Karen Purves

Measuring Marketing: 5 Easy Performance Metrics

Posted on 15 June 2010 | 1 response

For many entrepreneurs and small business owners, performance metrics can be a bit of detail that feels like it gets in the way. But, without metrics there is no way of knowing whether performance could be improved, repeated or discarded.

For the first time, including the internet in your marketing mix, measurement is easy and doesn’t need lots of technical experience.

Here are five easy performance metrics for measuring marketing activity:

1. Use Vanity URLs

These can be short urls used for specific reasons. You can buy short domain names for campaigns or add a short code after your normal name. Eg www.HaveMoreClients.co.uk goes to the Facebook fan page of Have More Clients.

Alternatively there are the subscription based shorten url services where you can assign a URL and the service tracks the number of clicks and where they came from. There are several services and the top three are budurl.com,  cli.gs and bit.ly 

2. Web and Email Analytics

Google offers free web analytics where you can monitor every page as well as campaigns. There are other companies offering paid for analytics and you would be best to review the different offerings.

Also, by using a good email marketing system, you will also know who clicks on links and where they go. This information gives your sales team, whether that’s you or your marketing VA/assistant something very specific to contact that person about.

3. Brand Monitoring

Sign up for Google Alerts and add in the keywords you wish to have information on. It is a good idea to include your company name, the names of key staff members so you can be altered if something is going awry. Of, course then you need to take action – head in the sand is not the appropriate action
Having subscriptions is just the start of the story, its monitoring what happens to these people as a result of your activity that is important. This is linked to Web Analytics by tracking the behaviour of people, your headings improve, the content improves and the calls to action has more action straight to the bottom line.

4. Subscriptions to your Bog Feed, newsletter and downloads

If you have a blog, then linking the feed to Feedburner.com will mean people can subscribe to the blog and receive posts as they are published without ever going to the site.

5. Asking People

This may seem a bit old fashioned and off the wall against the hi-tech solutions. But, the simplest methods can still be very effective. You can add a question to all the engagement points asking where they heard about you. This gives you feedback just which channel is working for you and which needs attention!

Adding a survey to encourage responses is helpful not only for the information gained, but it is an opportunity for your client and prospect list to engage – moving them from the passive to the active.

Once you have the measurements, set aside time to respond to this information; make changes to your marketing campaigns. Re-evaluate what is and isn’t working and improve. These techniques work whether you are tracking your social media, online activities as well as offline.

Is there a business in selling content?

Posted on 8 June 2010 | 3 responses

Whilst surfing the Answers section of LinkedIn, I spotted this question:

I’m sure we all heart ‘content is king’

But is it? If the major content sites expect you to upload for free and other sites expect you to wait for ad revenues, then it doesn’t sound like it does much good for content providers. The Wall Street Journal seems to be the only one getting away charging a fee after the first few paragraphs.

So, if there isn’t another out, what is the incentive for providing content? And please don’t tell me it will bring customers. I have only successfully used my site once in three years to bring in a writing client.  I guess maybe it depends on what kind of customers you are looking for.

Anyway, I have had great reviews for my business content every time I post here letting it be known I have a new article up.. However, and it is a big however, no is willing to pay for it. Well, I take it back, I found one customer here two years ago, willing, he paid me a whopping $1 an article for a big bunch. They were just sitting there so what the heck was my thought to begin with. Now, now I don’t know what to think.

Looking for input.

Laura Bell

PS Anyone need any business content

There has been a certain amount of misunderstanding about content. Sure, it is King but more like an hors d’oeuvre than the whole meal.

Clearly, you can make money from content, otherwise there would be no book sales, no colleges, no learning programmes and would it be a boring place?

What all these have in common is:

Content is material that people are searching for and it has to offer some unique insights.

People are buyers and they buy once trust has been built. So, content is part of that trust builder. For them to feel they are in safe hands.

So what was my answer to her question?

People will buy from sources that are focused and have great depth. You give away some content to demonstrate that you are knowledgeable and have that depth.

You have a website that appeals to the audience and even a blog that gives teasers.

Content can be sold but the business owner needs to:
- Be an authority in their field
- Have gravitas with thought leadership
- Be seen to be rubbing shoulders with other thought leaders
- Build community through free content
- Bring in people to deliver training and coaching to embed that knowledge or desired change

Content is part of your business – more like the glue rather than the whole meal

What are your thoughts on how to sell content?

Benchmark your Twitter Activity

Posted on 7 June 2010 | No responses

When out meeting with people, the conversation inevitably comes around to Twitter. There seems to be a variety of opinions about using the tool.

Some think it’s about ‘what you ate for breakfast’, about celebrities and full of junk! Well, of course with any community you can seek out and follow people who do tweet about these or are celebrities.

So, how are marketing people using Twitter? I want to share some of the findings from the recent Marketing Profs publication “The State of Social Media Marketing”. This research is based upon a survey of over 5,000 marketing professionals across the world.

Tweet Frequency

There are those marketers who post multiple tweets in an hour or day, but they aren’t the largest group. At the moment, marketers are updating their twitter accounts daily or to a lesser extent weekly.

This is good news for those people who have been concerned about the amount of time required to maintain the web presence. So, clients can be serviced and you get on with running your business without feeling a slave to your twitter stream.

Number of Followers

The jury is out about whether it is better to have a large following or a small one.

Only 10% of the marketers surveyed had over 2,000 followers with the average having 836 followers. Now that means they aren’t participating in this frenzy on having high numbers of followers with the follow-you-follow-me strategy or they want to have a large following but aren’t able to achieve this with their current tweeting activity.

Twitter is about networking, sharing and engaging with people. My view is that when you have thousands it is more difficult to engage when there are thousands of people unless you have a persona, time and respond to all mentions.

Benchmark Data

Account                                     Tweets/day      Followers         Follow

Research – avge                      ?                    836

@karenpurves                          4                 3500            200

So, how do you fit these findings fit with your Twitter experience? Add yours in the comments below.

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