When speaking with small business owners regarding search marketing there is one area that is really fun to talk about; analytics. All you need to do is ask most business owners how they are tracking traffic and conversions for their site and they say one of the following:
1. I think someone in the office does that.
2. I get a report but I have no idea what it is telling me.
3. Well, of course I do! (While in the back of their mind they are thinking they better do that in the future for sure)
4. You can track that stuff?
Of course, this is an area of great concern for those of us who are in the search marketing business. We feel that there is no way that someone can’t be tracking their web site’s performance and call themselves a business person. While that may appear to be a really arrogant position to some it is one that is not without merit.
Part of the beauty of search marketing and most anything internet related is the ability to track the results down to whatever level of detail you desire. It’s a major reason why many business folks in these times of tight spending will listen to what we say as search marketers. It is very difficult (although not entirely impossible I suppose) to accurately track most other forms of marketing that many small businesses get involved in. Some of the mass media plays like newspaper or broadcast (TV and radio) are near impossible to track with any level of confidence. Unless you are getting into sophisticated uses of specific toll free numbers for each ad at each time of the day etc. etc. it’s really tough to determine how much business is actually generated from those efforts and then attaching an ROI (return on investment) number to it. Of course, you can never under play the branding aspect of these broad marketing approaches but that is very tough to tie actual numbers to as well.
With search marketing there are free tools like Google Analytics that can help the small business owner / marketer tie a specific action of the website visitor to a sale / conversion. Or, just as importantly, one can track patterns of visitors and identify weaknesses in messaging or site structure or any other of a myriad number of things that can help you get better in attracting and engaging new customers and returning customers alike. While it’s not intuitive for most people it is also not as difficult to manage the tracking abilities of some of the tools in the marketplace.
I will leave the technical details up to those who know these tools better than I ever will. I will, however, continue to make the business case for the strong use of analytics to make educated business decisions that will help dollars fall to the bottom line. You don’t have to be a technical wizard to see the application of web analytics. Make sure you know who is coming to your site, what they are doing at your site and what you would eventually like to them to do at your site. The more you know the more you grow.
Thanks and have a great day!
