   It is very common for a company to launch a new marketing initiative solely due to the strategy of the top competitor. Sometimes the simplest way to obtain high level buy-in, is a competitive analysis.
3. Create added value with Social Media
   Unfortunately, just having a presence on Facebook and Twitter is not always valuable enough for corporations to build a team and allocate budget dollars toward social media. However, additional important targets within social media can become difference-makers. Consider opportunities such as: lead generation, hiring and recruiting, product launches, viral video opportunities, customer service and more.
4. Integrate Social Media
   C level executives and corporate marketers need to understand new media in order to allocate resources. Often, they feel overwhelmed by buzz words and lingo around social media and online marketing. If social media marketing is integrated into the overall marketing strategy, following similar company goals and processes, it can be more easily adopted. In order to do this, it’s important to create a social media policy as well as a strategic road map including company approved key performance indicators and marketing goals.
5. Track and Analyze
   Smart marketers typically utilize dashboards and data analysis. In order to obtain buy-in for social media marketing, it’s important to get the right people involved. Using tools like Google Analytics, create custom dashboards tracking social media programs in an easy to digest format. Important metrics include referring traffic from social media sources as well as engagement metrics within social sites. These dashboards can help paint the picture for social media as a marketing channel and an important part of the integrated marketing plan for the company as a whole.

With the Holiday season upon us, there is pressure to anticipate what your loved ones will want by way of Holiday gifts. If you have a spouse, you know that when you get married you are expected to become a mind reader. If you have children, do not worry, they will let you know what they want, at least ten times before the Holidays hit. But what if you are an online retailer, or a service provider, is it safe to “guess” at what your customers want from you this Holiday season?

There are an estimated 4 billion online searches performed on a daily basis.  The sheer volume of searches alone makes it impossible to anticipate online behavior with any degree of certainty.  Yes, Google Trends helps with projections when putting together an online marketing campaign, but the only sure fired solution is website analytics.  What does your website tell you? The best antidote to doubt is letting the data drive your business decisions. Using tools and reports like traffic sources, content and goals in Google Analytics, will help highlight top performing content, referral websites, and which pages are converting website visitors into customers.

The first key to embracing Let Analytics Drive is to start asking “so what” instead of “what”.  Answering “what” will provide information such as:  “social media is an important and growing way that people engage online”.  Answering “so what” provides information such as “98% of your visitors last month originated on your FB group page”.

Second, disallow any internal discussions around how people who work at your company behave online or engage your website.  It is easy to be tempted to use this thought process as a means of starting a conversation.  But it is a slippery slope that too often ends with firm decisions made based on the compromised and biased behavior of a hand full of people instead of the thousands and millions of visitors to your website.

Finally, establish goals around performance (traffic, conversions, conversion rates, sales) instead of usability.  Website visitor behavior should drive usability decisions.

In this line of thinking, website development projects do not need to be 100% vetted through with the expectations that after launch, our website work is complete for the next 3-5 years.  An online marketing plan should be launched with the expectations of immediate adjustments to that plan rather than attempting to roll out a perfect online marketing plan.

If you disagree, try anticipating even one action of everyone living in China and India today.  What would you guess they are going to have for breakfast today? Happy Holidays!

Several small tweaks to your website could increase conversions by up to 20%. The following 6 tips are proven, easy to conversion tactics that will help you generate more quality leads from your website.

1. Implement Landing Page Optimization:
The design of your website, microsite or landing page is critical to B2B search marketing success. A best practice for Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is to incorporate a well designed, streamlined landing page to serve as any marketing campaigns visitor destination. A well designed landing page guides the visitor to a conversion point (i.e. an online sale or sign up form) and eliminates confusions and distractions.

The effective use of landing pages in a campaign can create better customer engagement and, ultimately, increased conversions.

2. Know How to Speak to Your Buyer
B2B landing page content is different than consumer “messaging.” Write at an 8^th grade level and highlight features, benefit statements, points of differentiation, and calls-to-action as quickly and efficiently, and at the top of your page. While consumers may need to be “wowed” your B2B buyers don’t have any interest in “the fluff” and will appreciate a simple, clean, clear landing page.

3. Bring the Benefits to the Forefront
As a whole, marketers tend to focus on how great their brand is, stop doing this. Instead, highlight the “what’s in it for me” value proposition.  Focus your webpage content, calls-to-action and downloadable assets on what will benefit the prospect. Provide visitors with something of value (whitepaper or digital tool kit) give them access to resources that help them do their job better. By providing them with unique information they feel like it’s less about brand promotion and more about providing top tier customer service.

4. Provide Options
Each customer and prospect has different needs, even when it comes to business. Empower visitors by providing them with options and allowing them to decide for themselves what package, product or service suits them. Test various types of offers and assets.

• Prospects who are early on in the sales cycle often prefer general market information.
• Prospects who are further along in their research appreciate comparison charts and independent user reviews.
• Prospect who are ready to buy want information on pricing, terms and conditions.

5. Be Accurate
Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Make sure your online buying process is straightforward and simple. Be accurate and consistent with your offerings and fulfillment of those offerings.

Example:  Do not promote a link sending visitors to a registration form by having the anchor text read “download  a whitepaper now” instead say “Sign up now for instant access“.

6. Create Urgency
Your average website visitor losses interest in 30 seconds or less.  Because of this, business marketers must present compelling, actionable information and offers should instill a sense of urgency. Utilize limited time or limited availability offers for that little extra push to compel website interaction.

1) Referral Traffic to the Website
This is a simple metric that can help understand how many new and returning visitors are getting to your website via your social media campaigns. Some marketers are focused on driving users over to the corporate website from social media sites, in order to convert those users into new customers or a leads. Google Analytics is the idea tool for this type of tracking. Simply click on Traffic Sources, then click on Sources, then Referrals. You will be able to see how much traffic comes to your site from your social networks and other top referring domains.

2) Brand Sentiment
Using tools that are readily available (and free!) can be a quick and easy way to keep track of brand sentiment. Our favorite tools for this are Google Alerts and SocialMention. Both of these tools are designed to help marketers track their brand’s mentions across the web. It’s also important to track the brand sentiment of competitors and partners. We recommend setting up benchmarks and keeping an eye on trends. Things like PR, seasonality and advertising can all be indicators in changes to brand sentiment.

3) Volume of Fans and Followers
This metric is the leading success indicator for many marketers, as they evaluate the performance of their social media marketing campaigns. In order to track this effectively, make sure to monitor the total number of Like’s (Facebook), Followers (Twitter), Subscribers (YouTube) and any other quantifiable metrics within your social programs. It’s important to look at these numbers on a consistent basis (we recommend monthly) and to look at percentage increases as well as total counts.

4) Engagement of Fans and Followers
Both Facebook and Twitter provide deep levels of engagement tracking. There are also a host of additional tools available, some free and some paid, to deepen the level of tracking within social media. Facebook Insights is a smart tool offering free detailed information regarding comments, sharing, segmenting and more. Twitter allows you to see who has re-tweeted your tweets. Third party tools offer the ability to track click thru’s to your links. A few interesting tools are Twitrratr, Hashtags.org and Klout.

5) Social Content Performance
Smart marketers recognize that there are costs and resources associated with content marketing (also referred to as earned marketing). Although these are not fixed costs, as with advertising, they can add up. It’s a good idea to keep track of how well your content is performing. This can be done using some of the tools outlined above and related to articles, tip sheets, white papers and blog posts. Keeping track of the sharing and commenting will help determine how many resources to put toward future content marketing efforts.

6) Conversion Attribution
Social Media is often used during the “browsing” phase of the buying cycle. Frequently people will need to be exposed to a product or service multiple times before purchasing. Because of this, we find that social media typically converts at a lower level than a direct response channel like search. However, we commonly see social media attributing to a final purchase which is made via another channel. This can be tracked through Google Analytics, using the Multi-Channel Funnels tab, under Conversions.

Also, there’s no denying the fact that sharing a name with the richest search engine in the world, has inherent benefits. Here are some things to consider with Google +.

1) Google + currently has four key business opportunities, including Sparks, Circles, Hangouts, and Snippets.  These allow for easy access to what is trending, segmenting content, live group chat, and sharing content/images/video.

2) Integration between Google + and search will have a large impact in online marketing.  The backbone of search marketing is content and integration.  With Google + offering increased ease of sharing content and hyper-customization for users, search results will be impacted.  Sparks, in Google + allows users to subscribe to topics by keywords.  This is expected to become a social signal for search in the future.

3) The social signal is key.  The new +1 feature from Google appears to be their social signal, similar to the Like signal used by Facebook.  The +1 feature lives in Google +, also in Google, and is now available around the web, on owned media, for maximum sharing.  In order to drive +1′s and engagement, content editors need to deliver the highest quality content.

4) Google + is crazy for mobile.  Earlier this month, Google + announced that they were rolling out improvements to their mobile strategy.  Google + has web- app- and SMS- based versions.  On their basic mobile site, they offer streamlined design, easy to use comment posting and clean people and circle view, including people search functionality.  Also, Google + has recently made Hangouts available via mobile and included Messenger for mobile, where you can post photos, share content and receive notifications.

5) Connect with You Tube.  Marketers will be able to quickly and easily integrate You Tube with Google + by going to the You Tube settings page and connecting with Google +.  Allow a bit of time for videos to transfer, but soon enough the sites will be linked.