Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Evaluating Your Marketing Efforts

One of the most important things you can do for your business is to constantly be evaluating the results of your marketing efforts. You need to frequently look at what is happening and what results you are getting or not getting from it. The only way you will know what approach is working is to watch the statistics after you market. There are several important items to talk about with this part of your business.
·         You need to build multiple landing pages to test different styles
·         You need to install stats on each page to understand
o   how many people are coming
o   from what marketing efforts
o   what they do when they get to your page
·         You need to begin multiple marketing campaigns to send traffic to your pages
o   Start with one approach
o   Create multiple “different” ads with that approach
o   After mastering it and seeing improvement/results learn a new marketing approach
·         You need to review your stats often to see what is happening with the visits
o   Which ads are getting clicks?
o   What is the cost if any?
o   What landing pages are giving you conversions?
o   What ads/landing pages are not creating conversions?
o   Make adjustments (change landing page layout, change ads, stop ads, test other approaches
·         Continue to review other ads and landing pages from your competition
o   What do their ads look like?
o   Do they use text ads?
o   Do they use flash ads?
o   Do they use video?
o   Do they use banner ads?
o   Do they use a custom landing page?
o   Do they send directly to the offer?
o   Do they use long ad copy?
o   Do they attempt to capture emails?
o   What ads do you see consistently over and over?
As you continually apply these different steps you will start to see the patterns that indicate good results and you will be able to duplicate those efforts and eliminate the marketing that is not working for you. The knowledge you gain in the first tests will also be something that will help you with all other marketing you ever do with your business. While you work on your own marketing and also evaluate the ads and landing pages of others you will improve the results of your business. Your business will live by the testing and research that you continually do.

Multiple Landing Pages

Creating multiple landing pages will allow you to test different styles of marketing. You can quickly find out what style of landing page works for the offer you are presenting. Creating multiple pages at once and driving traffic to each page simultaneously will allow you to see the results of each easily side by side with very little variance other than the page itself. If you create one style and market it for a while and then create another style and market it you won’t have the same type of data because it was marketed at a different time and that may affect the performance.

Install Stats

Installing stats on every landing page you have will allow you to monitor your marketing and landing page performance. You should install stats immediately after the page is created. This way the stats start running as soon as you publish your pages. See the steps below for installation instructions for the two most recommended stat counters:

Installing StatCounter.com code

1.       go to www.statcounter.com and sign up for a new account.
2.       (Click on the My Projects link at the top if not prompted to create a first project)
3.       Click on the Add New Project link
4.       Enter the name of the site(just for your tracking purposes) and enter the full domain name in the URL field.
5.       Click next
6.       Click the radio button for “Invisible Counter” and then press next
7.       Leave all items on the “Installation Options” page to default and just click “next”
8.       Copy the code from the window
9.       Login to your web builder account
10.   Click the pages tab
11.   Click backgrounds on the right sub menus
12.   Double click the default background to go to the page edit screen
13.   Click on advanced on the right sub menus
14.   Paste the code in the “body” field
15.   Click done until back in the back office with all your tabs across the top of the screen
16.   Click on the publish tab
17.   Write notes in the comments field detailing that you installed the stat counter code for your site
18.   Check the box that states you agree to the terms
19.   Click the publish button

Block your IP address in statcounter.com

Once you install your Stat counter it is important to block your IP address as well as ours so you don’t track those stats that are not really buyers. To do this follow the steps below:
1.       First go to your website and click on one or two pages making note of which pages you click on
2.       Login to your statcounter.com account and click on your project name
3.       Click on visitor paths on the left side column
4.       Look for the log that shows your location and has the pages you clicked on
5.       If you don’t see them right away refresh the page until they show in the log
6.       Highlight and copy the IP address shown for that entry
7.       Click on the wrench icon on the top left of the page
8.       Click on “Edit Settings”
9.       Under IP Blocking paste the IP address you copied
10.   Also paste the following IP address: 65.102.24.234 which is our IP address at PMI
11.   Click edit project


Installing Google Analytics code

Go to www.google.com and sign up for a new account if you don’t already have one. If you do then sign in.
Once signed into your Google account click on My Account at the top right.
NOTE: If you don’t see exactly as stated here please just read the screen and continue in the affirmative to create a new account.
1.       In the list of products or possibly in the “Try something new section” you will see a link to Analytics. Click on this link.
2.       On the next screen you will see an option to “Add new account”.  Click this option.
3.       You should then see a screen that has a button that says Sign up. Click it.
4.       On the next screen enter your website URL
5.       Enter your website URL as the account name as well
6.       Choose your time zone country or territory
7.       Choose your time zone
8.       Complete all screens for personal info and agreement to terms
9.       Copy the code from the window
10.   Login to your web builder account
11.   Click the pages tab
12.   Click backgrounds on the right sub menus
13.   Double click the default background to go to the page edit screen
14.   Click on advanced on the right sub menus
15.   Paste the code in the “body” field
16.   Click done until back in the back office with all your tabs across the top of the screen
17.   Click on the publish tab
18.   Write notes in the comments field detailing that you installed the stat counter code for your site
19.   Check the box that states you agree to the terms

Begin Multiple Marketing Campaigns (split testing)

There are many ways to drive traffic to your site and you want to harness the power of as many as you can understand. This means that eventually you may market with many different avenues but initially you should learn one approach at a time. With every approach to marketing it is a good idea to test several different styles or ads. If you are starting with Twitter posts then track (with different landing pages) what posts seem to drive the most traffic. If you are starting with PPC then track what ads get the most clicks.
Split testing is one of the most important parts of your business because it will allow you to see side by side results of many different attempts all at once. With any split testing you do there should be a certain amount of elements that are the same and then a certain amount that are different. For example; you might create an ad for an IQ test. You can create a landing page that offers a brief intro to the test and gets your visitors excited about the test. If you see others with the same type of offer sending people direct to the offer then you might want to test that approach as well. Running two ads at the same time with two different landing pages but to similar audiences will allow you to understand which one works best for you.

Review Your Stats Often

Once you start running ads you need to pay attention to the performance of each ad. If running an image ad which one is getting the most clicks? You might be surprised sometimes. What text seems to bring the most clicks? What call to action gets people’s attention? If you have statcounter installed then you can see where your visitors are coming from and what they do once they get to your landing page. If they are not moving forward then you know you may need to test a new landing page layout. You can try something a little different that will get you the results you want. Keep testing until you see results happening.

Continue To Review Other Ads And Landing Pages

Don’t forget to do continued reconnaissance and review of other ads and competing landing pages. This part of your business is never “done”. It is something that is needed for ongoing success. You must be involved in your industry and understand what others are doing. This is one of the most powerful options for you because it allows you to use the work of others to improve your business. Think about the power of this action for just a minute. Your competition has been working the business for many years. They have done the testing already. When you see a consistent ad being repeated or a landing page style being repeated over and over you know that they are doing it because it has proven to be successful. It works for them and chances are, if it works for them it will work for you.

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