Curious about Restream.io? This article provides the best Restream io review of its features, user experience, and value, helping you decide if it enhances your live streaming.

Key Takeaways

• Restream.io allows users to multistream to over 30 platforms effortlessly, making it a top choice for content creators wanting to maximize their reach.
• Its user-friendly interface and customizable features cater to both beginners and experienced streamers, ensuring a seamless streaming experience.
• Restream offers free and paid plans, with the free option providing solid functionality while the paid tiers unlock advanced features for improved streaming performance.

Restream.io Overview

Restream.io, founded in 2015 by Andrew Surzhynskyi and Alexander Khuda, started its journey as a free tool primarily for gamers. Over the years, it has evolved into a robust multistreaming platform supporting over 30 streaming sites, including major players like YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook. The platform’s core functionality allows users to broadcast live videos to multiple social media platforms simultaneously, simplifying the process of reaching a larger demographic.

Content creators can use Restream.io to share various formats, including live streams and pre-recorded videos, extending their reach across multiple streaming channels. This versatility makes it an essential tool for maximizing online presence and engaging a broader audience.

The Restream website provides an intuitive interface that makes it easy to manage multiple sites and streaming channels, ensuring that users can focus on creating engaging content rather than getting bogged down in technical details.

Ease of Use

One of the standout features of Restream.io is its user-friendly interface. Setting up a restream account is a straightforward process, allowing users to start broadcasting with just a single click. This ease of use extends to the restream studio, where navigating the dashboard and conducting a test stream are simple tasks, ensuring that even beginners can get their streams up and running quickly.

Customizable branding options give users more control over their stream’s appearance. Whether you’re a novice or an experienced streamer, the platform’s intuitive design and existing tools make it easy to manage and customize your streams across multiple platforms.

Key Features

Key features of Restream.io enhance the streaming experience. The browser-based Restream studio allows users to go live directly from their web browser, creating custom layouts and utilizing tools like overlays and background editing to customize their streams. For advanced users, the platform supports Custom RTMP, enabling them to stream to different platforms using custom settings.

Another noteworthy feature is the Split Audio Track Recording, which provides the ability to record audio tracks separately, giving users more control over their streaming content.

These features, combined with the platform’s customizable branding options, make Restream.io a versatile and powerful tool for any content creator looking to enhance their live streaming capabilities.

Free and Paid Options

Restream.io offers both free and paid options to cater to a wide range of users. The free plan is ideal for aspiring multistreamers starting out in live streaming, providing access to channels that are most relevant to their needs. While the free version comes with limitations, such as a restream watermark and restricted customization options, it still offers significant value for those just beginning their live streaming journey.

For users seeking advanced features, Restream’s paid options offer increased streaming quality, additional destinations, and more comprehensive data analytics. These paid plans are designed to meet the needs of more experienced streamers, providing the tools necessary to elevate their streaming performance and reach a broader audience.

Live Streaming with Restream.io

The platform caters to various use cases, including live interviews, gameplay streaming, in-person events, and webinars. The platform supports streaming to popular sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Twitch, making it a versatile tool for reaching audiences across different platforms.

Optimizing multi-streaming with Restream.io involves following best practices for audience engagement and stream performance. Utilizing the platform’s various tools and features can significantly enhance the quality and reach of your live streams, ensuring that you can effectively connect with your viewers across multiple platforms.

Live Studio Capabilities

Restream Live Studio provides various tools to enhance live streaming. Users can customize their video streams with various tools, including overlays and background editing options, to create a professional and polished look. Invited presenters can stream themselves and share their screens during live sessions, making it easy to conduct live interviews and interactive presentations.

Real-time channel toggling lets users end streams on one platform while continuing on another. Paid plans further enhance streaming capabilities with features like RTMP pull links for real-time translations and commentary, providing even more flexibility and control over your live content.

Stream Pre-recorded Videos

The platform supports streaming pre-recorded videos, useful for users not always available to go live. The Scheduler feature allows users to plan and promote upcoming streams in advance, ensuring that their audience is aware of when to tune in. Users should note that they cannot schedule multiple streams simultaneously on Restream.io.

The Upload & Stream feature converts pre-recorded videos into live streams and video broadcasts, supporting various formats such as MOV, M4V, MKV, and MP4. This feature is available on Professional plans and above, making it an excellent option for those who need to broadcast content even when they’re unavailable.

Audience Engagement Tools

Audience engagement is crucial for building loyalty, and Restream.io provides several tools to facilitate this. Restream Chat aggregates comments from multiple platforms into one interface, allowing streamers to engage with viewers more effectively. Utilizing interactive elements like polls and Q&A sessions can further enhance audience engagement and interaction.

Additionally, Restream offers analytics features that provide real-time insights into stream performance, helping streamers assess their audience engagement and adjust strategies accordingly. By implementing these engagement tools, streamers can extend their reach and build a loyal audience through regular interaction and content engagement.

Performance and Quality

Restream.io delivers high-quality, stable streams. This combination of high quality and stability enhances the user experience, ensuring that streams remain smooth and reliable across multiple platforms.

Video Quality and Stability

The platform supports a maximum streaming resolution of 1080p Full HD and a frame rate of 30 FPS across its Professional, Premium, and Business plans. The platform ensures stable streaming by utilizing a global network of servers, praised for its reliable performance even during peak times.

The platform can automatically fine-tune streaming quality based on the internet connection, with manual adjustments available for optimization. Video resolution is crucial for enhancing the viewing experience during live streams, affecting detail and clarity.

Stream Recording and Analytics

Recording livestreams with Restream is available on standard or paid plans. The Business plan allows users to upload videos of up to two hours in length and a maximum file size of 5GB, with recordings stored for 30 days.

Real-time analytics on viewer engagement, such as live views and chat activity, can enhance streaming performance. Restream provides various stream performance analysis metrics, including Stream, Audience, Chat, and Followers Metrics, allowing users to monitor their stream performance and make data-driven decisions.

Scalability and CPU Usage

The platform scales with audience growth, managing viewership spikes without losing quality. It reduces strain on local hardware, allowing users to stream without significant CPU load and ensuring a smooth streaming experience across multiple platforms.

User Experience

Restream Studio is the primary tool for managing live streams on the platform. With just a few clicks, Restream.io makes it easy to share videos across multiple platforms, ensuring a seamless and efficient streaming experience for users.

Customer Support

Customer support is available through email, live chat, and social media, though response times can vary, especially during peak issues. Some users have reported experiencing bugs that can disrupt live streaming and technical glitches, particularly with specific features like updating stream titles.

Common criticisms also include the limitations of customer support during peak usage times.

Community Feedback

Users consistently praise the platform for its quick responses and effective customer service. In case of technical issues during a stream, users recommend preparing backup internet options and having pre-recorded content ready, including on demand videos.

The community expresses strong support and a proactive approach to overcoming streaming challenges. Community feedback plays a crucial role in evaluating Restream.io’s services and helps in understanding user sentiment.

Comparisons with Other Multistreaming Platforms

The platform excels in multistreaming, enabling users to reach a wider audience across numerous platforms simultaneously. However, it’s essential to compare it with other multistreaming platforms like StreamYard, OBS Studio, and Streamlabs to understand its unique strengths and potential areas for improvement.

Restream vs. StreamYard

One of the main advantages of using Restream over StreamYard is its ability to send streams to more websites. While StreamYard doesn’t support multistreaming on its free plan, Restream’s free plan offers more features, allowing streaming to over 30 channels compared to StreamYard’s limitation of streaming only to one platform.

The platform is ideal for those needing to stream to multiple platforms simultaneously, making it excellent for reaching a broad audience. StreamYard, however, provides additional customization options for stream overlays, catering to different user needs.

Restream vs. OBS Studio

Users often prefer Restream for its straightforward streaming solution and ease of use. While OBS Studio offers extensive customization and advanced features, it requires a more complex installation process, which can be a barrier for some users.

The choice between Restream and OBS Studio often comes down to whether the user prioritizes ease of use or advanced video editing capabilities. Restream simplifies the streaming process, making it more accessible for users seeking ease of use, while OBS Studio caters to those needing advanced editing tools.

Restream vs. Streamlabs

Restream.io allows users to stream live content to multiple platforms simultaneously, enabling broader audience reach and engagement. It offers features like Restream Studio, which allows for layout customization and real-time channel toggling, enhancing the multistreaming experience.

Streamlabs, on the other hand, focuses on features that support donations and chatbots, providing tools that enhance audience interaction and monetization. While Restream excels in multistreaming capabilities, Streamlabs prioritizes viewer interaction through donations and chatbot services, catering to different user needs.

Pricing Plans

The platform offers both free and paid options, making it accessible to a wide range of users. The free plan allows streaming to more than 30 platforms at a resolution of 720p, providing significant value for beginners and those just starting out in live streaming.

Individual Plans

Paid plans start at $16/month, offering reasonable value for the features provided. The free plan, though limited to streaming to two websites and featuring a Restream watermark, is primarily targeted towards beginners. Paid plans offer more features and greater access to streaming channels, making them suitable for more experienced streamers.

Overall, Restream’s subscription options cater to diverse streaming needs, providing a range of features that make it an attractive platform for both beginners and seasoned streamers.

Business Plans

Restream.io offers a range of business plans tailored to varying streaming needs, providing flexibility for companies. These plans include advanced features such as enhanced analytics, additional channels for streaming, and priority customer support. Companies with higher streaming demands benefit significantly from the additional features and support provided by the business plans.

These business plans allow companies to effectively reach wider audiences and improve engagement through robust streaming capabilities, making Restream.io a valuable tool for small businesses and larger enterprises alike.

Pros and Cons

Restream.io offers significant advantages for live streaming, paired with some limitations in video editing and potential technical issues. Its extensive features and wide platform compatibility make it a strong contender in the multistreaming space.

Pros

The platform is recognized for its user-friendly interface, suitable for both beginners and experienced streamers. Its extensive feature set includes accessibility and advanced functionalities, such as the ability to send live videos to over 30 social media sites simultaneously, enhancing its feature offerings.

Supporting a variety of streaming platforms, the streaming platform is versatile for broadcasting content across multiple channels. Overall, the platform’s user-friendly design and comprehensive features make it an excellent choice for anyone looking to enhance their live streaming capabilities.

Cons

Despite its many strengths, Restream.io does have some drawbacks. Starting at $16 per month, some features may be a barrier for certain users. Additionally, users may experience a small delay in video delivery speed, usually less than 2 seconds.

Users may also encounter limitations on advanced features unless they subscribe to a paid plan, which could be frustrating for those looking to fully utilize the platform without incurring additional costs. While these cons are relatively minor, they are worth considering when evaluating Restream.io for your streaming needs.

Conclusion

Restream.io stands out as a powerful multistreaming platform, offering extensive features, ease of use, and wide platform compatibility. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned streamer, Restream.io provides the tools necessary to elevate your live streaming game and reach a broader audience. While there are some limitations, the platform’s benefits far outweigh the drawbacks, making it a valuable asset for any content creator looking to enhance their live streaming success.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use Restream.io for free?

Absolutely, you can use Restream.io for free! Their free plan lets you stream to over 30 platforms at 720p resolution.

What are the main advantages of using Restream.io?

Restream.io is great for content creators because it’s easy to use and lets you stream to multiple platforms at once. This versatility can really enhance your online presence!

How does Restream.io compare to StreamYard?

Restream.io shines when it comes to streaming to more platforms and offering additional features on its free plan, making it a great choice for those wanting to broadcast across multiple channels at once. If you need expansive reach with your streams, Restream.io is likely your best bet.

What are the limitations of Restream.io’s free plan?

The free plan of Restream.io has a watermark and restricts you to streaming on just two platforms. For more features and channels, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Does Restream.io offer customer support?

Absolutely! Restream.io offers customer support via email, live chat, and social media, though response times might differ.

The post Restream IO Review: Is It the Best Choice for Your Streaming Needs? appeared first on Done For You.

In an era where data drives decisions, business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers face a constant challenge: extracting actionable insights from an ocean of information. Enter deep research—AI’s newest innovation designed to revolutionize how businesses analyze markets, competitors, and trends. By automating the synthesis of vast datasets, deep research empowers leaders to make faster, evidence-based decisions.

The urgency to adopt deep research grows as industries face accelerating competition and information overload. Traditional methods of manual analysis—scouring reports, compiling spreadsheets, or hiring consultants—are no longer sustainable. AI-driven deep research bridges this gap, offering scalability and precision that human teams alone cannot match.

What Is Deep Research?

Deep research refers to AI systems capable of autonomously conducting multi-step investigations across vast datasets. Unlike traditional search engines or basic chatbots, these tools synthesize information from hundreds of sources, analyze patterns, and generate comprehensive reports tailored to user prompts.

This technology represents a leap beyond earlier AI tools, which focused on single-step tasks like keyword searches. Modern deep research platforms, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT-powered agent, leverage reinforcement learning to iteratively refine their investigations. For example, they can:

• Scour academic papers, news articles, and financial filings.
• Compare pricing strategies across industries.
• Predict market shifts using historical data.

For businesses, deep research eliminates days of manual analysis, delivering insights in minutes.

Why Deep Research Matters for Business

In today’s hypercompetitive landscape, businesses that fail to harness deep research risk falling behind. The ability to rapidly decode market dynamics, consumer behavior, and regulatory changes is no longer optional—it’s a strategic imperative.

Deep research democratizes access to high-quality intelligence, enabling even small teams to compete with enterprise-level resources. For instance, startups can now conduct due diligence on par with venture capital firms, while marketers can uncover niche audience insights without costly surveys. Below are three areas where deep research delivers transformative value:

1. Competitive Intelligence

Deep research tools excel at dissecting competitors’ strategies. A marketer could prompt, “Analyze Apple’s Q1 2025 earnings, focusing on China’s declining sales and AI-driven revenue claims.” The AI browses earnings calls, regional market reports, and expert analyses to debunk assumptions or validate trends.

2. Market Entry Decisions

Entrepreneurs exploring new markets can use deep research to evaluate risks. For instance, “Compare EV adoption rates in Germany and India, including infrastructure challenges and consumer sentiment.” The tool compiles regulatory hurdles, charging station density, and cultural preferences into a structured SWOT analysis.

3. Customer Insights

Marketers gain nuanced audience insights by tasking deep research with prompts like, “Identify Gen Z’s top sustainability concerns in the fashion industry.” The AI aggregates social media sentiment, survey data, and influencer content to highlight actionable trends.

How Deep Research Works: A Step-by-Step Breakdown

The power of deep research lies in its ability to mimic human reasoning at scale. By combining natural language processing with advanced algorithms, these tools navigate complex queries through iterative learning.

First, the AI breaks down a user’s prompt into sub-tasks, prioritizing the most relevant data sources. For example, when asked to analyze supply chain risks, it might cross-reference geopolitical news, supplier databases, and logistics reports. This structured approach ensures depth without sacrificing efficiency. Below is a detailed workflow:

1. Prompt Customization

Users input detailed queries (e.g., “Create a supply chain risk report for the semiconductor industry”). The AI clarifies objectives, ensuring alignment with business goals.

2. Autonomous Investigation

Using reinforcement learning, the AI browses academic journals, news sites, and proprietary databases. For example, when analyzing a medical issue, it might cross-reference NIH studies, clinical trials, and patient forums.

3. Synthesis & Reporting

Findings are organized into digestible formats—tables, summaries, or visual dashboards—with citations for verification. A CEO reviewing a deep research report on renewable energy trends can trace claims back to sources like BloombergNEF or IRENA.

Real-World Applications of Deep Research

The versatility makes it applicable across industries, from healthcare to retail. Businesses are already leveraging this technology to streamline operations and uncover hidden opportunities.

For example, a fintech startup used it to analyze global regulatory changes, identifying gaps in compliance frameworks that competitors overlooked. Similarly, a retail chain optimized its inventory by using AI to predict regional demand shifts based on climate data and social media trends. Key applications include:

• Product Development: A startup used it to identify gaps in the electric bike market, discovering unmet demand for foldable models in urban areas.
• M&A Strategy: A venture capital firm automated due diligence, flagging regulatory risks in a target company’s overseas operations.
• Content Marketing: A SaaS company generated SEO-optimized blog posts by analyzing top-ranking articles and integrating keyword gaps.

Challenges and Limitations

While this type of research is transformative, businesses must navigate its limitations to maximize value. The technology’s reliance on publicly available data means it may miss proprietary insights or emerging trends not yet documented.

Additionally, the quality of output depends heavily on input specificity. Vague prompts can lead to generic reports, while overly narrow queries might overlook critical context. Below are common challenges users face:

• Accuracy Gaps: In niche industries, the AI might overlook privately held data (e.g., a supply chain report missing a key regional supplier).
• Source Bias: Overreliance on low-quality websites can skew results. Users must verify citations.
• Cost: At $200/month, OpenAI’s Pro plan may deter small businesses, though ROI often justifies the expense.

Choosing the Right Deep Research Tool

The rise of deep research has sparked competition among tech giants and startups, each offering unique strengths. For businesses, selecting the right platform depends on use case, budget, and required depth of analysis.

OpenAI’s stands out for enterprise-level tasks requiring exhaustive analysis. Its ability to process 100+ sources per report makes it ideal for industries like finance and healthcare, where precision is non-negotiable. However, its 5–30 minute processing time and premium pricing may not suit time-sensitive or budget-conscious teams.

Google’s prioritizes speed, delivering results in 2–4 minutes. It’s optimized for real-time competitive scans, such as tracking social media sentiment during a product launch. While less comprehensive than OpenAI’s tool, its free tier and integration with Google Workspace appeal to startups and marketers.

Perplexity bridges the gap between academic rigor and practicality. With freemium pricing and strengths in sourcing peer-reviewed studies, it’s a favorite among researchers and analysts. However, its narrower focus on technical topics limits its utility for broader business strategy.

Deep Research Tools Compared

Selecting the best deep research tool requires evaluating speed, depth, and alignment with business goals. Below is a comparative overview:

Future of Deep Research in Business

As AI evolves, deep research will integrate private data (e.g., internal CRM systems) and predictive analytics. Imagine tools that not only summarize past trends but simulate scenarios like:

• “How will a 10% tariff on Chinese imports impact our Q3 margins?”
• “What regions will see VR adoption spikes by 2026?”

These advancements will blur the line between analysis and strategy, enabling businesses to anticipate disruptions rather than react to them. Early adopters of deep research will gain a first-mover advantage, leveraging AI to outpace competitors in innovation and agility.

Getting Started with Deep Research

Implementing deep research requires a strategic approach to maximize its potential. Begin by identifying high-impact areas where data overload slows decision-making, such as market analysis or competitor monitoring.

Next, train teams to craft precise prompts. For example, instead of “Analyze the tech industry,” use “Evaluate cloud computing adoption rates among SMEs in Southeast Asia, 2023–2025.” This specificity ensures actionable insights. Follow these steps to integrate deep research effectively:

1. Define Objectives: Start with specific prompts (e.g., “Analyze TikTok’s algorithm changes for Q2 2025”).
2. Verify Outputs: Cross-check citations and refine prompts for precision.
3. Scale Gradually: Begin with market analyses before tackling complex tasks like merger evaluations.

Deep research is more than a productivity tool—it’s a paradigm shift in business intelligence. By automating data collection and analysis, companies can focus on high-impact decisions, from product launches to global expansions.

While challenges like accuracy and cost persist, the benefits of deep research—speed, depth, and scalability—make it indispensable for forward-thinking leaders. As AI continues to advance, businesses that master deep research today will shape the industries of tomorrow.

FAQ: Deep Research for Business Owners

1. What is deep research, and how does it differ from traditional market research?

It refers to AI-powered tools that autonomously analyze hundreds of data sources to generate comprehensive, actionable reports. Unlike traditional methods—which rely on manual data collection—deep research automates tasks like competitor analysis, trend forecasting, and customer sentiment tracking, delivering insights in minutes rather than weeks.

2. How accurate is deep research?

While it excels at aggregating data, accuracy depends on the quality of sources and specificity of prompts. Tools like OpenAI’s version cite sources for verification, but users should cross-check critical findings. Niche industries may face gaps due to limited public data.

3. Is deep research expensive?

Costs vary: OpenAI’s Pro plan starts at $200/month, while Google’s offers a free tier. Budget-conscious businesses can start with freemium tools like Perplexity, scaling to premium options as needs grow.

4. Can deep research replace human analysts?

Not entirely. Deep research augments human teams by handling data-heavy tasks, but strategic interpretation and creative problem-solving still require human expertise. Think of it as a force multiplier, not a replacement.

5. How do I integrate deep research into my workflow?

Start with specific, high-impact tasks like competitor analysis or market entry reports. Train teams to craft precise prompts (e.g., “Analyze Q3 2025 consumer trends in vegan skincare”) and verify outputs against trusted sources.

6. What industries benefit most from deep research?

All industries gain value, but sectors like finance, healthcare, and tech see immediate ROI. For example, it helps investors analyze regulatory risks or enables marketers to decode Gen Z purchasing habits.

7. How secure is deep research with sensitive data?

Most tools prioritize privacy, but avoid inputting proprietary data unless the platform offers encryption or private cloud options. Always review vendor security policies before use.

8. Can deep research analyze non-English data?

Leading tools like OpenAI and Google support multiple languages, making it viable for global markets. However, accuracy may vary in regions with limited digital data footprints.

9. How does deep research handle real-time data?

Google’s  excels here, scanning social media, news, and stock trends in 2–4 minutes. OpenAI’s tool is slower (5–30 minutes) but offers deeper historical analysis.

10. What are the risks of relying on deep research?

Overdependence on AI can lead to “analysis paralysis” or missed nuances. Balance it with human intuition, especially for high-stakes decisions like mergers or product launches.

11. Can small businesses afford deep research tools?

Yes! Start with free tiers (e.g., Google) or sector-specific tools. As revenue grows, upgrade to premium plans for advanced features like CRM integration or predictive analytics.

12. How does deep research stay updated with industry changes?

AI models are retrained regularly on new data. For instance, OpenAI’s incorporates quarterly financial filings, patent databases, and peer-reviewed journals to stay current.

13. What’s the future of deep research?

Expect tighter integration with internal systems (e.g., ERP, CRM) and predictive “what-if” scenarios (e.g., “Simulate supply chain impacts of a natural disaster”).

14. How do I measure the ROI of deep research?

Track time saved on manual tasks, revenue from data-driven strategies, or risk mitigation (e.g., avoiding a flawed market entry). Most businesses see ROI within 3–6 months.

15. Can I customize deep research outputs for stakeholders?

Absolutely. Tools like OpenAI allow users to request summaries, charts, or board-ready presentations. Tailor reports to audience needs—executives prefer dashboards, while analysts value raw data.

AI Isn’t the Future—It’s the Present. Are You Using It to Your Advantage?

Most business owners are either wasting time on tasks AI could handle or missing out on powerful automation because they don’t know where to start. If you want to free up hours in your week, increase revenue, and scale without burnout, AI is the answer –> but only if you use it the right way.

Let’s talk. Book a free strategy call, and we’ll walk through how AI can be integrated into your business to make you more efficient, profitable, and unstoppable.

Schedule Your Free Call Now

The post Deep Research: How AI’s Latest Breakthrough Transforms Business Strategy appeared first on Done For You.

Developing a winning product strategy is a challenge for many businesses. Balancing customer insights, strategic goals, and execution plans often leads to inefficiencies, misalignment, and wasted resources. Squad AI positions itself as a solution to this problem, leveraging artificial intelligence to streamline product planning, roadmapping, and execution. But does it live up to the promise? In this review, we’ll take a deep dive into Squad AI, exploring its features, benefits, pricing, and potential impact on product teams.

What is Squad AI?

Squad AI is an AI-powered product strategy platform designed to help teams make data-driven decisions, organize insights, and translate them into actionable roadmaps. The tool is built to assist businesses in aligning their goals with execution by automating processes such as opportunity discovery, solution generation, and requirement documentation.

Rather than relying on guesswork or scattered information, it helps teams centralize their strategy, automate repetitive tasks, and improve decision-making.

Key Features of Squad AI

This software stands out with its intelligent automation capabilities, making product management more efficient. Below are its most notable features:

1. AI-Driven Opportunity Discovery

One of the most valuable aspects of Squad AI is its ability to extract actionable insights from multiple data sources, including customer feedback, analytics, and business goals. Instead of manually sorting through endless data points, the platform identifies trends and opportunities that align with a company’s objectives.

2. Outcomes-Based Roadmaps

Squad AI enables teams to build opportunity-solution trees (OSTs), helping them visualize and structure their product strategy based on clear business outcomes. This approach ensures that every initiative is aligned with long-term goals rather than just reacting to immediate demands.

3. Automated Documentation & PRD Generation

Creating Product Requirement Documents (PRDs) and other critical documentation can be time-consuming. Squad AI uses AI to generate structured, detailed PRDs based on user input, reducing the need for manual documentation and ensuring consistency across teams.

4. Seamless Integrations

For product teams already using tools like Jira, Typeform, or Atlassian, Squad AI integrates seamlessly, allowing users to pull in relevant data and push generated insights into their workflow without friction.

5. AI-Powered Execution Support

Beyond strategy and planning, Squad AI also assists with breaking down initiatives into features, tasks, and test cases, making execution more streamlined. This means teams can move from idea to implementation faster without losing sight of priorities.

How Squad AI Works

Building a successful product strategy requires structure, automation, and clear insights. Squad AI simplifies this process by leveraging AI-driven automation to streamline workflows and improve decision-making. Instead of manually compiling data, debating prioritization, or struggling with alignment, teams can use Squad AI to maintain focus and efficiency.

By integrating AI at every stage, this software eliminates unnecessary guesswork and ensures that every decision is backed by real data. Here’s how the platform guides teams through the product development process:

Knowledge Base Creation

The platform builds a strategic knowledge base by gathering business insights, industry trends, and customer feedback. This ensures that product teams have a solid foundation for decision-making.

Opportunity Identification

This software processes various data inputs to highlight product opportunities that align with company goals, eliminating the need for manual research and data sifting.

Solution Generation

AI suggests and refines solutions, allowing product managers to evaluate different approaches before execution. This reduces wasted resources on ineffective ideas.

Implementation Planning

It assists in structuring roadmaps, breaking down initiatives into manageable tasks, and integrating them with project management tools, ensuring smooth execution from start to finish.

By following this structured process, product teams can stay aligned, reduce inefficiencies, and move from strategy to execution faster than ever before.

Pricing

Squad AI offers a tiered pricing model based on company needs:

• Personal – Free access with limited features, ideal for individual users.
• Professional – $29 per seat/month, including unlimited insights, PRDs, and strategy nodes.
• Enterprise – Custom pricing for large-scale teams with advanced features like multi-knowledge bases and custom integrations.

Who Should Use It?

This software is designed to benefit businesses of all sizes, from solo entrepreneurs to large enterprises. Whether you’re building your first product or refining an existing strategy, this tool provides structured guidance and automation to keep your team aligned. By eliminating manual work and data overload, it ensures that product teams can focus on making informed decisions and driving results.

Here’s who can benefit most from using it:

Product Managers looking for a structured, data-driven approach to strategy. This tool helps streamline decision-making, automate documentation, and maintain focus on long-term objectives.

Startups needing a cost-effective way to build a roadmap without hiring a full product team. With Squad AI’s automation and insights, smaller teams can execute high-level strategies efficiently.

Enterprises seeking AI-driven automation to improve efficiency and decision-making. Large organizations can benefit from Squad AI’s structured workflows and integration capabilities to enhance collaboration across departments.

Is Squad AI Worth It?

This is a powerful tool for businesses aiming to bridge the gap between product vision and execution. With its AI-driven insights, automated documentation, and seamless integrations, it eliminates many of the inefficiencies that slow down product teams.

For companies struggling with strategy alignment, roadmap execution, and manual documentation, Squad AI provides a streamlined, intelligent solution. While the pricing may not fit everyone’s budget, the platform’s ability to automate and optimize product planning makes it a valuable asset for serious product teams.

FAQs About This Software

Is it difficult to set up?

No, Squad AI is designed to integrate seamlessly into existing workflows, with a straightforward onboarding process and compatibility with common product management tools.

Can it replace a product manager?

While Squad AI automates many aspects of product strategy, it serves as a decision-support tool, not a replacement for human oversight. It enhances efficiency but still requires strategic input.

Do they support small businesses and startups?

Yes, with its free Personal plan and affordable Professional tier, Squad AI offers solutions for businesses of all sizes, from startups to enterprises.

How does it generate product insights?

The platform pulls data from multiple sources, including customer feedback, analytics, and business goals, to generate actionable insights and highlight potential opportunities.

What makes this software different from other product management tools?

Unlike traditional product management software, Squad AI uses AI-driven automation to streamline roadmapping, documentation, and execution, reducing manual effort while improving strategic alignment.

AI Isn’t the Future—It’s the Present. Are You Using It to Your Advantage?

Most business owners are either wasting time on tasks AI could handle or missing out on powerful automation because they don’t know where to start. If you want to free up hours in your week, increase revenue, and scale without burnout, AI is the answer –> but only if you use it the right way.

Let’s talk. Book a free strategy call, and we’ll walk through how AI can be integrated into your business to make you more efficient, profitable, and unstoppable.

Schedule Your Free Call Now

The post Squad AI Review: The Product Strategy Tool That Simplifies Roadmapping appeared first on Done For You.

The tech world has been buzzing with recent news about Google selling Chrome, and digital marketers are left wondering what this could mean for their strategies. Chrome is more than just a browser, it’s a critical tool for data collection, ad targeting, and web performance standards. A potential change in its ownership could create ripple effects across the digital marketing industry, altering everything from analytics to audience engagement.

For businesses that depend on Google’s ecosystem to fuel their marketing strategies, this development raises questions about what comes next. Below, we’ll explore the implications of Google selling Chrome and the key ways it could transform the digital marketing landscape. By understanding these changes, you’ll be better equipped to adapt and thrive in a shifting environment.

The Role of Chrome in Digital Marketing

Before diving into the potential impacts of Google selling Chrome, it’s essential to understand why Chrome has been such a powerful tool for marketers. As the most widely used web browser globally, Chrome plays a pivotal role in how marketers access data, track user behavior, and optimize campaigns. Its seamless integration with Google Ads, Google Analytics, and other tools has made it a cornerstone of digital strategy.

Marketers rely on Chrome for:

• Granular Audience Insights: Chrome provides data on browsing behavior, helping advertisers create highly targeted campaigns.
• Enhanced User Experience (UX): Chrome’s performance standards influence how websites are designed, ensuring fast loading times and mobile compatibility.
• Cross-Platform Compatibility: With its widespread usage, Chrome ensures consistency in ad delivery and web performance across devices.

If Chrome moves to new ownership, these advantages could shift significantly, forcing marketers to rethink their tools and strategies. Let’s break down the potential impacts and what they mean for the future of digital marketing.

1. Changes in Ad Targeting Capabilities After Google Sells Chrome

Chrome’s deep integration with Google Ads and its ability to collect granular user data have long been central to targeted advertising. With Google selling Chrome, digital marketers may face limitations in accessing the data they’ve grown reliant on. A new owner could impose restrictions on how data is collected, stored, or shared, potentially disrupting key ad targeting strategies.

What It Means for Marketers:
Marketers who rely on behavioral data for retargeting or creating hyper-specific ad campaigns may need to explore alternative tools or platforms. This could lead to increased competition for user data or the rise of new browser-based advertising networks.

2. How Google Selling Chrome Could Shift Analytics and Reporting Standards

Google Analytics integrates seamlessly with Chrome, offering rich insights into user behavior, such as bounce rates, session durations, and user flow. If Chrome is no longer under Google’s ownership, those streamlined analytics connections could be severed or altered. A new owner might prioritize privacy over granular data collection, leaving marketers with fewer insights to work with.

What It Means for Marketers:
To adapt, marketers may need to diversify their analytics strategies by using multiple tools or platforms to fill the potential gaps. Platforms like HubSpot, Adobe Analytics, or even first-party data collection could become increasingly important.

3. Impacts on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Chrome’s dominance in the browser market means that many SEO strategies are crafted with its performance and user experience standards in mind. Whether it’s site speed metrics, mobile responsiveness, or usability features, Chrome has been a consistent benchmark. With a new owner at the helm, these standards could shift, creating uncertainty for SEO professionals.

What It Means for Marketers:
Prepare for potential algorithmic shifts that could redefine key SEO metrics. Regularly monitoring site performance across multiple browsers will become essential, as Chrome’s updates may no longer align with Google’s broader search priorities.

4. Rise of Competing Browsers

If Google selling Chrome diminishes the browser’s market share, other browsers like Safari, Firefox, or Edge could rise in prominence. This shift could fragment the audience further, forcing marketers to account for different user behaviors and compatibility issues across various platforms.

What It Means for Marketers:
Marketers will need to focus on cross-browser compatibility to ensure their websites and ads perform consistently, regardless of which browser users prefer. Testing tools and resources will become critical for maintaining a seamless experience across platforms.

5. Increased Importance of First-Party Data

As privacy concerns continue to grow, Chrome’s new ownership could accelerate the decline of third-party cookies and other data-sharing mechanisms. Marketers who depend heavily on third-party data may find themselves scrambling to adapt. This shift would put an even greater emphasis on first-party data collection and management.

What It Means for Marketers:
Marketers should prioritize building their own databases by collecting emails, phone numbers, and other contact information directly from customers. Strategies like gated content, loyalty programs, and personalized email marketing will become even more valuable in a post-Chrome era.

6. The Rise of Decentralized Marketing Platforms

If Chrome’s influence declines, we could see the rise of decentralized marketing platforms that aren’t tied to major tech giants like Google. Smaller, independent browsers or niche platforms could gain traction, giving marketers access to new, untapped audiences.

What It Means for Marketers:
This shift could level the playing field for small businesses. Marketers should stay informed about emerging platforms, test new advertising opportunities early, and look for ways to diversify their traffic sources beyond Google’s ecosystem.

Preparing for a Post-Chrome Era in Digital Marketing

The prospect of Google selling Chrome underscores the need for digital marketers to stay agile and forward-thinking. This potential shift could disrupt the foundations of data collection, ad targeting, and even SEO strategies that many businesses rely on. However, it also presents an opportunity to diversify strategies, explore emerging platforms, and develop new methods of connecting with audiences.

Instead of relying solely on Chrome’s capabilities, now is the time to:

• Build a more resilient data collection strategy.
• Test website and ad performance across multiple browsers.
• Stay informed about industry shifts to pivot strategies proactively.

The future of digital marketing will always involve change. By staying ahead of the curve, you can turn potential disruptions into opportunities for growth.

Adapting to a Changing Digital Landscape

The possibility of Google selling Chrome is a wake-up call for digital marketers everywhere. It highlights the importance of staying flexible, diversifying tools, and proactively preparing for shifts in the industry. While this change may bring challenges, it also opens the door to innovation and growth.

By staying informed and adapting your strategies, you can navigate this potential disruption and continue delivering meaningful results for your clients and business. Remember, the key to thriving in digital marketing is not resisting change—it’s embracing it.

FAQ: Everything You Need to Know About Google Selling Chrome

1. Why is Google selling Chrome?

The Department of Justice has pushed for the sale as part of antitrust investigations into Google’s dominance in digital advertising and data collection. By divesting Chrome, Google would have less influence over the advertising ecosystem and browser market.

2. How could Google selling Chrome affect digital marketers?

If Chrome moves to a new owner, digital marketers may face changes in data access, ad targeting capabilities, and integration with Google’s suite of tools like Google Ads and Google Analytics. This could disrupt key strategies that rely on Chrome’s user data and performance standards.

3. Will Chrome still support Google Ads and Analytics after the sale?

This will depend on the new owner’s priorities. While Chrome may still integrate with Google Ads and Analytics, the level of access or functionality could change, forcing marketers to adapt to new platforms or approaches.

4. What does this mean for SEO professionals?

SEO professionals may see shifts in Chrome’s performance standards, which have long influenced site speed, usability, and mobile responsiveness metrics. A new owner could redefine these benchmarks, impacting SEO strategies.

5. Should I start using other browsers for digital marketing testing?

Yes, diversifying your testing across browsers like Safari, Edge, and Firefox is a good practice. Relying solely on Chrome could leave you unprepared for changes in user behavior or browser standards under new ownership.

6. Will this impact consumer privacy?

Potentially. A new owner could prioritize stricter privacy measures, which might limit data collection and tracking capabilities that marketers currently rely on for targeted advertising.

7. How can marketers prepare for the potential changes?

To prepare, marketers should:

• Diversify their data sources and testing across multiple browsers.
• Explore alternative analytics platforms in case integrations change.
• Stay updated on announcements regarding Chrome’s ownership and any resulting industry changes.

8. When will this change happen?

The timeline for Google selling Chrome depends on the outcome of the Department of Justice investigation and negotiations with potential buyers. No official timeline has been announced yet, but businesses should start preparing now.

9. Will Google still dominate digital advertising without Chrome?

Google’s advertising ecosystem, including Google Ads and YouTube, will still hold significant market power. However, losing Chrome may reduce its ability to collect and leverage user data for personalized ads, leveling the playing field for competitors.

10. Could this be an opportunity for smaller businesses?

Yes! If Chrome’s sale introduces stricter data privacy measures or disrupts Google’s advertising dominance, it could create opportunities for smaller platforms, tools, and businesses to thrive in a less centralized digital marketing landscape.

The post How Google Selling Chrome Could Reshape Digital Marketing appeared first on Done For You.

As AI-generated content becomes more integrated into our daily lives, questions about trust and authenticity are taking center stage. Google AI open sourced its watermarking tool, SynthID, to help developers and businesses ensure transparency and accountability in AI-generated content. This innovation isn’t just a technical milestone—it’s a step toward building trust and accountability in the AI space.

By making SynthID available to the public, Google is setting a new standard in responsible AI development. Let’s break down what this means for developers, businesses, and the broader conversation around responsible AI.

What Is SynthID and Why Does It Matter?

SynthID is Google’s watermarking tool that embeds an invisible, detectable signature into AI-generated content, such as text, images, audio, and video. Unlike visible watermarks, this technology works at a deeper level, subtly altering probability scores during the content generation process without compromising quality, creativity, or accuracy.

For example, when an AI predicts the next word in a sentence, SynthID adjusts the probability of specific word choices. These adjustments are imperceptible to humans but detectable by specialized software. Over a single sentence, this could mean dozens of adjusted tokens; over a full page, hundreds. The result? A digital “fingerprint” embedded in the content that helps identify its AI origins.

Why Open-Sourcing SynthID Is a Big Deal

By open-sourcing SynthID through its Responsible Generative AI Toolkit, Google has made this powerful tool available to the wider developer community. This decision could have far-reaching implications for the AI industry:

1. Empowering Developers to Build Responsibly
   Open access means other generative AI developers can integrate SynthID into their large language models (LLMs). This democratizes the technology, ensuring that smaller organizations, not just tech giants, can contribute to building more trustworthy AI ecosystems.
2. Combating Misinformation and Misuse
   AI-generated content has already been used for spreading political misinformation and creating harmful content like nonconsensual deepfakes. By making SynthID widely available, Google is equipping developers with tools to counteract these threats and foster accountability.
3. Setting a Standard for Transparency
   Governments are starting to regulate AI-generated content, with places like China and California already moving toward mandatory watermarking. SynthID’s open-source availability could pave the way for global adoption of watermarking as an industry standard.

How Does Google AI Open Sourced SynthID Work?

Every time an AI generates text, it predicts the next most likely token (a word, character, or part of a phrase). SynthID tweaks these predictions slightly, creating a detectable pattern in the final output.

For instance, given the prompt:
“My favorite tropical fruits are __.”

The model might predict:

• Mango (60%)
• Papaya (25%)
• Durian (10%)
• Lychee (5%)

SynthID adjusts these probabilities without affecting the sentence’s quality, making it possible to detect AI-generated text, even if it’s been cropped, paraphrased, or slightly edited.

These subtle adjustments don’t impact the overall readability of the text, but they provide a unique digital fingerprint. This fingerprint can later be identified through detection tools to verify the content’s origin. This process ensures that even modified or slightly rewritten content retains identifiable traces of its AI origin.

Additionally, SynthID operates invisibly, ensuring the text looks and feels natural to human readers. Its innovative design has been optimized to avoid diminishing the creativity or authenticity of the generated output, making it a valuable tool for maintaining content integrity.

Limitations of SynthID

While SynthID is a breakthrough, it’s not without its challenges:

• Short Text Struggles: SynthID works best on longer content. Short sentences or phrases may lack enough adjusted tokens for detection.
• Content Rewriting: Rewritten or heavily paraphrased text can sometimes bypass detection.
• Translation Issues: Content translated into other languages poses additional challenges for watermarking.

Another limitation lies in the difficulty of retroactively applying SynthID to existing content. Content that was generated prior to SynthID’s integration won’t carry the watermark, making it challenging to identify past AI-created outputs. This limits its immediate application to future AI developments.

Moreover, as technology evolves, adversarial techniques to bypass watermarking may emerge. SynthID will require ongoing updates and collaboration with the broader AI community to remain effective and secure against such efforts.

What Are the Business Applications of SynthID?

SynthID offers a variety of applications for businesses, helping them adopt more transparent and responsible AI practices. Here are a few ways it can be used:

• Content Creation: Businesses can watermark their AI-generated blogs, videos, or social media posts to maintain credibility and transparency with their audiences.
• Regulatory Compliance: As governments introduce regulations requiring AI watermarking, SynthID can ensure your business stays ahead of the curve.
• Fraud Prevention: Detecting AI-generated content helps businesses identify fraudulent use of their intellectual property or prevent misrepresentation.

Businesses can also use SynthID to build customer trust. By openly marking AI-generated content, they can demonstrate a commitment to ethical practices and transparency. This can be particularly impactful in industries where trust is critical, such as finance, healthcare, and education.

Furthermore, SynthID can be leveraged in marketing campaigns to distinguish between AI-enhanced and human-created content. This dual approach enables businesses to communicate the strengths of both types of content, ensuring clarity and engagement with their audiences.

The Role of SynthID in Ethical AI Development

Google’s open-sourcing of SynthID goes beyond technology—it’s a statement about the future of AI ethics. As AI becomes more prevalent, the importance of fostering responsible practices grows. SynthID contributes by:

• Promoting transparency in how AI content is created and shared.
• Encouraging collaboration among developers to create more effective tools for detection.
• Setting a precedent for ethical AI development that prioritizes trust and safety.

Ethical AI development isn’t just about creating tools; it’s about shaping behaviors. By embedding tools like SynthID into their workflows, businesses can demonstrate a commitment to transparency, accountability, and ethical practices. This helps build a stronger relationship with their users and the broader public.

Additionally, tools like SynthID enable industries to collectively adopt better standards, reducing the misuse of AI across sectors. This collective effort supports a healthier, more sustainable AI ecosystem that benefits everyone.

Final Thoughts on Google Open Sourced AI 

Google’s decision to open-source SynthID isn’t just a technical milestone—it’s a bold step toward creating a more transparent and trustworthy AI ecosystem. While it’s not perfect, this technology serves as a foundation for future advancements in responsible AI development.

As businesses and developers adopt SynthID, they’ll be contributing to a larger movement toward ethical AI practices. This effort not only enhances trust but also paves the way for innovative applications that prioritize accountability.

Google AI open sourced SynthID to make AI content identification more accessible, paving the way for a transparent, trustworthy digital future. If you’re interested in learning more about SynthID and how it could impact your business, click here to dive deeper into the details and explore its potential applications.

FAQs About Google AI Open Sourced

1. What is SynthID?
SynthID is a watermarking tool developed by Google that embeds detectable yet invisible markers into AI-generated content like text, images, audio, and video.

2. Why did Google open-source SynthID?
Google aims to make SynthID accessible to developers worldwide to encourage responsible AI development and help combat misuse of AI-generated content.

3. How does SynthID work?
SynthID adjusts probability scores in the content-generation process, embedding an invisible signature that can be detected by specialized software but is imperceptible to humans.

4. What are SynthID’s limitations?
While powerful, SynthID struggles with detecting short text, heavily rewritten content, and translations.

5. Can small businesses use SynthID?
Yes! The open-source nature of SynthID makes it accessible to businesses of all sizes, allowing even small startups to integrate AI watermarking into their workflows.

6. Why is watermarking AI content important?
Watermarking ensures transparency, combats misinformation, and builds trust by clearly identifying AI-generated content.

7. Is SynthID compatible with all AI models?
SynthID is designed for large language models (LLMs) and can be adapted by developers to fit various frameworks.

8. What’s next for SynthID?
Google plans to continue refining SynthID and encourages the global developer community to innovate and expand its applications.

The post Google AI Open Sourced Watermarking Tool for Content appeared first on Done For You.

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Episode Summary:

In this episode, digital marketing guru Jason Drohn dives deep into customer analytics and discusses four essential tools to help you understand and capitalize on your website’s traffic. He thoroughly explores each tool, ranging from beginner-friendly options to advanced professional-grade software, offering valuable insights into how to turn prospects into loyal customers.

Jason starts by addressing the importance of tracking website traffic and understanding where visitors come from. He emphasizes using Google Analytics, a free and powerful tool for any website owner. He explains how to set it up and utilize its various features to break down website visitors’ demographic and behavioral data. Jason notes, “Every single website should be using Google Analytics.”

Moving into more advanced territory, Jason explores tools like Wicked Reports and Supermetrics, which help tie different analytics elements together, including CRM and shopping cart data. He highlights how UTM variables are crucial in tracking customer journeys, from ad clicks to conversions. Jason mentions, “The best way to understand what makes a prospect a customer is to use an analytics package that ties different elements together.”

Key Takeaways:

• Google Analytics: Essential for every website, providing detailed insights into traffic sources, audience demographics, and user behavior.

• UTM Variables: Crucial for tracking the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and understanding customer journeys.

• Wicked Reports: Advanced analytics software integrating multiple data sources for comprehensive customer analytics.

• Supermetrics and Report Garden: Tools for creating detailed, visually appealing reports that help track advertising performance.

• Importance of Customer Analytics: Jason stresses understanding what turns a prospect into a customer to drive more sales.

Notable Quotes:

1. Every single website should be using Google Analytics.” – Jason Drohn

2. What turns a web visitor into a customer? And the best way to understand that is to use a software package that ties a couple of different elements together.” – Jason Drohn

3. UTM variables are essential for tracking where your website traffic is coming from and understanding the performance of different marketing campaigns.” – Jason Drohn

4. Wicked Reports ties together Facebook ads, Google Analytics, your CRM, and shopping cart tools to give a complete view of your customer data.” – Jason Drohn

5. “For a dashboard and reporting standpoint, Report Garden looks well for that.” – Jason Drohn

Resources:

• DoneForYou.com

• Google Analytics

• Wicked Reports

• Supermetrics

• Report Garden

Tune in to the full episode for an in-depth look at these powerful tools and how they can transform your understanding of customer analytics. Stay connected for more insightful content to boost your business strategies!

The post DFY 79: 4 Essential Tools for Capturing and Analyzing Customer Data appeared first on Done For You.

Customer segmentation analysis is a powerful tool that enables businesses to unlock growth potential by identifying unique customer groups with specific needs and preferences. Understanding your customers is a critical element in maintaining a competitive edge.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the benefits of customer segmentation analysis and how it can help businesses thrive.

Understanding Customer Segmentation Analysis

Customer Segmentation Analysis divides customers into distinct groups based on shared characteristics such as demographics, behavior, and needs. By segmenting customers, businesses can fine-tune their marketing strategies and offerings to meet the unique needs of each group, gain a deeper understanding of customers, and tailor marketing, product development, and customer service efforts to meet the individual needs of each segment, thus increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Benefits of Customer Analysis

1. Better Understanding of Customer Needs

By segmenting customers, businesses can better understand their needs and preferences. This understanding enables businesses to create targeted marketing campaigns, products, and services that cater to specific customer segments. This approach leads to an increase in customer satisfaction and loyalty, as customers feel seen and heard.

2. Increased Revenue

Customer segmentation analysis can lead to revenue by identifying high-value segments most likely to purchase from the business. Businesses can increase their sales and revenue by targeting these segments with tailored marketing campaigns and offerings sales and revenue.

3. Improved Customer Retention

Customer segmentation analysis can help businesses identify at-risk customers and take proactive measures to retain them. Companies can offer personalized solutions that increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by understanding each customer segment’s unique needs and preferences.

How to Conduct Customer Analysis

1. Identify key customer characteristics, such as demographics, behavior, and needs.
2. Collect data: Collect data on these critical characteristics by conducting surveys, analyzing customer interactions, and using data analytics tools.
3. Analyze the data: Analyze the data to identify patterns and similarities between customer groups.
4. Segment customers: Use the data analysis to segment customers into distinct groups based on shared characteristics.
5. Tailor marketing strategies and offerings: Tailor marketing strategies and offerings to meet the unique needs of each customer segment.

To take your business to the next level, consider investing in Customer Segmentation Analysis. Book an Action Plan Call if you aren’t sure where to start!

The post Demystifying Customer Segmentation Analysis: A Roadmap to Business Growth appeared first on Done For You.

Welcome to GSDdaily. This is episode 155. Today is a five-minute guide, and we are going to talk quickly about how to, in five minutes or less, find the keywords your website is ranking for organically.

This is a little exercise that we put a client through a little earlier in the week and I figured it’d be cool to show you. So basically your website is ranking for something. We might not know what it ranks for yet, but it’s ranking for some keyword phrase because of a blog post or a page, or shit, your privacy policy might be ranking for something.

One of the quickest ways to figure out what that is and are free tools, both are going to let you find out what you’re searching for, what … How much traffic your website is getting, what pages are getting traffic, and what the keyword phrases for those pages are. Install the following applications,

1. Google Search Console
2. Google Analytics

What we’re going to do is we are going to go through and I’m going to show you how to use Google Analytics a little bit, specifically the search console functionality, so that you can see what pages are ranking.

Google Analytics

So we’re going to flip over into Google Analytics here and we’re going to look at some of the done for you data. I’m going to make this a little bit bigger so you can take a look at it. And if we go to the home here, we’re going to see, we’re going to go back to the done for you home. Overall, we’re going to switch to 28-day visitors, and then we’re going to … So just a real quick overview. These are all of your time stats. So anything real-time is in this top browser here.

Right now, there are two people on our website. We can look at the locations. We can look at traffic sources, the content they’re on. So specifically these two people, one person is on a homepage, one person’s on a software page. So you can watch that fluctuate back and forth.

Demographics

Your audience is all of your audience, your people. So if we look at the demographics of people who come to do for you, then we see that by and large, 25 to 34, 35 to 44, 45 to 54, 55 to 64 and 65 plus and it is mostly male. We can go, we can break it down by age and gender. We can break it down by interests. So there’s a lot of things you can do here to actually understand your users a little bit better.

Acquisition Report

The acquisition is going to show you all of the ways that people come to your site, and what we’re going to dig into is this search console tab. The search console is going to show you the landing pages, the countries, the devices, or the queries or search results.

We’re going to start by going to landing pages and just take a look through. Here we see that there have been 3,000 impressions for this particular blog post, with zero clicks through. The average position is 52, meaning the average position is on page six of Google. Obviously, there’s a lot of room to improve that. And if we look at, and then … it’ll go through and show you where your search traffic is clicking to, what pages are ranking, and then ultimately when somebody clicks in the search result, where they are going.

Our absolute number one search result is, in this sampling, is the homepage. But then after that is email marketing campaigns, is a blog post, then another blog post, then a sales page. And if we look at queries, this is where you start to see and find the keywords you’re ranking for.

Rank Your Keywords

Done for you is ranked for 4,000, and what we see is all of the things that we could be ranking for. I’m going to add rows, and so we’re going to do show rows to find the keywords. Here you can see that in the last seven days, we’ve received 900 impressions for the keyword phrase business consultant, 800 impressions for the keyword phrase sales funnel. Then we can scroll all the way down here and say, “Okay, what is customer analytics,” we received 75 impressions, business consultant skills, 72 impressions. Done for your sales funnels, 72 impressions, and four clicks.

These are all the keyword phrases that basically are done for you. What do I do when I look at this and say, “Okay, what are the keyword phrases that I would like to rank better for?” I can get more traffic from, and then also, what do I need to do to influence those rankings?

Optimize Organic Content

We’ve done quite a few dailies on basically optimizing organic content, and that is the answer to those questions. So it’s basically going through, editing the blog post, adding sub-headlines, making sure your keyword density is good, making sure you have YouTube videos and multimedia content inside that blog post, as well as images. And then editing it, bringing it back up to the top of the queue.

Google and search engines love it when you edit all content as opposed to writing new content. So whenever possible, we always try to go in and edit the old stuff, and then we’ll say updated in the blog post title. But usually just updating it is enough to bounce it up a couple of pages in Google. And then we’ll do some internal linking. We’ll do some outbound. So we do very, very little bits of linking. Most of it is just on-site SEO and stuff.

So that is today’s five-minute guide. Came in just on, I think, five minutes is right now. But that is how you find the keywords that you’re ranking for and also the pages you’re ranking for organically. And then you take it a step further and optimize the blog posts and the content for those fewer phrases. So have a fantastic weekend and I will see you on Monday.

The post Ways In Finding The Keywords Your Website Is Naturally Ranking For appeared first on Done For You.

Content marketing isn’t just about creating content and publishing it on different social media platforms, but the most crucial part begins just after that – measuring and analyzing its success.

Although it is important to evaluate your content marketing activity, only 8% of marketers consider themselves ‘good enough’ at finding the right way to analyze and measure their content marketing success. If you’ve been finding it hard to track results, you desperately need to find a way to measure the impact of your efforts. Before we delve straight into it, let’s get our basics straight.

What is content marketing?

According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content Marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

If you read the definition again, you would realize that the main purpose of content marketing is to get more conversions. Having a specific process does help you to achieve that.

Here are some basic content marketing metrics that will give you a starting point and an overview to form and analyze your strategy in the right way:

1. Unique visits (website traffic)

One of the easiest and most basic ways to analyze your content is to track the number of visitors that viewed the content on your website within a specific time frame. The major part of measurement should revolve around website analytics because your content is web-based.

Having an analytics solution like Statly is a great way to keep track of website traffic, understand the game of keywords, crawl rate, bounce rate, and more. Collecting this information could be game-changing for you and ultimately, improve conversions in a big way.

However, if you’re using Google Analytics, here’s what you need to know:

To measure unique visitors in Google Analytics, click on Audience in the top left and then click on Overview. You will get a graph indicating the number of times a unique visitor has visited a site over the last 30 days.

Analyzing this information could be game-changing for you and it could, ultimately, improve conversions massively.

2. Social media metrics

The content you share on various social media handles could often reveal your true standing in the market in the form of likes, comments, shares, and an increase in followers.

Likes and comments: The number of likes and comments directly reflect if the content resonates and can evoke a reaction or not.

Shares: The high number of shares means the audience finds the content relatable and valuable.

Follower growth: The rise in the number of followers over a specific period of time is indicative of whether your brand is headed in the right direction or not. LinkedIn, Facebook, the Instagram following are some great platforms to check the total rise in your followers.

You don’t have to take the pain to find the analytics as there are plenty of tools like HootSuite that help track shares and scheduling posts.

For instance, in Hootsuite, you get to see real-time results, insights into trends that can help you measure the impact of your content across various platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Apart from HootSuite, some other popular tools which you can use are Klout, Quintly, and SproutSocial to name the major ones.

3. Email and newsletter metrics

Email is used worldwide and according to Radicati’s Email statistics reports, emails will be used by more than 3 billion people by 2020. While there are many benefits of using email marketing, the one that is surely going to keep you in the business is the fact that email’s return on investment is massive.

With email metrics such as:

• the number of opened emails
• email click-throughs
• conversions 
• bounce rate
• overall ROI,

you can easily gauge if your product can strike a chord with prospects or not.

Here is a look at how to calculate each of them.

To calculate the click-through rate:

(Total clicks / Number of delivered emails) * 100

To calculate the conversion rate:

(Number of people who completed the desired action ÷ Number of total emails delivered) * 100

To calculate bounce rate:

(Total number of bounced emails ÷ Number of emails sent) * 100

To calculate the overall ROI:

[($ in additional sales made minus $ invested in the campaign) ÷ $ invested in the campaign] * 100

It is worth mentioning here that the statistics you need to track to measure your email marketing success may vary based on what you are trying to achieve with your content. Therefore the list mentioned here is not strictly exclusive of these metrics.

These metrics give you an overall idea of whether the efforts you are putting are going in the right direction or not? Based on the results you can either plan to change the entire strategy or make amends in the existing one and crack the code of successful content marketing.

4. Lead generation

The ultimate aim and top organizational goals for content marketers are generating leads. Needless to say, one should definitely track these metrics and observe how they can be incorporated into your strategy. Don’t just stick to blogging – explore other avenues, like that of ebooks, which could massively boost your leads. 

Using content for lead generation is one of the oldest and most dependable methods. However, to measure the success of your content marketing lead generation campaign, make yourself well-aware with lead generation metrics such as:

Click-through rate (CTR)

(Total number of clicks / Total number of visitors) X 100

Conversion time

Total time spent by all visitors / total number of leads

ROI

But before you do that you need to be well versed with the basic lead generation funnel. Here’s a pictorial representation that might help you understand it better:

Source: Singlegrain.com

Lead scoring is the best way to identify high-quality leads which is a process of ranking and identification of leads in terms of their chances to convert into sales.

Apart from these basic metrics, it is always a smart idea to keep a check on the cost you are spending on the campaigns. Hence you must also track metrics such as Cost-per-click (CPC), Cost per lead, etc.

The most important reason behind keeping track of the metrics is well explained in these words by Peter Drucker, “If you can track and measure something, you can also manage and improve it.”

5. SEO metrics

If you see a considerable rise in page visits, website rankings, and conversions, then SEO had a big role to play. Knowledge of the right keywords and advising writers on how and where to use them in the content and title are some surefire ways to increase traffic and generate increased click-throughs from search results.

Here are the basic elements of a successful SEO strategy:

Keywords: To target what people are searching for when discovering their business in a search engine. Google Keyword Planner is a great tool that can help you in this.

Meta tags: To help Google look at your page title as a signal of relevance.

Content: Creating quality content is the best way to create a great user experience and Google agrees to it. when it comes to creating and curating the most impactful content on the web, Curtely is a tool that can be of great help.

Backlinks: If the content is the king, backlinks are the queen, and quality matters a lot here.

Social media: To send signals of authority to the search engines.

It is essential to leverage the importance of SEO and incorporate the elements mentioned here with content that is crisp, out-of-the-box, engaging, and actionable.

To help you perform the analysis of your SEO strategies better, there are tools such as BuzzSumo and SEMRush that are very useful to discover the most shared content and relevant keywords in just a few seconds. You can use them to good effect and see how they can be game-changers.

6. Subscribers

Your subscription-list could be a direct indicator of the value and impact you leave on your audience. After all, you haven’t made your business blog only to get a huge list of followers, right?

Having a large and loyal fan-base is an effective way to get more views, reads, and visits on your blog. The larger the list of subscribers, the more chances of getting them converted. If the number of subscribers is nose-diving or becoming stagnant, it could be a hint to produce more engaging content to get more traffic, which would further become your subscribers.

What are the metrics that matter to you the most?

The most successful content marketing strategies are those that smartly tick off most of the above methods to track and analyze results. It is advisable to make use of capable social media tools to gain more insights and get more leads.

What are your key content marketing metrics for measuring content marketing success? Are there any other ways or metrics that you would like included on the list?

How to measure content marketing success?

For our GSDdaily today, we are going to be talking about how to measure content marketing success.

TOPICS:

1. how to measure content marketing success results
2. measuring performance
3. how to create content
4. how to do keyword research
5. what kind of content to create
6. how to split test subject lines for your blog posts
7. all kinds of different how to measure content marketing success related things.

At the end of the day, that is really what is going to drive the success of your business, the success of how well that content is going to perform. We’ve talked about advertorials, we’ve talked about a lot of different stuff.

Today we’re just going to dig into the stats side, the numbers side of content, so that you can start to take a look at how to know if what you’re doing is actually working, which is difficult to tell sometimes because you put a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of money into creating content, and we kick this whole thing off with the idea that there’s no free traffic. You are either going to pay for traffic in time or money. If you want quick traffic, then the quickest way to do it is to pay for traffic in money, is to do Facebook ads or Google ads or any of those other things.

If you are okay investing time and knowing that it’s going to take a little bit longer to get results, then you can absolutely write content, have content written for you that then ends up ranking on Google, or ends up bonding with your clients, or you end up being able to use it as advertorial content, that kind of thing. At the end of the day, it’s really just about figuring out what people want to read, what people want to learn about, what people are coming to you for in terms of problems, and then putting content together that is posed as solutions for those things. That’s really going to be what ends up moving the needle for your business. Now, we have a blog post that we’re going to cover today.

We’re also going to go through some stats and some of the stuff that I look for our content, for our business. So here is the link. Let me just share this inside the comments section here. This is going to be the post, that’s every morning post, there we go. That’s the post that we’re going to start riffing on today. Then let me just share this screen here real quick. You should be able to see that now.

1. Unique Website Visitors Metrics

Probably the biggest number one driver that your content marketing is working is going to be unique visitors. How many unique visitors is your content serving up for your business? How many people are coming into your, or hitting your website, or reading your content from a unique user standpoint? That is one person, one set of eyeballs that come to your website within one month. How many users, how many individual people are you bringing in?

That is metric number one. But oftentimes it doesn’t really start there. One of the things that we track a lot is impressions, SEO impressions, organic impressions. And the reason we track that so much really is because before you get a sale, you got to get somebody to opt-in, or you got to get them to raise their hand and say, yes, I have a problem. Content is the same thing. Before you get a unique visitor, you have to get ranked in the search engines and it will guide you on how to measure content marketing success.

You are not going to write a piece of content and then, well not anymore, and then two days later you’re going to get ranked on the first page of Google and get a flock of traffic. It is a gradual process. You are going to write a piece of content and then it’s going to rank on the fifth page of Google. Then you need to be aware that it ranks on the fifth page of Google so that you can then optimize the content so that it ranks to the third page and the second page and the first page of Google. That is when you start getting traffic.

But you have to be aware that it’s ranking before you can start optimizing for it. Do you know what I mean? It all follows this kind of content optimization process. Now, you might get lucky. You might write a blog post, put a video out, do a podcast, or whatever, and it’s just a freaking barn burner and it gets shared. The likelihood of that is, you’re probably better off being struck by lightning before that actually happens. So you can take the analytic and procedural approach and watch rankings, watch traffic, see where your opportunities are and then influence those opportunities. But unique visitors is the primary number one metric before you can start digging into everything else.

2. Social Media Metrics

There are social media metrics too, page likes, shares. We don’t do a lot with social media marketing, with social media virality. Of course, building an audience is building an audience. But like I said, posting a piece of content and then having it be awesome is a rare occurrence. But you can use a tool like Hootsuite, which we use Hootsuite for our social media posts. We don’t have great engagement with our staff. But for us, it’s more about being present and being on, being seen in the social media spheres and then we augment that through paid traffic.

3. Email and Newsletter Metrics

There’s also email and newsletter metrics. If somebody is coming in because of your content, they are opting in for your reports, buying your products, all of that kind of stuff. Then, of course, there are metrics there. So you’re looking at new leads, you’re looking at sales, you’re looking at the number of opened emails or the email click-throughs, the bounce rate of the pages. Basically, overall like ROI, return on ad spend kind of stuff. Then there are some useful little nuggets here, little equations to help you calculate that stuff.

4. Lead Generation Metrics

Lead generation is a big one. So much of our content, we try to generate leads from, whether it’s an exit pop or whether it’s a native ad or something like that. But generating the ROI from the content is… The content itself doesn’t generate ROI. Content frames the sales piece that generates the ROI. Content is always a piece of the funnel, it isn’t the funnel. So you have to just be diligent in understanding that whenever you’re putting your own campaigns together.

5. SEO Metrics

The last one is SEO metrics. We have what pages are you ranked for? What keywords are you ranked for? How many impressions does that particular keyword phrase get? Those are all the big questions when it comes to organics that guides us on how to measure content marketing success. And we’re going to walk through some of the things that I look through in stats. Then we have subscribers, subscribers to your YouTube channel, subscribers, followers, views, time watched is a big one on YouTube. All of that stuff, useful metrics to take a look at. I would say pick three that are important to you.

My personal pick:

1. Users
2. SERP rankings
3. daily leading

My own personal three that I look at all the time and I actually have a little dashboard set up for myself are users – organic users and SERPs. The rankings inside the search engines. Users, SERP rankings, and then the third one is daily leading. How many leads you are signing up for. When those three things are in line, then the business is doing really well. None of them have to do with revenue on the outset, but they’re all correlated in some way. More leads, more search traffic. More search traffic means less money we’re spending on ads to acquire new customers, that’s a good number. The more leads we have, the more people in the email sequences and open up stuff inside sales funnels. Anything we do to drive those metrics makes a lot of sense and will help on how to measure content marketing success.

Now we’re going to kick over to, there are three things that we’re going to dig into. One of them is Google Analytics. Let me just open it up here, analytics. google. We’re going to dig into Google Webmaster Tools, and then we’re also going to dig into SEMrush. All right. We’re going to start with Analytics. I’m just going to walk you through what I look at when I’m digging into Analytics. So we’re going to go here. All right. When I’m looking at Google Analytics… I’m just going to make this big so you can see it here. All right, I don’t know that that’s quite big, but let me widen this out a little bit. Yeah, I think that helps a little bit. Okay.

Google Analytics

When I’m looking at Google Analytics, basically what I’m looking at is, of course, we have us, this is users within a week. What I tend to dig down into is I’m looking at acquisition and then I’m looking at search console and I’m looking at mostly queries. What I want to know when I’m looking at queries is what are we ranking for, where is our traffic coming from and how to measure content marketing success? Where is our opportunity? When we’re looking at this number here, let me get back here, here we go. So when we’re looking at our query information, then what it’s going to do it right now it’s organized based on clicks.

The number of clicks we received for these particular keyword phrases. Really, really good information, but this isn’t necessarily where I always start. This is good to know. Done For You, we get a lot of traffic for done for your agency, done for your service, done for your marketing agency, webinar creator. But oftentimes, what I do is I sorted a little bit differently. I sorted based on impressions because when I sorted based on impressions, then what I’m seeing is we have 21,000 impressions for keyword phrases and only 229 clicks. So there’s a lot of opportunities there that we can play with.

I’m going to drop this down to a hundred queries here, and we see that one of our biggest opportunities is the keyword phrase business consultant, Done For You showed up and got 763 impressions for the keyword phrase done for you or the keyword phrase business consultant. But we got zero clicks. So where did that happen? Our average position is 74, which means it’s on the eighth page of Google, the eighth page, seventh page. And it’s way deep in Google, but still 763 impressions. Marketing automation agency, 529 impressions. We’re 41 in Google. What is a flash sale? 255 impressions. We got 10, average position tens, we are at the bottom on the front page.

When I’m looking at results, I’m like, okay, where can I exploit some of these things? Can we have a lead magnet blog post about business consulting or how to become a business consultant, which we do? How do I continue growing the traffic with these particular keyword phrases? So this is the question that I’m asking myself. Like Done For You services, 142 visitors. We got 18 clicks and we were in spot three for that. So how do we get to spot two? How did we get to spot one? These are just some of the things that I look at when I’m looking at data and saying, okay, how do we exploit this stuff? How do we get in here and rank for these keyword phrases a little bit better?

Now, you can do the reverse of this. Like if we go in and we’re looking at business consultants, we can go into the pages and say, what are our best, what are our top pages? So it’s going to list all of our top pages and then our impressions, and then we have the number of clicks.

Here we see that the top 15 fastest ways to increase online sales have got 967 impressions, but yet it only got three clicks. Why is that? And the click-through rate is 0.31. Our average position is spot 44, which means it’s on the fifth page of Google. We, of course, can click here or we can go visit the page. So let’s go visit the page. We’re just going to take a look at it. Actually, it opens in another window, which you cannot see. So let me just copy this. Here you go. This is the other window.

This is the blog post. There was a podcast episode 17. So this video is quite old. I made that video last year sometime. When you have a lot of content, this is one of those things that happens. Some shit gets old. Here, we have a podcast, we have some stuff, whatever. But from a blog standpoint, there’s an opportunity there. Top 15 fastest way to increase online sales, we got 967 impressions. So let’s click this URL. When we click this URL, what it’s going to do is it’s going to give us the search queries that we’re ranking for. So these, it looks like 86 keyword phrases. If you look way down here, this is the first 10 of 86 keyword phrases.

What we’re going to do is we’re going to expand this to a hundred and then we’re going to run a similar little thing. To increase online sales, that particular keyword phrase, we are spot 41 and there were 168 impressions, but zero clicks. Now, how to increase online sales, 50 impressions, spot 32? Boost website sales, 39 impressions, spot 31. Basically, what I’m doing is if I can rank for any one of these keyword phrases on the blog post that is already there, if I can push the phrases up so I’m ranking in on the first page, second page, third page, whatever, then I’m able to increase my traffic without having to do a whole lot of work. So I’m seeing how I can generate more free traffic for these particular keyword phrases to a blog post.

These are just all things that I look for in quantifying how to measure content marketing success. This is just one little area, we can dig in. We’ve done some dailies on content optimization. It’s probably going to take a little bit longer to put together a content optimization. Maybe I’ll do a content optimization week at some point. So these are just some of the stuff that we look at.

Google Webmaster Tools

Now, Google Webmaster Tools, actually, this search console tool, this is what we’re looking at inside here. This gives you some good, solid analytic data. I tend to find some different opportunities if I go look at the same type of data, but from the inside, let’s see, I have too many accounts. This tool will help on how to measure content marketing success

So here inside the search console, we see different kinds of stats. So if we go to a performance, then what we can do is we can open up. We have in the last, so we’ve got 7,000 total clicks, 361,000 total impressions. Then we have our average position site-wide, it’s spot 42. Then we have our keyword phrases down below. We have all of our ones and we can resort from impressions. Now, notice how this gives us a little bit of different information. So when we did this over inside Google Analytics, the business consultants came up first and the number was smaller. Then a marketing automation agency came up below that. But marketing automation agency, it’s huge, it would be a huge win for Done For You to rank for. That’s what we’re trying to rank for.

Now, if we click on a marketing automation agency, it is then going to show us, it’s just going to single it out. Then what we can do is if we add, if we just hit pages then, so we have pages, Oh, I’m sorry, we got queries. That’s it. We have a marketing automation agency. Here, there’s a way that we can see. Yeah, there we go. This is the page that we can optimize for marketing automation agencies. Now let’s pull this back and if we can go into queries, or here, let’s do this. We’re going to look at doneforyou.com and see all the keyword phrases that we’re ranked for the homepage. So we’re just looking at Done For You, we got 27,000 total impressions, 2,100 total clicks.

If we look at queries, you will see that we’re ranking for 211 keyword phrases in total on the homepage. Done for you, done for your services, done for you, do for your agency, blah, blah, blah. Then all the keyword phrases were ranked in the top 10 pages of Google.

SEMrush

Some of them are like 10 and then other ones are like, there’s a spot 75. Sales funnel development agency, we are spot 75 in Google. So anyone of these is great opportunities to rank for too. Of course, just tracking all of it tends to be one of the challenges, which is why there’s a tool called SEMrush, which makes it somewhat easy. Maybe not totally, totally easy, but easy enough. So we’re going to log into SEMrush. If I can remember my password here, I usually do this on my other computer. Here we go.

All right. Here, we have Done For You, and this is our main dashboard. Let’s see, we’re going to do position tracking here. What position tracking is going to do is going to tell us all of our position tracking in time. So our landscape is, over the last, we ended up getting a pretty good bump in position. If we go into overview here, we’re going to see how our visibility has changed. And some of it is due to just algorithm updates, they always do an algorithm update checker, but here we have Done For You. Position one on July 16th, position one on July 22nd. Then we have a self-hosted landing page builder. We were spot 35 and now we’re spot 32. For the promotion of our affiliate products, we were spot 99, but we fell out of the top 100.

There are lots of ways to track the keyword phrases here. SEMrush tends to be one of the best ones that we have found. You can also do a lot of paid traffic stuff and competitive intelligence. Whenever we are trying to put together with intelligence reports for competitors, like for our paid traffic clients, we’ll jump into SEMrush and see how much traffic their competitors are spending. If we can find some competitors that we maybe didn’t know existed for that ad spend or for their Google ads or if somebody is ranking for a particular keyword phrase, or when we’re looking at doing a site audit or investment or whatever, we’ll come in here and see how much traffic their website is really getting. Before we have to do a deep dive into their analytics, we can get a good idea of what we’re seeing just through SEMrush.

There’s a lot of different ways you can cut up this tool, but bringing the whole thing back around, tracking metrics and tracking for your content marketing and for your search results and your organic views and all that stuff. It’s really just spending 10, 15, 20 minutes a day looking at your traffic, seeing what you can do to better it, taking action on that and implementing those changes, and then moving forward the next day. It sounds easy and it is easy, but it just takes a little bit of time. You just have to be diligent, write content, and track it. Also, you have to know what you’re looking at and optimize it. The only way to get good at it is really to do it. Just do it, get some experience in it, track it, see what influences your rankings, and go from there.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions at all, any thoughts, just go to doneforyou.com/start, fill out the little application. We can jump on a call and we can go through and look at your content. Look at your traffic stats. We can go through, do a marketing audit, put together an action plan for your sales funnels or your paid traffic strategies, whatever, make sure you got the right sales funnel in place. If you have any questions, if you just hit Done For You, just go to the Done For You main page, in the lower right-hand corner, there’s a little chatbox. You can go in, you can search from the dropdown. You can ask the question here, it’s going to get routed to our team. If there’s anything we can do, just let us know. Doneforyou.com, and have a fantastic weekend.

Next week, I’m not real sure what we’re going to talk about yet. It’s episode 96. Next week is episode 96 to 100. And then the week after, is that it’s going to be episode 101 when you’re going to be, it’s switching things up. We’re still going to do dailies, but we’re going to do them in different categories. I’m not real sure how it’s going to look yet. It’s going to be like just create, just the automation, scale and expand. I’m not sure if we’re going to do it weekly. If we’re going to do them weekly, we’re going to put them into their own podcast channels. I’m not sure yet, but we’re still going to do them daily. So we’ll still have those.

The post Measuring Content Marketing Success Of Your Business appeared first on Done For You.

SaaS KPIs are the most important to monitor when transitioning from a product idea to building an early-stage startup. Not only is it essential to track basic marketing metrics and the Key Process Indicators (KPIs), but you also need to ensure investor capital is protected!

Founders who focus on product development and team building often neglect KPIs for early-stage startups.

Typically, an early-stage startup has created a minimum viable product and actively seeks seed funding to enter the growth stage. Failure to find investors will most probably mean the death of the startup. But to get access to funding, venture capitalists (VCs) or private investors will want to see complex data and analyses that show proven growth potential.

The analytics challenge in SaaS KPIs

At the same time, marketing analytics for an early-stage startup is a significant challenge. That is, firstly, because startups are not likely to have a budget for expensive analytics software. Secondly, and most importantly, a SaaS KPIs startup doesn't typically have a large customer base or a variety of advertising campaigns to compile a set of meaningful metrics. In other words, there's not enough data to track because the product is still in a beta or testing phase.

In the case of early-stage startups, SaaS KPIs, website analytics, and in-app analytics are of utmost importance and challenging to track simultaneously. Before discussing the best way to tackle this issue, let's briefly see what is essential to seed and early-stage startups.

Seed and early-stage investments

Early-stage SaaS KPIs or seed tech startups are typically exploring funding opportunities to invest in product development, infrastructure, customer acquisition strategies, and team building. Early-stage companies have few users testing a beta product while fine-tuning their product, working on their go-to-market plan, and devising an outbound strategy.

An early-stage startup usually focuses on customer acquisition and actively seeks customer feedback and its first outside investors through angel investors or VCs.

Usually, a startup won't be profitable until it expands its customer base. Some SaaS KPIs might hinge on trying to reach breakeven cash flow.

Why startup metrics matter

First and foremost, startups need to set goals, and metrics can be seen as business goals. Without pre-defined KPIs, setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-limited) goals and measuring progress would be impossible. KPIs are needed so that the management team can track progress and motivate the early-stage development team.

Data also helps founders make intelligent, informed decisions about their new business. Even with a small customer base, they might be able to identify patterns, problem areas, and achievements and strategize on potential next steps.

Of course, tracking SaaS KPIs, website analytics, and marketing data is also essential when startups are talking with a VC or angel investor. Investors will typically want to see indicators of product validation. Specifically, they will require proof that the go-to-market strategy works and that the company has a solid monetization strategy.

The only thing that makes a great idea is the numbers. If a startup founder cannot get to the point where they acquire paying customers, the picture will die. As they say, a picture is only as good as its execution. So, an early-stage startup should be able to demonstrate specific growth and success metrics.

It's essential to understand why metrics matter. Without data and analysis, a founder won't know how far they have progressed and won't know when the startup is ready two scales or is in trouble.

Decisions are often made based on entrepreneur intuition, but nothing is more solid than metrics, especially when a third party will be involved as a funding source.

Marketing metrics and analytics for early-stage SaaS startups

Let's assume your startup follows the freemium model (I know - not a GREAT way to monetize in terms of SaaS KPIs).

Freemium is a pricing strategy by which a SaaS KPIs product has a basic free tier, and it also provides premium paid plans for users to access additional features.

In this case, a lead refers to a free signup, while a customer is anyone who converts to a paid plan.

It's worth to mention that there are three keys to success in SaaS:

1. Acquiring Leads
2. Converting Leads into Customers
3. Monetizing Customers

Here are the most critical metrics KPIs for early-stage startups you need to track consistently.

Free download: Excel Template with KPIs for early-stage startups - SaaS Metrics 2.0 Dashboard

Do you need a better web analytics tool that helps quantify traffic data and visualize complete sales funnels instantly? With Statly, a web tracking and analytics tool that is simple to set up, you can finally start to make sense of your marketing data.

A. Growth metrics to track for early-stage startups

Monthly unique visitors

Monthly unique visitors are an important one for SaaS KPIs. It's the number of different users visiting your website each month. If a single person visits the site multiple times within a given time, they will be considered one unique visitor. That is, of course, as long as they use the same browser for the visits and do not clear the browser cookies. Use this metric and the traffic source to know more about how effective your paid or SEO campaigns are. Monthly unique visitors are a good reflection of the size of the audience and are a good measure of your brand reach.

Use tools like Google Analytics to estimate monthly unique visitors.

Monthly new leads

This metric, called lead acquisition rate, shows how many new leads or free signups a SaaS KPIs company acquires monthly. It makes sense to track the information sources, whether through paid channels or word of mouth and SEO.

Not every SaaS KPIs business offers a free trial or a self-service option. Many established companies require you to schedule a demo with a sales rep before accessing the software. But, self-service user signup and activation is perhaps the best way to lower the cost of acquiring a customer and increase the lead acquisition rate for a small SaaS startup.

For self-service SaaS companies in their early stage, monthly signups are probably the most critical growth metric since they're still building up their user base. Sometimes, CEOs want to acquire as many leads as possible before finding an optimized formula to convert those people into paid users.

Google Analytics can help you calculate some SaaS KPIs, such as new leads and comparing data to the previous month.

Customer acquisition rate

Whether offering a free trial or a free pricing plan, your ultimate goal should be to convert free users into paying customers. It is a misconception that many trial users will eventually generate considerable revenues.

SaaS startups need to put a well-thought-out onboarding and lead nurturing plan into action if they want to be able to boast when in meetings with VCs.

Similar to the lead acquisition rate, the customer acquisition rate is the number of new revenue-generating users over some time, usually a month.

Your billing or accounting platform will help you find the number of new customers and the revenue they generate every month.

Churn rate

Churn measures a drop in the customer base of a SaaS startup. Churn is about how much the service has lost within a certain period, which might be longer than a month. It's one of the most meaningful indicators in forecasting business continuity. As a startup founder, you must know if customers want to stick with or abandon your product because they see no value.

So, keep a sharp eye on the customer churn rate and identify its reasons.

For most SaaS companies, 3% or lower churn is considered normal.

Now, in terms of revenue lost because of churn. As an early-stage startup focused on revenue growth, your goal should eventually be to earn more from new customers than lose from abandoning customers. In other words, you need to accomplish a negative revenue churn. Your biggest bet is to prevent paid users from unsubscribing while at the same time finding ways to retain existing customers, if not sell more to them.

You must use data from your accounting or billing and CRM software to calculate churn. Ideally, these platforms should be integrated so that you can cross-check and pull data from either place.

Churn Rate = ( Users at the beginning of Period - Users at the end of Period ) / Users at the beginning of Period

Average use per user per month

Average use per user per month is a KPI to measure the quality of your active users. This is an essential ratio if you want to know how long users spend working with your app. It is a qualitative number that reveals your app's importance to their daily life. It doesn't explicitly measure qualitative data, like passion and frequency of use, but it provides an excellent metric to highlight the relationship of the average user with your app.

If you hook customers to your SaaS KPIs product and get them to revisit it repeatedly, your app becomes a habit, and the users are more likely to continue using it and talk to their peers about it.

Use built-in app functionality to measure this critical metric for early-stage startups, and install Intercom if you want a more accurate portrayal of each user's journey and behavior.

B. Conversion KPIs for early-stage startups

Visitor-to-lead rate

In most cases and according to different marketers, the number of website visitors that become leads is deficient. And we're talking about the conversion rate of the total number of website visitors, not a particular landing page. On average, more than 95 percent of new visitors will leave your website without signing up for your app or subscribing to your newsletter. Instead, very effective landing pages coupled with targeted inbound traffic can give a conversion ratio of as high as 60%.

How to calculate the visitor-to-lead rate. Take your total number of people that converted to leads (subscribers to the free plan and email leads) for any given month, divide it by the total number of unique visitors, and multiply the result by 100. For example, 500 monthly charges with 10,000 website visitors would result in a 5% visitor-to-lead rate.

If you still feel something is wrong with your funnel, you may want to watch our three-part video course. In this free course, you will learn the three steps to finally fix your sales funnel and conversion rates to make more money from your current traffic. Click here for instant access.

Lead-to-customer rate

Every SaaS KPIs startup in its early stages wants to convert free or trial users into paid customers. This number describes how many leads convert into paying customers per month. In other words, it shows whether your sales process and lead nurturing methods work. The lead-to-customer rate is about how quickly you turn free subscribers into customers. Generating sales-ready leads is a challenge; this metric shows you how good you're at it.

The lead-to-customer rate is pretty straightforward to calculate. Take the number of newly acquired customers for any given month, divide it by the number of new leads, and multiply that by 100 to get your percentage. For example, 15 monthly customers when you score 500 new charges would result in a 3% lead-to-customer rate.

Use Google Analytics goals to track conversions and other paid tools that can come in handy, like Intercom.

C. Marketing and other basic KPIs for SaaS startups

Cost per lead

Cost per lead (CPL) is a number that shows you how much it costs your company to acquire a new user that is interested in your SaaS product. In other words, CPL is how much you need to spend on average to have a new lead subscribe to your newsletter or sign up for your free plan. Compared to the cost per click (CPC), CPL is more important as a KPI for decision-making. CPL measures the actual cost of a real business asset, a natural person who engages with your business and decides to come aboard your app.

How to calculate cost per lead. CPL is calculated by dividing total ad spend by the number of new information for a given time. While you can use the actual ad spend over the total number of leads, it is best practice to attribute lead generation to an ad. So, CPL should be calculated separately for each channel campaign.

CPL = Total Ad Spend / Total Attributed Leads

Customer acquisition cost

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) describes how much your SaaS startup costs to acquire a new paid customer.

Calculating CAC is somewhat more complicated. Divide your total marketing spend (including personnel) by the number of new users who purchased a plan within a period usually longer than a month. If you calculate CAC for a single month, you might not consider your sales cycle, which is typically longer than a month for a less-known SaaS product.

CAC = Total Cost of Sales & Marketing / Number of Deals Closed

For example, if you spent $80,000 over three months and added 400 new customers, your CAC would be $200.

Combined with customer lifetime value (CLV), this metric helps companies calculate ROI and prove their business model is viable.

Monthly revenue and monthly recurring revenue

Revenue for early-stage SaaS companies is necessary, but a recurring cash inflow is even more worth concentrating on. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) is a simple but powerful metric that tracks the net value of renewals, new subscriptions, and up-sells minus churns every month.

If you want to calculate the new monthly recurring revenue, use this formula:

Net New MRR = New MRR + Expansion MRR – Churn MRR

MRR helps your early-stage SaaS KPIs startup predict its business future more accurately. Thus, MRR can gauge the value you bring for a funding round.

The average revenue per account

The average revenue per account (ARPA) measures the average revenue generated per user, typically monthly, where multiple pricing tiers exist. It represents the average revenue per customer since a customer should be signed up for a single account.

A simple way to calculate ARPA is to divide the total MRR you have at the end of a month and divide it by the number of active customers at that time, like so:

ARPA = MRR / Total Number of Customers

A good practice is measuring ARPA for new and existing customers separately to understand how your ARPA is evolving or if new customers behave differently compared to existing ones.

D. Expenses

Monthly expenses

When it comes to expenses, one of the most significant tasks from a SaaS startup's P& L perspective is the proper classification of costs. The two main categories of expenses are the costs of goods sold (COGS) and operating expenses. Both categories of expenses are essential for analytics, benchmarking, and investor analyses.

For example, revenue minus COGS gives you a gross profit margin. This is one of the most straightforward but powerful ratios investors consider when funding their early-stage SaaS startup.

From a managerial point of view, you need to keep an eye on COGS and operating expenses that are usually high in tech startups, like staff wages, technology expenses, and marketing costs.

Cost of goods sold

COGS is the direct costs attributable to the production and delivery of the product.

In the case of a SaaS company, COGS will include any of the following: developer wages; hosting; cloud and database fees; support personnel and customer care costs; third-party fees directly attributable to product creation and delivery; and customer onboarding costs.

Operating expenses

On the flip side, operating expenses are incurred by an organization through its day-to-day business operations. This category of costs would include other staff salaries, rent, advertising, legal & professional fees, etc.

Your accountant will be able to help you with the appropriate cost structure for your early-stage SaaS startup to comply with the law and, at the same time, be able to reach conclusions from a managerial perspective.

Free download: SaaS Financial Model - Simple Template For Early-Stage Startups

E. Other marketing metrics that matter

Traffic per channel and campaign

You already know the importance of consistent streams of traffic to your site. Unique visitors and traffic sources (per channel and campaign) are also important SaaS KPIs. They should already be visible in your Google Analytics account; however, diving deeper into your traffic analytics is essential as a SaaS startup.

Most SaaS websites have a way for users to log in. The log-in link is usually in the top navigation bar. As the number of users of your cloud-based software increases, you will get a lot of repeat visitors to your homepage. These users come back to find the log-in link. This can yield false traffic data.

An artificial increase in your overall traffic might be misinterpreted as business growth due to marketing campaigns. You need to tackle this issue with the help of a Google Analytics expert.

Customer lifetime value

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is one of the most critical SaaS KPIs! It's the average income each customer will generate for your business. It is wrong to associate the value of each user with a month's worth of the plan they purchased. Also, it's wrong to calculate the ROI of your marketing efforts based on a customer's first purchase. Instead, you need to take into account the sum of revenue you have on average from a customer's lifetime.

Here's how to calculate CLV.

CLV = ( 1 / Churn Rate ) x ARPA

First, calculate your customer lifetime rate by dividing the number 1 by your customer churn rate. For instance, if your monthly churn rate is 2%, your customer lifetime rate would be 1 / 0.02 = 50.

Then, it would be best to figure out your average revenue per user (ARPA) by dividing the total income by the total number of paid users. If your payment was $50,000, divide it by 100 customers, and your ARPA would be $50,000 / 100 = $500.

Finally, find the lifetime value of your customer by multiplying the customer's lifetime rate by ARPA. In this example, your SaaS company CLV would be $500 x 50 = $25,000.

This value translates into the expected revenue from a single customer for the lifetime of your relationship. It is what every user is worth. It is an essential piece of data you want to display to funding parties.

Brand reach

Turning to pure marketing ratios, brands, or market reach is crucial to a tech startup. In its simplest form, brand reach is the estimated size of the audience you reach through your marketing campaigns over some time, usually a month.

Market reach allows tech startups to determine whether the cost of a marketing campaign is worth the revenue that new customers could bring in.

To measure this metric, you would usually look at the total number of people who visited your site (monthly unique visitors), saw your Facebook or Google Ads, opened your email, and so on. Observe the number as it grows month after month to make sense of this SaaS metric over a more extended period.

Sales cycle

For most SaaS products, the sales cycle will depend on the type of product you're selling, the reputation of the product, and the price tag.

An early-stage startup usually struggles to create buzz around its name, making it easier for people to purchase.

Even if you have a long sales cycle, tracking how it changes over time is essential so you can continually improve. Either you have salespeople who pick up the phone or an automated sales sequence focusing on effective onboarding and nurturing the leads in your funnel to shorten the sales cycle.

And remember: Acquiring a new customer is 4-10 times harder than retaining an existing one. So keep building your relationships with newly acquired customers and improve your engagement KPIs.

How does your startup score against other SaaS companies?

Tracking analytics and data might make sense if you look at them as standalone numbers and rates. First, it's essential to look for trends over time, and second, you might want to benchmark against other SaaS and tech companies. If you're wondering what is the typical KPIs for a SaaS company, look at the following survey of over 400 private SaaS companies, which represents deep benchmarking data and insights on the growth and operations of private SaaS companies.

Survey part 1
Survey part 2

These benchmark metrics will help you see how you're doing and create a detailed business plan for your startup. Such a business plan can help you present your business in front of VCs for funding or just set business goals.

The importance of data-driven decisions for SaaS startups

To make an early-stage SaaS company successful, you can't just build a great product or change your software subscription model and assume that hordes of customers will come. You need a thoughtful marketing strategy and run marketing and sales campaigns to make people aware of your SaaS product and attract your target market.

The SaaS economic model is unique from almost any other. It relies on small amounts of recurring revenues to support growth. It would be best to track important metrics and KPIs from day one of your early-stage startups to make rational, data-driven decisions regarding your marketing, sales, and services operations.

Free download: SaaS Cohort Analysis Model - KPIs for early-stage startups

[FORMATTED FROM VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]

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Mastering SAAS KPIs for Business Growth

Hello there, I'm Jason Drohn, the brain behind doneforyou.com. Today, we are diving deep into the nitty-gritty of SAAS KPIs - the metrics that can propel your business into a new digital age. Through our expertise in creating offers, setting up sales funnels, and marketing automation, we aim to assist you in sculpting your business growth trajectory. So, let's unravel the intricacies of SAAS KPIs.

Understanding the Landscape of SAAS KPIs

SAAS KPIs, or Software as a Service Key Performance Indicators, are metrics cloud-hosted software companies use to gauge their business health and growth. Due to years of hefty venture capital investments, SAAS companies have developed mature business models, adopting a data-driven approach ahead of many other digital business sectors. Understanding and tracking your SAAS KPIs is crucial whether you're an early-stage or late-stage startup. Let's delve into why these metrics are critical for your business development.

Essential SAAS KPIs for Startups

In the early stages, startups often face the challenge of identifying the most vital KPIs. The focus often sways between subscriber growth and profitability, with a keen eye on metrics that signal promising returns in the future. Here are some fundamental SAAS KPIs to consider:

• Monthly Unique Visitors: Track the number of new visitors to evaluate the reach of your business.
• Lead Generation: Monitor the influx of new leads daily, as they hold potential for future revenue.
• Customer Acquisition Rate and Churn Rate: Keep an eye on these metrics to understand your business's health and growth rate.

Monetizing Leads: A Closer Look

Turning leads into revenue is a gradual yet inevitable process. It might take a while, but with the right strategies, such as effective email sequences, you will see a significant uptick in your revenue. Here, we will discuss aspects like:

• Lead to Customer Conversion Rate: Understand the percentage of leads transforming into customers.
• Cost per Lead: Determine the amount spent to acquire a lead and strategize accordingly.
• Customer Acquisition Cost: This metric, varying across funnels, helps strategize your budget effectively.

Revenue Metrics: Tracking Business Growth

Your business's growth and valuation are intricately tied to your revenue metrics. In this section, we will examine:

• Monthly and Yearly Recurring Revenue (MRR & YRR): Staple metrics indicating your business's size and growth trajectory.
• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): Learn how to gauge and influence this number to improve your business's financial health.

Influencing Factors: Shaping Your SAAS KPIs

Various factors within your business operations influence each SAAS KPI. Understanding these influencers can help in optimizing your strategies. We will explore landing page effectiveness, sales material quality, offer strategies, and how they mold your KPIs.

Expenses and Other Vital Marketing Metrics

Apart from the above, knowing your monthly expenses, operating costs, and other marketing metrics like brand reach and the sales cycle is crucial. This section will offer insights into managing your payments wisely and understanding marketing metrics that matter.

Leveraging Tools for SAAS KPI Tracking

To stay on top of your game, leveraging tools that offer in-depth insights into your business is essential. One such tool is Cyfe, which allows you to create dashboards that provide comprehensive insights into your business, covering aspects like ad spend, social media engagement, and much more.

Conclusion: Embrace the Power of Data

While SAAS KPIs might seem a dry topic, understanding and utilizing these metrics can revolutionize your business growth. Remember, the key to successful business management is knowing your numbers and effectively leveraging data.

The post Why Tracking The Right SaaS KPIs Will Help You Scale More Quickly appeared first on Done For You.

We live in a world driven by data analytics—namely, sales data analysis.  That leads us down a neverending road of figuring out how to analyze sales data, analytics, statistics, and numbers.   It is a channelized interplay of all this that we can see the things placed in the way they are around us.

This whole idea of sales data analytics, data mining, and data science has completely captivated business and education in the last 12 months...  So much so that I see info products and degree programs popping up all over the place around this idea of 'data.'

Don’t believe it?

Well, why do they place the items in the way they are placed in a grocery store?

They have studied and found a particular pattern that attracts maximum attention. Hence, they have kept it like that. The same goes for the advertisements we see on our social media. Because of the data or the so-called cookies these systems use, we see those ads floating around on our computer screens.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In this post, we will discuss the countless ways businesses can utilize data analytics to create a better experience and ultimately improve their sales. So, let us begin...

And to kick it off, one of my favorite quotes:

“Data by itself is useless. Data is only useful if you apply it.” Todd Park

1. How To Analyze Sales Data And Market Data

As a business, you want to generate as much traffic for your website as possible to convert them. You employ countless strategies – social media marketing, search engine optimization, paid marketing, and whatnot.

At the most basic level, you want to know how to improve sales with data...

What works and what not? It's easy to get lost in vast amounts of seemingly meaningless numbers.

Only quantifying and analyzing data can help you determine what works, which is why we built the Axis's Advanced Analytics engine... To get a complete picture of what works. What is driving sales? Where should you be investing your marketing resources? There’s even a free 3-part video series that’ll walk you through filling the gaps in your metrics.

With the power to increase sales analytics, you can eventually learn how to analyze sales data, driving the best numbers to your website.

Once you have those numbers, you can quickly analyze the sales data and focus more effort in that direction rather than continuing with the hit-and-trial streak.

2. Targeted Marketing Using Data Analytics

Your efforts are going to waste unless you know your target. It is data that helps your product to target.

Suppose you have project management software for teams. And, you intend to sell it in the market.

Which audience should you target? This becomes a big question. Running a pilot study, gathering the data, and then studying the results of this test can help you get a clear picture of your most influential audience.

So, you can plan the marketing efforts targeting that particular audience and kill it in the market!

That’s how powerful data analytics is when it comes to driving sales!

3. Predictive Analysis: How Analytics Can Improve Business

Your ultimate target is to reach the customers and sell your product. But when should you get them?

What are the best methods and the best time to get in touch with them? This can be achieved with data-driven predictive analysis once you discover how to analyze sales data effectively...

If you have a business that has been running for a long time, gathering past data to study customer behavior and understanding the results of interaction with them can be used to predict customer behavior.

Based on these predictions, you can eventually be more specific in your efforts and hit the bull’s eye with every marketing campaign to ultimately get more conversions!

4. Drive Down Costs With Data Analytics

As combined results of all the factors mentioned above, you can be sure of one thing – running more efficient marketing campaigns.

This means that you can be more specific when dealing with customers, create more targeted campaigns, and hence require less effort to develop and implement.

The ultimate result would be – low costs and better ROI - leading to an increase.

And this is the ultimate goal of every business. Isn’t it?

Bringing down the expenses and getting the maximum out of the investment you put in creates a successful business. With the help of data analytics, you can quickly achieve this goal without facing any trouble.

Inside our Coaching Accelerator Toolkit, there are LOTS of free training materials to help you understand and dig into analytics:

• Learn how to analyze sales data
• Start effectively tracking marketing data
• Find out how you decide what costs you should cut and
• Get to the profitable areas of your business that are worth pursuing.

5. Build Better Products With Data

A business must continue to evolve to remain a thriving force in the industry. But how does a company grow?

The answer is constantly building new products, better services, and whatnot.

Now, this is where data analytics can play a significant role.

Data analytics can help you understand market trends. What are the customers drifting towards? What are they attracted to in the current market scenario? And what’s the future going to be?

Answers to all these questions lie in your numbers, making learning how to analyze sales data the most important question...

Once you have those numbers and find the answer to these questions, you can head towards developing a product that already has a high chance of succeeding in the market.  So, you are in a win-win situation!

6. Better MRR Because Of Data Analytics

MRR stands for monthly recurring revenue for those who are not into sales.

It is the number of customers that come back every month to pay for your product or service.

With the power of data, you can efficiently study customer behavior, build targeted campaigns, and effortlessly attract those customers who have invested in your business.

So, you can quickly get recurring customers by targeting your efforts in that direction. As the numbers suggest, it costs five times more money to acquire a new customer than retaining one.

And data analytics can help you figure out ways to keep that returning customer number high.

What's Next?

Remember those words by Mark Twain, “Data is like garbage. You’d better know what you will do with it before you collect it.”

And today’s businesses have found the hidden power of data. They know what they will do with it and invest considerable sums in data and predictive analytics.

If you, too, want to learn how to analyze sales data and take your business to newer heights of success, it is high time you find the right source for gathering data and then invest in analytics.

The future lies in numbers and predictive analysis. And you would not want your business to be left behind in the market just because you did not want to invest in gathering those numbers. Would you?

So, what are you waiting for? Plan your way out, and see what strategy you need to implement to get the most out of data analytics for your business.

If all this data is Greek to you...  If you're a big-picture visionary and would rather claw your eyes out than spend a second looking at graphs...  Click the button below to learn more about what we do, and then book a free call!

Video Transcript:

They have no clue whether it's getting 2000 visitors a day or 20 visitors a day. That's terrible because if you know how much traffic is coming to your website, there are things you can do to influence that traffic. You can move them into sales funnels. You can do things like exit pops, put banners on your website, and serve advertising to start making money.

Hey, this is Jason Drohn. Today, I want to discuss how businesses use analytics to improve sales, website optimization, and conversions. It is how to make more money with the traffic to your site and the sales material that is usually already there. So a quote I love, "Data analytics by itself is useless. Data is only useful if you apply it," which is true. So, first of all, if you do not have an analytics program that you are using, you need to install something on your website immediately.

Stop this video, go, and install Google Analytics. And if you can't figure it out, figure it out because it is easy. Log in with your Gmail username and your Google account username, go to analytics.google.com, and then start your account. Then, it will ask you what website you want to track.

And do you want to track websites, apps, whatever? You want to follow a website, and your website is your URL. Then, there is a multitude of plugins. For WordPress, you can install the code directly to your site. It would help if you started tracking data because here's the thing. Your data analytics is lost. Every day, you are not following. So, if your analytics code is installed today, but you don't plan on using that data at any point in the next month, it doesn't matter. Because when you log in in a month, in two months, in three months, in six months, you still have all that Data you can comb through. But, if you don't ever take the time to install it, then that data is gone. You have no idea how many visitors your website is getting. There's a reason I'm harping on this.

So many of our clients who come to us have no idea how much traffic their website is getting. So whether it's getting 2000 visitors a day or 20 visitors a day, they have no clue. That's terrible because if you know how much traffic is coming to your website, there are things you can do to influence that traffic. You can move them into sales funnels, do something like exit pops, put banners on your website, and serve advertising to start making money, but you need to know how much traffic is coming to your website. So, now that we have that out in the open, how do businesses use data analytics? I have been digging through website data for the last 13 to 14 years, trying to understand the story that the data is trying to tell us.

And it's not just my websites or my traffic; all our clients, too. So, I've gotten pretty good at figuring out what data analytics means. There are things that I'm always looking for. Of course, revenue, number of units sold, number of leads in, all of that stuff is super important. That's also a given. I mean, if you're looking to do business online and you aren't tracking sales or aren't tracking the number of units sold, there's a problem with that. It's what you need to do. But some things influence those kinds of critical metrics, leads, and sales. Those things affecting the metrics are website visitors. They are keyword phrases that bring in new traffic. They are ad source, basic UTM variable stuff, so which ad is sending the sale? Lots of things that aren't ... If you're looking at traffic, you're looking at your sales and your leads and then downline; many things influence those sales and leads.

So, what are those things? Because if you can optimize those, then you get more sales. A great example is a sales funnel. If you have a thousand people who are hitting the home page of your site and right up top, there is a hero box. A hero box, right up top, with an image, a headline, and a button. It says ... I don't know, like even on Done For You ... "We Accelerate Your Growth" or "We Accelerate Growth". So, there's "We Accelerate Growth" and a little sub-headline and a button. And, let's say a thousand people hit the website, and a hundred of them hit that button, and then they go off into some sales funnel. So, the sales funnel, in our case right now, is a survey. It's just something we're testing.

So, they go down in the survey. Now, what if we changed that headline to be, let's say, "Make Money Fall From the Sky"? Let's say. Make money fall from the sky," so they hit the homepage, Done For You, "Make Money Fall From the Sky," then they hit the button, sending them to the same sales funnel, but we get 200 clicks. It's 100% more, or twice the amount of traffic hitting that button and then going down the sales funnel for that second headline. Now, that second headline isn't something we want on our website, but it illustrates the point. Whenever you can unblock a gateway, whenever you can unclog a gateway so that more people are flowing through it, then you're knocking down the barriers through the rest of your sales funnel.

So, if you get twice as many people who hit a landing page, you'll have twice as many people ... All things remain even ... You have twice as many people who will opt-in for that lead and then move into your email list. So, there are many different ways that data analytics can be used there. When looking at sales funnel metrics, what are the five steps of the funnel? And then, how many people hit each step, and is there anything that we can do to unblock that pathway? So, an example might be changing the -landing page headline and splitting it into three or four different headlines. It might be changing our button color so that we're optimizing the button. I mean, you go from green to red to black. You'll find a button color that'll give you a 12% boost in the conversion of your order. I know it's wild because it's just a color, but it always matters.

Order form design, sales page design, sales copy, all of these things can be optimized, and you're going to be looking at your data analytics to figure out what needs to be optimized and what needs to happen with it. So, just some fundamental parameters there. But, some of the things that I'm looking for ... We started with Google Analytics ... Some of the stuff that we looked for in Google Analytics, I'm looking at page views. What pages are getting an uncommon amount of traffic, and then what is happening on those pages? For instance, we have 400 blog posts. So, what are the 20 or 30 blog posts getting most of our traffic, and how were the keyword phrases influencing that traffic?

For example, our website is a sales funnel page. I think we're ranked for 170 keyword phrases on our sales funnel page and our sales funnel offer. Now, those 170 keyword phrases, all with some derivative of the sales funnel, are ranging ... Some are on the first page, and some are on page 10 in Google. A lot of them are on page five and page six. We're getting quite a bit of traffic searching from sales funnels, but we want to move as many of those page four and page five keyword phrases up closer to page one and page two and then move the 10s to page five. So, we're constantly pushing, trying to increase those keyword phrases so we can continue getting sales to funnel traffic and rank for more keyword phrases that then send us free traffic.

So, that's one thing I'm looking for: the pages and the keyword phrases sending us traffic. Another item I'm looking for is paid traffic campaigns, in which ads send an uncommon amount of sales or call signups or whatever we're looking for. I'm also looking for all this stuff in the client's campaigns. I'm always looking for the data that says the small things we're doing that make the most drastic difference. It might be a video of you targeting one particular group or interest base inside Facebook. And then, because of the language in that video, they are reacting to the landing page better, so they're opting in on the landing page and moving through the sales funnel faster.

That's all a data analytics play because, in data, you can see the UTM variable, you can see what ad this person came in on, you can see what the conversion rate on the landing page is, and you can see what the conversion rate on the sales video is. And ultimately, you can track how long it takes in most CRMs. You can track how long it took somebody to click the ad to purchase. There's a buyer lifecycle cycle report in some of the more advanced CRMs. So, you know that that video gets you better conversion and drastically reduces the customer life cycle, which is fantastic. Do you know what I mean? So the most significant thing, though, is it is so easy to get lost in data. So easy.

So, if you're not a data and analytics junkie like me, pick a couple of things that you're excited about. Pick leads, sales, and video view minutes, let's say. Those are the three things you watch. There's lots of dashboard-building software out there. I use an excellent tool called Cyfe, C-Y-F-E. You can build a nice little dashboard spread to check on it. I check on it once a day to see what my trending analytics are. But it keeps me good on the critical numbers to me now. Every once in a while, I'll take a metric off, or I'll add a metric on, but what it does is it gives me an excellent way of just popping in, checking on stuff, and then leaving.

So, check out Cyfe, Domo, or any of the other dashboard tools out there. I think they make a big difference in the tabs you're keeping on your business and don't cost a whole lot. Nice software. But, if you liked this video, make sure to enjoy, subscribe, and comment, and if you would like us to take a look at your data analytics, your website, get into some website optimization, get into really making your sales funnel hum, go to DoneForYou.com/start. Fill out the short little form and schedule a call, and we'll talk to you soon. All right? Thanks, bye.

The post How To Analyze Sales Data To Unlock More Revenue Online appeared first on Done For You.

Sixty percent of enterprise business leaders claim that customer analytics is the most critical need of the hour and will increase to 79% by 2020, with personalization being the key driving factor. Enterprises are adopting customer analytics successfully and are concentrating on their goal of achieving customer personalization at scale. They are using customer analytics to do precisely that in real time.

Some of the highest achievers at the enterprise level have developed machine learning algorithms to learn how and when to offer product recommendations, adjust pricing at par with demand, and deliver competitive pricing strategies.

Corporations and various industry sectors worldwide are changing their approach to business with a customer-centric perspective, gathering a massive volume of customer intelligence data. However, harnessing the data surge can be challenging.

Even sophisticated and advanced software handling big data could not meet this deluge. Countless companies have faced challenges that continue. However, it is a fact that to succeed in this competitive marketplace and grow, your business should be able to acquire, retain, engage, and satisfy customers effectively. So, customer analytics is crucial for assessing your business performance.

Customer analytics statistics

Image source: Forbes.com

Before concluding, it is vital to know how much customer analytics has influenced the growth of businesses. Some fascinating insights from a study conducted by the Harvard Business Review Analytic Services and Intel, SAS, and Accenture Applied Intelligence find that customer analytics is the basic need of the hour for improving customer experience across all channels.

These facts should help:

• 70% of enterprises have increased expenditures on real-time customer analytics solutions over the years
• 58% of enterprises are witnessing a significant rise in customer loyalty and retention due to customer analytics
• 60% of real-time customer analytics is in use to improve customer experience across various devices and touchpoints
• 44% of enterprises are acquiring more new customers and increasing ROI (i.e., optimizing their sales funnel) by adopting and integrating customer analytics operations
• 39% of enterprise executives opine that IoT is an essential technology for improving customer experiences

Customer satisfaction analysis – A sensible business trend

Image source: expertcallers.com

Corporations have a target market and customer base. If your customers are happy with your services or products, they will likely repeat you. Customer satisfaction analysis is a simple process to assess whether your customers receive what they expect and want from your business, product, or service. Precisely, you are determining their level of satisfaction – good, satisfactory, unsatisfactory.

A common way of assessing customer satisfaction is using qualitative and quantitative surveys. However, the concept of surveys is also changing and evolving with time. Today, rather than spending fortunes on surveys, you can encourage your customers to interact with you on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. You can open your business page on these leading social networks for better customer communication.

Customer Lifetime Value Analytics

Image source: Pearanalytics

A business should aim to attribute a lifetime value to customers. Once you do that, you can immediately differentiate between the most valuable and important customers. Customer lifetime value analytics is a process of analyzing how valuable a customer is to your business over an entire lifetime of a long-lasting relationship. Rather than focusing on transaction profitability, you should look at how long the customer is likely to stick with you, how often they buy during that relationship period, and, thus, how valuable they are over a specific time frame.

As a result, you can start focusing on and retaining the most valuable customers. This analysis can identify ways to increase a relationship’s length and customer value if done correctly. However, this module’s most significant challenge is finding the right formula for the business, as there is no one-size-fits-all. Analytics experts at DoneForYou.com can help.

Customer segmentation analytics

Image source: eweek.com

Gone are the days of selling all things to all your customers using a cliché marketing tactic! It does not work that way anymore.

Customer segmentation analytics is a process that allows businesses to find sub-categories or segments of customers within the market. Assessing customers and splitting them into different parts that might purchase a particular product or buy more frequently helps to create tailored marketing efforts and communication strategies. Valuable customer data to help companies identify clear segments is widely available online. Tools like text analysis and data mining are very effective for this purpose.

How important is real-time customer analytics?

Image source: eweek.com

Customer analytics is gradually becoming critical to businesses.

Customers today are more empowered and connected to the source than ever before. As such, they have complete access to information anytime, anywhere – where to buy, what to buy, what is the cost and the best discount, etc. This makes it significantly important to predict how customers will behave when interacting with your business so that you can respond accordingly. A deeper understanding of your customers’ lifestyle preferences and buying habits allows you to predict future buying behaviors accurately. The more successful you are at delivering relevant offers to attract customers, the better it is for your business.

With customer analytics, you can:

• Increase response rates and customer loyalty, which ultimately increases ROI
• Contact the right customers with relevant offers and messages
• Reduce the cost of campaigns by targeting those customers who are most likely to respond
• Reduce attrition by predicting customers’ behavior accurately and develop proactive campaigns to retain them
• Deliver a target message by proper segmentation more effectively and have a better understanding of target populations

How does Axis Advanced Analytics help?

If you want your business to succeed in marketing, you must track and analyze critical data. Your business may be attracting massive traffic, but you need more conversions to make it worthwhile.

Axis Advanced Analytics is a complete tool that helps you to identify your potentially valuable customers, track their buying behavior, and keep them coming back. You can follow how users act when they visit your website. Today, it is essential to obtain meaningful data to succeed in your marketing plans, and Axis Advanced Analytics helps you to track your users in real-time. As a result, you can monitor customers leveraging your sales funnel strategy, which increases the chances of conversion multiple times. In addition, Axis Advanced Analytics also helps businesses obtain meaningful data to make correct business decisions.

So, do you know how it works?

Axis Advanced Analytics gives businesses a comprehensive idea of the sales funnel and its conversion rate. It also allows you to spot opportunities and parts of the funnel that require improvement. The tool also allows:

• Real-time website analytics
• Sales funnel conversion tracking
• Tracking conversion opportunities
• Tracking user behavior and sales on the website

Sites powered by WordPress can install the latest version of the plugin and get started with the software’s latest analytics and sales funnel tracking. Adding Axis Advanced Analytics ensures you can optimize the online sales process and enhance the buyer’s journey. As a result, you can expect an increase in the number of web visitors converting into customers.

You can sign up for Axis Advanced Analytics from DoneForYou.com.

Tips to improve real-time customer experience analytics

Image source: yumyumvideos.com

Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, in collaboration with Accenture Applied Intelligence, SAS, and Intel, produced a clear-cut ROA that can help any company start improving customer experience with real-time analytics. Here’s how:

• Having a C-level executive increases the chances of success by 70% or more. Using their insights and influence, they create better opportunities to improve overall customer centricity.
• Overcome any analysis challenge that slows the roadmaps from becoming a business reality in larger enterprises. Stay focused on capturing retention, revenue, loyalty, and customer outcomes.
• The study mentions the impressive results of Telefonica Chile, showing how they remained faithful to the original vision of enriching every customer touchpoint using valuable data. Strong enterprises with customer-centric systems reflect on real-time customers.
• Usability testing is a feasible technique to analyze customer behavior and buying habits, which were recently ignored.
• Personalization at scale should be the focus of enterprises for an exceptionally successful customer analytics strategy.
• Shift focus from technological leadership to customers and their needs. Innovating around customers using data from your products and services is the key.

Final word

Data management is different from the reason you chose marketing. However, it is the basis of understanding your target customers and developing incredible customer intelligence, which is vital for genuine creativity and personalization. Businesses can monetize an offer to the market by using customer data wisely.

Customer intelligence is the source of determining the magical moment of success. As you get to know your customers, your business will reach the ideal point at which you can offer them something new and attractive that they shall accept immediately. You must know what to provide and when. If either goes wrong, you could lose your customer to another service provider who got it right.

Also, I’d like to point out that the first impression remains the last impression. What your potential customers see at first sight is your digital interface. So, could you make it attractive and engaging?

If you’d like a hand in optimizing your website and sales funnel, click the button below and watch the video…

The post The Power of Customer Analytics: Essential Insights for Skyrocketing Your Sales! appeared first on Done For You.

But, what exactly is marketing automation?

Marketing automation – What it is and what it is not

Marketing automation is a way of targeting customers using software that works on auto pilot after you initially set it up. Software sends automated marketing messages and notifications across multiple channels, such as emails, text messages, social networks, pop up notifications, push messages, etc.

Undoubtedly, marketing automation fuels efficiency as well as global outreach. Research shows that marketing automation increases sales productivity by 14.5% and reduces marketing overhead by 12.2%.

Automation tools and software are very effective in lead generation through chatbots across several platforms such as email marketing, webpages, social media, and SMS. Another research reveals that 4 out of 5 users increased leads by choosing marketing automation software and almost 77% experienced increased conversions.

Automation tools are effective in analyzing customer demographics, usage patterns, and behavior. Data collected can be further used for effective customer targeting and segmentation. Using Axis Advanced Analytics, users can understand marketing data better and improve sales performance.

The most effective ways to optimize marketing automation is to map customer experience and use dynamic and personalized content.

Brief history of marketing automation

When IBM launched Unica automation software back in 1992, it was one of its kind. Presently, the same Unica products power the omnichannel marketing as well as real-time automation solutions of the company. When Unica was launched, most businesses did not even think of having an online interface. In fact, the internet was in its infancy.

With the penetration of the internet in the mid-2000s and cloud-based marketing tools like Act-In and HubSpot development, things changed. By 2010, there were almost a billion social media users. Around the same time, Infusionsoft and HubSpot integrated social marketing tools. Webinars and mobile commerce started becoming popular, thus contributing to the development of some of the finest automated marketing tools.

According to reports released by EmailModay, in 2017 over 50% of the companies were already using marketing automation tools whereas 60% of all B2B companies planned to adopt this new technology.

Today, marketing automation is touted to be a game changer. Its benefits are inarguable. Obviously, it is a massive time as well as money saver; but there is a lot more to it. Over 90% of marketers consider these tools because of their ability to deliver uninterrupted and autonomous optimization across various channels. In addition, these tools also enable teams to analyze, review and take action on marketing data and customer in real-time.

Implementing marketing automation

Marketing plays a key role in business. As your business scales, it may be impossible to communicate with all your customers and manage your relationship at a one-to-one level. As a result, marketing automation is the only solution. It not only makes communication easier but also helps businesses operate professionally and efficiently. Most importantly, it ensures that you are punctual and prompt with communication.

Automation tools are designed to serve your purpose depending on the nature of your business. For instance, if your business is a bank, you can choose marketing automation tools to nurture your prospects, convert them into customers, help with customer relationship management, etc.

Contrary to popular beliefs, most marketing automation tools and software improve communication and give time to emphasize on the quality of messages and ad campaigns. Furthermore, it also gives importance to personal space in communication through regulated conversations.

Overall, marketing automation with all its weapons aims to improve the user experience. However, we must realize that the concept of automation is not just limited to technology or software. It is, rather, a channel and a medium used to perform crucial activities for the benefit of your business.

In order to make the most out of marketing automation, you must take some preventive measures to avoid making mistakes.

Noted below are some of the major mistakes to avoid while implementing marketing automation:

1. Start with a plan

Automation is a powerful tool. As a result, it is prone to misuse. As automation allows you to create ad campaigns and schedule email campaigns with less money, time and energy, you should not go overboard to become a spammer. Because it is easy, don’t blast email your leads, especially if your figures are good. You wouldn’t know when you cross the line to hit the spam list.

In the digital domain, you have to avoid spamming. It can hurt your business like none other. So, send only relevant emails to your target audience at the right time.

Moreover, when you are aimless, the process may seem to be too expensive with not so promising result. So, set your goals right, be specific, and take the correct approach.

2. Not having a sound inbound strategy

Wise marketers use marketing automation together with an inbound lead marketing strategy for best results. However, as most marketers rely heavily on automation, they give no importance to inbound marketing.

The traditional marketing strategy involving the sales funnel is very effective. While it takes you through a series of steps to arrive at a sale, automation is a mere way of communicating with your existing leads and converting them.

If your existing lead data is not ready, automation cannot be productive. Although both the strategies are not mutually exclusive of the other, it is difficult to use one optimally without the influence of the other.

3. Don’t be an aggressive seller

When marketers target customers and convert them, they tend to pressurize a lot. Some marketers may also become pushy and intrusive with their offers, discounts, and deals. This indicates that their leads are not engaged before pursuing with their sales pitch and communication. That’s a bad attitude.

You can only engage leads and convert them with defined and relevant content. It is crucial to carry out a sale. By engaging with your leads, you can pass on information related to your business, its principles, and factors making you stand apart from your counterparts. Using a call to action such as signups, surveys, or questionnaire, can benefit too.

4. Not segmenting your audience

You have to categorize your email list based on user behavior, demographics, location, sex, and other relevant factors. Non-segmentation might lead to fruitless exercise. This is primarily because if you deliver the same content to people of all age groups and various professions, there is a possibility that most of your audience would not be interested.

Analyzing buyer personas and segmenting them can boost your returns. It also helps you to aim at the right audience before implementing a marketing automation process. As a result, there is a higher chance of conversion. For instance, if you segment your audience into married, unmarried, and divorced individuals, you would be able to deliver content, which concerns them separately, and gets a response from a likely potential customer.

5. Don’t forget you are human, not a robot

Undoubtedly, marketing automation is wonderful. Everything works on its deal and there is no hassle of the manual process. However, though it allows you to focus on important matters, there is a slight risk of becoming organic.

As you are, your prospects are also humans. You would not want them to realize that a robot is dealing with them. It is critical to humanize the brand and add value to the user experience. Simply by adding a personal touch to messages and making communication more genuine and authentic can make a difference. Make your emails more relevant to your recipients.

6. Don’t build content without a call to action

Ensure to build content with a call to action for better engagement and returns. If you believe that automation can do it all, you may be wrong.

To bring your customers back repeatedly, engage them with sign-up forms, simple clicks, questionnaires, or surveys, and make sure it has a call to action. It would help you to have access to your audience, especially those who are interested in the content or would like to know about your products and services. Depending on the purpose of your content and the nature of the call to action, your audience may engage or disengage with you.

7. Not scheduling and running tests

Running tests is non-negotiable. It is a strategy to predict consumer behavior and learn more about them. This is the gospel of truth for any marketing strategy, including marketing automation.

Always schedule and run tests for your campaigns to maximize the advanced features of the tool or software used. For example, A/B testing allows you to compare two distinct versions of a campaign and deliver better results by emphasizing on a particular element like CTA, subject line, landing page or any other important concern.

Conclusion

Marketing automation is prepared for massive growth. There would be significant changes and technological advancements. A brilliant strategy would be to focus on customers and their needs. Collecting data through customer interaction across several channels may also help businesses to optimize their content targeting client base. To succeed, analyze data and understand the pattern of your customers, their needs, and buying behavior to influence decision making in the future.

Implement Marketing Automation now. Leverage the potential of software tools, marketing solutions and expertise we have to help you grow your business.  Schedule a call with us.

The post Implementing Marketing Automation? Avoid These Common Mistakes appeared first on Done For You.

Google Analytics lets you track both the progress and performance of that site. It’s a basic tool and a perfect addition to our advanced analytics suite, Axis.

Most importantly, Google Analytics provides you access to a pool of important data, such as

• how users find your site and
• how they interact with it.

This beginner’s guide to Google Analytics explains the type of information Google Analytics provides and how it will help your online business. The 5-minute guide to Google Analytics also explains how web analytics can help you make important business decisions.

The type of information Google Analytics provides

One of the greatest features in Google Analytics is the inclusion of custom dashboards. This allows you to develop custom dashboards for your websites. Here you can include any metric you might be interested in. Besides that, you can also select how you want the information to be displayed.

Google Analytics dashboard may look similar to this:

The information is displayed as reports, which include:

1. Real-Time Reports

This Real-Time Report shows information about who visited your website and what they did. So, you will know how many people viewed and read the great post you just published. Further, you will know how many people watched the video you uploaded recently.

There are different real-time reports. Some of them are:

i) Locations

Here you will know the location of your site viewers. Most importantly, you will see the page they have visited and how long they stayed there.

ii) Content

This section lets you know where visitors land on your website and how long they stay there. This means you will know the page URL, title and all the active users on a certain page (mostly in percentage).

iii) Traffic Sources

This section lets you know how visitors found your website. They could have found it via your new social post. Or they found it by typing your URL.

Traffic sources are very important in real-time. It indicates the traffic that your new social media post has generated. More so, it shows how a brand-spanking page is performing.

iv) Conversions

Every time you implement a business strategy, people will want to see whether or not it increased conversions. Luckily, real-time reports will provide that information.

This means you will see your top goals and the number of users that completed them (in percentage). Essentially, you will view this information either in the last 30-minutes or in real-time.

2. Audience Reports

This part categorizes users based on specific parameters.

Would you like to see how many users carried out a website search? Or those who bought a product/service in the last 12 months, but they did not do so in the last 14 days?

If yes, then you can get all that information – thanks to Google Analytics. This information is highly beneficial to online businesses. It can help in targeting certain sections of your audience.

However, you should take note of 2 vital features.

• For one, you must clearly define the kind of audience you would like to track.
• Second, Google currently launched a new Audience Report. It lets you view how those audiences respond to your remarketing campaigns.

Nonetheless, the audience reports show different information such as:

i) Active Users

Here, you will be able to track audiences who have visited your website in the last one, seven, 14 or 30 days. As such, you will be able to measure audience interest.

ii) Audiences

This lets you develop more granular audiences and use them in any other section of your Google analytics report. Nevertheless, you can only develop and apply a maximum of 20 audiences at once.

iii) Interests

Apart from knowing the number of audiences who visited your site, you should be able to know their interests. Well, Google Analytics gives you that chance.

However, you must enable your remarketing & advertising reporting features to get started.

Once you do, you can view user data depending on (examples):

• In-Market Segments: covers those interests related to a product like “baby & kids products” or “Hotel/travel accommodations.”
• Affinity categories: broad lifestyle groups like “Value Shoppers” or “Food & Dining Enthusiasts.”
• Other categories: more specific groups like “Pets” or “Hair Care.”

3. Behavior

Once you know the interest of your audience, the next thing is to know their behavior. The Behavior Reports shows information on how your users act once they visit your site. In addition, you will know how they used site search, how fast/slow pages loaded, and the content they viewed, and so on.

This kind of information is important for online businesses as they can uncover areas where their sites are not performing as planned.

4. Acquisition

The Acquisition Report offers detailed information on how users found your website. You will know what they did on the site. For instance, you will know whether they took certain actions like filling out forms.

Why Google Analytics is important for business decisions

To know why Google Analytics is important in making business decisions, we will take an example.

Let’s assume you want to know whether or not you should develop a mobile version of your business website.

As aforementioned, the Analytics suite lets you know your site viewers. So you will know those who used a mobile device and those who used other devices. Just sign in to your Analytics account and choose the last 1 year.

Navigate to Audience Reports>Mobile>Overview.

Once you do so, you will get a table indicating the number of audiences using a mobile device.

Google Analytics statistics go like this:

In our illustration, 84,123 visits (25.84%) of all site visits in that period of time come from mobile devices. Plus, another 14,360 or 4.41% came from tablets. The bounce rate of visits coming from mobile devices is 78.21% above the average of about 74% on other devices.

If you make a comparison of the data from mobile visits and non-mobile ones, you will clearly note that the data from mobile visits is slightly worse.

Hence, the GA statistics firmly suggests that further improving the mobile version of your business site may be needed right away This is because a significant portion of users use their mobile devices to view your website but more than expected abandon your website too soon.

5-minute guide to Google Analytics – Your next steps

As you can see in this guide, Google Analytics provides lots of information, which might be overwhelming if you barely know what you want. The most important part is to translate that information in a way that will benefit your online business. If you do not understand the basics of Google Analytics, then you should find an expert to implement it for you.

Nonetheless, Google Analytics is an extremely powerful tool that can assist online businesses to make decisions. When you have to make a new decision, you should first understand the information available in Analytics.

The second action is to raise a question and determine what information can answer that question. Lastly, you should segment as well as manipulate the information to find the right answer.

Axis – Advanced analytics

If you want a complete web analytics solution, that can work along with Google Analytics or standalone, then Axis is a tool that you would appreciate. What makes Axis analytics unique is that it offers patent-pending, real-time “opportunity-based” analytics that track visitors through your website and sales funnel so you can improve conversions and optimize their sales experience.

This is not about meaningless data; Axis is a tool that helps you understand what’s going on in your business, and what action you should take to improve sales results. Click here to book a demo.

The post 5-Minute Guide: Google Analytics appeared first on Done For You.

As we bid adieu to 2018 and welcome the New Year, it is time to evaluate what were our accomplishments and where we failed. Self-assessment is crucial for every business owner as it helps us assess our strengths and improve on our weaknesses. Unfortunately, not always do we achieve our goals, mostly because we fall short to follow through. Either we set unclear goals, lose direction, or simply give up. However, that is true for all business – we all have failed to achieve our goals at some point in time.

But the problem is when we do not learn from our mistakes. We go on pursuing our business goals in precisely the same way as we have done in the past, committing all the same mistakes, and gearing ourselves up for even more failures in the future. And perhaps that’s why you did not achieve your goals in 2018.

The good news: Businesses need to transform how they go about realizing their goals by planning effectively how to pursue them. Now that you have a track record all littered with disappointments, it’s time for self-retrospection. We have outlined the nine common reasons why you may not have achieved your business goals in 2018. Knowing how to avoid these scenarios will bring you a step forward towards success.

1. Setting unrealistic or undefined goals

One of the biggest reasons why businesses fail to achieve their goals is because the goals are too vague. What’s the point if you have set an objective but your team isn’t sure what you actually want to achieve? For instance, “Our goal is to achieve huge profits in the first quarter.” This is, of course, a goal, but not specific. It does not define how much profit you expect or what steps to take in realizing the goal.

On the other hand, if your goal is too impractical, it tends to be overwhelming. Over time, you will lose focus. The result – you fail to achieve what you envision.

Solution: In 2019, avoid this mistake by setting goals that are realistic and well-defined. Break down a goal into several achievable steps, and you are more likely to complete the same. Make it a point to write down your plans and this will make it easier to accomplish them.

2. Lack of focus

Another reason why you did not achieve your goals in 2018 is due to a lack of consistency. It is difficult to remain laser-focused for a long period of time, especially when interruptions are many. Initially you may feel excited about a goal – say a project – but eventually, you lack the passion for seeing it complete.

Solution: Overcome this behavior by defining your goal properly, and giving it a start and end date. The line of communication should be clear, and effective planning should be in place – what are the top milestones, what problems will it solve, how it will benefit the organization, what budget & resources you need, etc.

3. You did not survey it right

A major reason why most projects fail is that businesses do not have a clear & comprehensive understanding of what their customers want. Any product, service or business objective should be created on the line of what your customers’ expectations are, what are their problem areas, and how you can provide a solution. And if this ‘base’ is not strong, it is quite obvious that achieving your goals would seem far-fetched. This is true for any project.

Solution: A great survey makes a strong foundation for setting a project outline and goals. Valuable customer insights can help in effective targeting & segmentation and can go a long way in determining your objectives, setting a plan, and accomplishing the same. For this, you need to create a great survey first.

Askly is a powerful online survey builder that helps you ask the right questions to gain critical data, generate quality leads, and convert sales. It engages customers in a meaningful way, helping you identify their biggest challenges. With this in mind, you can set clear & achievable goals.

4. You don’t think big

 Do you think small when you set a goal, take up a project or perform your business operations? That might be holding you back from utilizing the opportunities and achieving your objectives.

Solution: In today’s cut-throat competitive business environment, you have to think big and embrace the change to realize your goals. Set bigger goals and make sure the efforts are right in place. Search for new possibilities and harness the potential of advanced technology. Remember: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

This year, think differently…think bigger & better! Transform the way you manage your business operations. Convertly is a powerful tool that will completely revolutionize the way you used to manage your email list previously. The simple yet automated email marketing software is designed to make creating & marketing your email list a breeze. From sending broadcast messages instantaneously to building triggered, bulk autoresponder sequences, simplify your email marketing and achieve your business goals in 2019.       

5. Not having a deadline

One of the biggest reasons why businesses fail when it comes to goal-setting is neglecting the importance of having a deadline. When business objectives are open-ended and do not specify the time frame within which they are to be accomplished, people tend to lose focus from it. The subject gets into the back foot, often leading to procrastination. Having the thought in mind that “this can be done sometime or the other,” things actually get delayed and are mostly not done.

Solution: It is almost essential to set a specific deadline within which a goal has to be attained. This will help everyone to remain disciplined and focused on achieving it within the time frame.

6. You neglected the power of analytics

Whatever business you are in, unless you are able to monitor your performance and draw powerful analysis from your results, you are nowhere. Often, companies set bigger goals, put their best foot forward, and yet overlook the potential of time-to-time business evaluation. No wonder, they remain a step behind achieving their goals.

Solution: Powerful analytics is pertinent to gather meaningful data that aids in effective decision-making. It is vital to track your performance through every stage of goal realization, ensuring that you are on the right path and capitalizing the opportunities efficiently. Analytics also help in identifying and eliminating the bottlenecks that come in the way of accomplishing your goals.

Digital marketers and website owners may utilize the potential of Statly – advanced analytics software that helps track every visitor moving through your website or sales funnel. It provides real-time analytics data that help track conversions through your sales funnel. The tool allows you to monitor what your visitors are doing on the website, helping you track sales & revenues based on your website behavior.        

7. You failed to act upon your goals

It’s surprising that most businesses know the secret to becoming successful; however, hardly few of them take the necessary steps to accomplish that. There is no point having set realistic & well-defined goals unless you actually act upon them. Making big plans, talking big won’t help unless you work upon it diligently. And this might be one reason why you did not achieve our goals in 2018.

Solution: Set goals and act upon them. Stop procrastinating and stay focused on what you have to accomplish. Only then you can set yourself apart from those who only dream, but do not achieve.

8. Trying to be the jack of all trades

Last year did you spread yourself thin thinking that you can do everything you are good at? If yes, that is one of the biggest mistakes you have made. You had taken up numerous goals in your hand, but your list of accomplishment is zero because you tried to be the jack of all trades. Your resources are limited and tried spreading your wings.

Solution: Well, there is no harm in dreaming big but make sure you are well equipped to achieve the same. Instead of trying to do many things at a time, limit your goals this year and stay focused on achieving them only.

9. You always do things the same way

Do you always do things the same way, year on year? Then it is difficult to see astonishing results. If you did not achieve a goal last year, would it make any difference if you follow the same steps and try to achieve it this year? Working diligently won’t help unless you take a new approach.

Solution: Evaluate what you did last year and how? Identify loopholes in the process. Determine how you can do it differently this year. If Plan A did not succeed in 2018, try implementing Plan B in 2019.

Addressing these failure points in time will enhance your likelihood of achieving your goals. Remember, failure does not merely stop you from reaching your goals; it also affects your thinking, your productivity and perception to go forward.

The post 9 Reasons Why You Did Not Achieve Your Goals In 2018 appeared first on Done For You.

Quality control is a crucial segment of quality management which can’t be handed over to light hands to upgrade it. Instead of manual efforts, quality can be better driven by robust tools those are easily available today.

Such tools are built to serve the motive of their invention providing continuous improvement and progression which strictly adhere to the well-known quality process of PDCA-

1. Plan
2. Do
3. Check
4. Act

Take a close rundown to the metrics that meet the global quality demands in order to acquire the goal of structured organizational management providing a strong support to Quality Management Solutions.

7 primary tools for continuous improvement in quality

1. Pareto Charts (80/20 Rule)

The Pareto Chart is a bar chart that analyzes data in accordance with the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule named after an Italian researcher Vilfredo Pareto.
Essentially, the Pareto chart is a prioritization tool which has a purpose to focus on the issues that are causing the biggest problems or failures, and thus, minimizes their impact.
The mechanical view of Pareto Charts can be seen as a bar chart that displays data from various discrete categories where sole factors are showcased:

• by a bar graph in descending order of their impact and
• the cumulative total is shown by a line graph

“It is well said: Pareto Chart helps separate the vital few from the trivial many!”

Now, what does this mean?

As mentioned earlier, the chart follows the 80-20 rule, this underlines that in any business process, 80% of the problem is merely caused due to the remaining 20% of few major factors.

These causes are the Vital Few( 20% of issues) occurred by 80% of many minor factors named as Trivial Many.

2. Histogram

An introduction by Karl Pearson, Histogram is a bar graph that represents the frequency distribution and displays the patterns that fall within typical process conditions.

Histogram’s purpose is:

• to scrutinize the data complexity in its distribution and understand the held factors, repeating frequently.
  to help prioritize the causing factors and identify which areas need utmost heed.
• A histogram’s shape shows the nature of the distribution of the data, as well as the average and variability and follows the below-written quote

“Changes in a process should trigger new collection of data.”

3. Stratification (Divide and Conquer)

“Stratification follows the Divide and Conquer phenomenon.”

Stratification bifurcates the data by dividing it into sub-categories and classifies the data set on the basis of:
Group
Class
Levels
Divisions

The predefined purpose of to stratify data is merely to derive meaningful and useful information giving a clear and understandable picture of an existing problem.

Take an example:

• An employee’s late coming data for January that is unstratified:

5th Jan, 12th, 13th, 19th Jan, 21st, 26th, 27th

• The same data fully structured, stratified and classified

Now you can well examine the clarity this management tool provides to a personnel handling the crucial quality-centric data in a company.

4. Check Sheets

Check sheets are like tally sheets that use metrics or table forms to gather and analyze data.

The Purpose it holds is to:

note down the vital points/events in a tabular format
maintain a balance while updating the status on their occurrence
analyze the development, defect patterns and causes for defects.

“In a way, a check sheet may help its operators to track the number of counts when a certain incident takes place.”

5. Control Charts (aka Shewhart chart)

Shewhart Chart named after Walter A. Shewhart, works on the collected data statistically, determining whether the internal process is under control and is robust enough to meet the customer defined specifications.

Control charts are popular and have a vast presence in Quality Control Techniques, where they play a vital role in defining process capability and variations in product developments.

The tool also helps in identifying how well the developments and proceedings are going concerning the customer’s desires and expectation.

Control Charts aim to:

• Predict the process performance,
• the diverse production patterns,
• a process’s changes or shifts over a period of time (in accordance with the defined limits.)

6. Scatter Diagrams (Scatter Plots)

It is a statistical measuring metric that helps depict the relationship between variables.

Variables can be termed as dependent and independent variables those can be simply related to the arising difficulties or failures and the causes that affect them the most.

Purpose:

• They particularly provide help in detecting the amount of correlation, or the degree of linear relationship, between the displayed variables.

A scatter plot consists of a horizontal axis containing the measured values of the dependent variable (generally, the causes) and a vertical axis representing the measurements of the dependent variable (that is, the effects).

7. Cause and Effect Diagrams (Fish-Bone Diagram)

Kaoru Ishikawa came up with this concept is also known by her name i.e. Ishikawa diagram.

As we are here to control the quality using varied tools, this diagram also helps identify the factors/causes leading to an effect/issue and derive a meaningful bond between them.

The purpose tagged with the fish-bone diagram is to dig all the root causes for being the reasons for the problems arising.

Once the leading factors are determined, the search doesn’t’ get a stop till the professionals digging the quality features find out the actual root cause.

The diagram that is drawn, resultingly, takes the shape of a fish spine involving multiple branches and sub-branches.

Final words to take away

No one wants to compromise with quality and its traits nor a business neither the consumer. Within an organization, there is a significant need to keep close checks on quality systems, tools, audits, deliverables etc.

Tools are generally used for problem-solving opportunities to draw semantic outcomes fulfilling their motive.

Quality Control tools help scrutinize and manage the quality initiatives which makes the deployed end-product customer-oriented getting remarkable user-experience.

About the Author:
Danish Wadhwa started his career as Business Developer, but after assisting many companies, he realized to start his own venture. Now, as MD & CEO of Webdew, he is sharing his inordinate amount of knowledge on quality management solutions, Cloud Computing, Digital marketing, Web designing and much more over social media.

The post Top Seven Tools For Quality Control Management appeared first on Done For You.

Here, we will see how real-time marketing analytics can boost your campaign performance and help perk up your ROI.

What is Marketing Analytics?

Understanding consumer behavior is vital for business success. At the same time, if you know which marketing channels work best with varied segments and which ones are more profitable, you will achieve better results. In-depth analytics let you predict your consumers’ requirements and measure marketing performance. Not only do they ensure increased customer satisfaction, but they also help boost business growth and profits.

Marketing analytics uses critical data to help advertisers target their prospects better, measure the ROI and forecast demand. Marketers use a range of predictive modeling and data mining techniques to target their prospects with effective communications and make marketing more profitable. There are three primary use cases for marketing analytics:

• Identifying potential customers and improving the quality of prospects
• Track and analyze campaign performance
• Demand forecasting and discover new opportunities

Thus, real-time analytics is a beacon that directs your marketing strategy. It is an agile approach that is not just about adapting the latest trends, but rather, identifying opportunities and consumer behavior that are relevant to your brand.

What are the key metrics of Marketing Analysis?

Image Source: business2community.com

To achieve higher ROI, it is first important to identify the key metrics of marketing analytics.

• Deriving valuable insights

Analytics is not just about data handling. It is about deriving valuable meanings from such data. Every year, we generate tons of data, most of which is unstructured. Turning bulk amounts of data, Big Data, into meaningful insights requires a rigorous process of organizing, reporting, and analysis. So, the key to real-time marketing analytics is to transform data into business-critical information.

• Consolidating data with concepts

Data holds no meaning when analyzed in a vacuum. It is vital to combine important data with your existing knowledge structures to identify which metrics are crucial and how to formulate actions from such data. It is only when you transform data into concepts that you can translate analyses into actions to optimize performance. Data visualization provides an in-depth view of what is going on with your marketing campaign – something you cannot do with just a column of numbers.

• Using marketing insights to guide data gathering

To improve your data gathering efforts you need a good understanding of critical marketing concepts. For instance, your user experience data. Without knowing how your consumers move through the sales funnel or what affects their decision-making process, it is difficult to know what data to evaluate further or to integrate into your A/B testing.

• Continuous monitoring

It is not enough to have a superb analytics program in place. You have to ensure constant monitoring, i.e. collecting, structuring and analyzing data in real-time. With performance monitoring in real-time, you can tweak your marketing campaigns or create powerful social media posts to achieve improved results.

Statly is a powerful tool that gives real-time marketing analytics a new dimension. It provides real-time tracking of how your customers behave through the sales funnel, and radically improves your chances of transforming quality leads into customers. This comprehensive analytics tool helps gather meaningful data and integrate it into your existing business concept to make the right decisions.

Tips to improve ROI with effective Marketing Analytics

Marketing analytics practices put data into relevant contexts, allowing you to spot indicators and trends that can be used to boost performance and increase ROI. The insights may help you win new prospects, allocate funds to the high-performing marketing channels and forecast opportunities.

Here are some tips to rev up your sales and increase ROI with the right marketing analytics strategies in place.

#1 Set objectives for improved ROI

To improve ROI, it is important to have a plan. To achieve your objectives, first establish an outline of what to measure, how to measure and when to measure. View historical data; identify modern trends. Know how you can incorporate analytics into your existing process. Discover how you are going to reach the desired ROI.

Image Source: Neilpatel.com

Based on your outline, find out ways to measure performance by:

• Using predictive modeling techniques in marketing data analysis.
• Bringing real-time marketing analytics in line with your financial goals.
• Gathering customer behavior and engagement data.

#2 Lead prospecting

Successful customer acquisition and retention are crucial to drive sales and increase ROI. Give it a boost with real-time marketing analytics.

Many marketers merely collect information on users who visit the company website or view the ads; the data is often compiled through various advertising networks. But they only get the basic demographic details with no valuable insights on how to convert the leads to sales.

Use one-of-a-kind platforms such as Statly to gain real-time “opportunity based” marketing analytics that helps track every prospect moving through your sales funnel or website. Having a robust and in-depth view of your prospects, you can identify qualified leads and configure your marketing campaigns to target only these users. Leveraging the data insights, you can optimize their sales experience, minimize bottlenecks, improve conversions and leverage hidden opportunities.

#3 Focus on engagement metrics

Often, marketers make the mistake of remaining content with typical metrics, like press release shares, retweets or Facebook fans. However, these parameters are considered “vanity metrics” and do not contribute to revenues as such. Rather, prioritize “engagement metrics” that can help improve your ROI.

In this regard, the Director of Products at Filament, Jason Amunwa, states, “Vanity metrics do nothing for your actual website objectives but make your marketing efforts look good. This is problematic because often they siphon effort and focus away from the things that could really move the needle for you. Engagement metrics tell you what content is truly performing for you, what’s just “meh” and what’s ripe for enrichment and optimization; in short, engagement metrics tell you where the real opportunities are for growth.”

Instead of running behind what does not correlate with your ROI, save time and make better decisions by tracking the right data.

You can leverage effective tools like Statly to:

• Monitor consumer behavior in a consistent manner.
• Get customized reports with the most relevant data.
• Analyze critical data through all stages of your marketing initiative

#4 Leverage real-time Website Analytics

Website analytics plays an integral role in identifying quality leads and improving their value for a lifetime while reducing the cost of customer acquisition & retention.

With effective web analytics, you can uncover various key performance indicators that help drive website traffic and conversions. Identifying stellar performers, and tweaking the weaker ones, can help improve the overall user experience, converting leads into quality customers. Use key metrics of web analytics to:

• Understand your customer demographics.
• Track essential parameters like click-through rate, bounce rate, number of conversions or types of referrals.
• Perform behavioral analysis of website visitors to increase ROI over time.

#5 Demand forecasting

Having the right data at the right time empowers marketers. At the same time, tracking historical data is vital to helping identify trends and forecast demand. Critical factors such as seasonality can affect campaign performance.

In-depth analysis can help highlight these variables, and likewise, re-allocate or tweak your marketing investments. Data analytics helps to understand the product or campaign performance, providing insights into which products will face a high demand in the next quarter.

#6 Use Marketing Analytics to increase sales

Today, consumers are more informed than ever. Most purchase decisions are now based on information gathered from reviews, social networks, blogs, etc. The good news: marketing analytics gives you access to such significant information. The bad news: you have no idea how to convert this data into profits.

To gain a holistic view of ROI, focus on how your marketing efforts impact sales. Identify when the right time to call a prospect is, which product would make a killer impact and who is best suited to close the deal. Discover what marketing strategies are contributing to maximum sales. Big data analysis can help increase your sales by:

• Understanding a customer’s decision-making journey.
• Tracking user behavior and sales patterns on the website.
• Discussing your ROI plan with the entire organization and not just the sales or marketing teams.

#7 Conversion tracking through your sales funnel

For effective business growth, increased sales and better ROI, you must have the right sales funnel in place.

Do not have a sales funnel? Have an expert build a sales funnel for you that seamlessly guides a prospect through all stages of Attracting, Converting, Closing and Delighting.

Statly is a tool you can use to track conversions through your sales funnel, analyze data and build strategies to improve user experience across all stages. Not only will this help increase conversions, but it can also go a long way in boosting profits by improving overall value.

Conclusion

Real-time marketing analytics practices are sure to play a vital role in effectively tracking performance and measuring ROI. A profound understanding of its capabilities is the key to leveraging these powerful tools to your advantage. Use Statly to assess how you can profit from real-time marketing analytics. From planning to decision-making, use analytics to spread brand awareness, increase sales and lower costs.

The post How Real-time Marketing Analytics Help To Improve ROI appeared first on Done For You.

In essence, the top reason why you should be using a chatbot is that it can help you automate lead generation and nurturing with the goal to increase sales. But a chatbot can do a lot more than that.

In the early stages of using a chatbot, businesses are hesitant because they are not sure of how it could advance their marketing strategy. However, after some time, adopt the trends that are a good fit for their campaigns, and start deploying chatbots for lead generation, customer support and for responding to basic questions that web visitors pose.

According to chatbot stats and trends, Facebook Messenger bot is one of the solutions that is commonly used. It lives inside Facebook Messenger, so it’s a pretty simple and popular solution to implement. If developed for an e-shop, for instance, this bot can recommend products, reply to customer inquiries and blend with an e-commerce store.

Next and Staples are some examples of businesses that use Facebook messenger bot. This software replies to any question from their customers within the shortest time possible. Likewise, you can use Facebook messenger chatbot for other purposes such as recommending playlists or songs – just like Spotify does. In fact, any kind of chatbot can add value to your business.

To put things into perspective, let have a look at some chatbot stats and trends you shouldn’t ignore.

5 chatbot stats that can transform your marketing

1. The market is expanding fast

Facebook is the most commonly used social media network, attracting at least 2 billion users in a month including both businesses and individuals. This translates to around 2 billion messages sent via Facebook.

Clearly, as a business owner, you view this as a chance to create a long lasting relationship with your customers. Different from Twitter support, tickets and emails, chatbots create a new, instant way to serve your customers. According to a current market survey, people use chatbots because:

• 37 percent states it gives instant replies in case of emergency
• They help to resolve a problem or complaint
• 35 percent say it provides a well-detailed response
• 34 percent use chatbots as a channel for getting connected to a human

However, the last stat pays emphasis that chatbots should not be “all or nothing” technology. If a customer wants to talk to a human, then the business should provide the means.

2. Chatbots help customers interact with your business

According to HubSpot (2017), 55 percent of consumers prefer to use messaging apps as a means to resolve a problem. They use these apps as a way to engage with a business. One thing you should know is that customers hardly have the time to wait for your response. They want the answer instantly instead.

Therefore, chatbots can be of great help if your customers are spread worldwide. You’ll be able to provide customer support regardless of the time or day. This shows that chatbots are highly interactive – not like emails.

Having an appropriate chatbot configuration, it can create a forth and real-time conversation with your brand. And of course, you would be interested in getting feedback from customers as well. Chatbots will easily do that for you. It will assist in integrating different options, photo carousels, and quizzes – just to interact with your customers.

3. Chatbots boost conversion rates

Are you in e-commerce business? If so, you can benefit from a chatbot as it increases the rate of conversion. HubSpot (2017) indicates that around 47 percent of customers make a purchase through chatbots. So, owning an online business means that you get lots of inquiries about your services/products.

What happened if you didn’t have the time/chance to notify your customers about a clearance sale or promotion running? Perhaps you failed to pass this important information on time. And sales didn’t rock as you expected. With chatbot, this shouldn’t worry you because it will automatically do that for you. The Facebook messenger bot can help you sell products from your e-commerce even when you are out of the office.

4. Bots increase brand awareness

On average, the open rate for emails is 18.1%, while that of messages can go up to 98%. This is a clear indication that chatbots can send information quicker and more effectively than email.

As an illustration, you can program a messenger bot in such a way that it replies to specific keywords. So, in case a client seeks information about a bike, your bot will remind them in case you have a sale on the said item.

Better still, you can offer coupons in the event that they make a repurchase. These customers can redeem these coupons through text messaging or messenger apps. This channel provides quicker services than emails.

5. Customers prefer live chats

Successful businesses are different from the rest as they have identified a means to reach their customers. Gone are the days when businesses used to rely on emails as the only way to communicate with customers. They have noted that clients and consumers hardly have the time to read emails – or reply to them.
Actually, most people prefer responding to texts instead.

Surprisingly, a survey shows that people prefer live chats over other methods of reaching out to companies. Perhaps this is because of one obvious reason. Live chats are instant. Customers don’t wait for responses – they get them immediately. As a matter of fact, you can start chatting with a chatbot right now – no matter where you are.

Can chatbots be part of your marketing strategy?

After considering these stats, chatbots can be part of a well-rounded marketing strategy. When chatbots came into the market, few people were aware of them. Now many business owners are realizing what the bot technology can do for their marketing. This explains why chatbots have expanded since 2010 when Facebook launched messenger.

With these five chatbot stats and trends, we believe you are now more ready than ever to incorporate chatbots in your digital marketing strategy. Here are more relevant resources to help you get started. And here’s a resource for more ideas and inspiration.

The post 5 Chatbot Stats And Trends You Need To Know appeared first on Done For You.

Its impact in the world of digital marketing has not only been phenomenal but also revolutionizing in many ways. Considering its reach in the world, one must realize its potential and learn how it can benefit various industries especially that of digital marketing.

Before we dive straight into it, let’s discuss, in general terms, a little bit about artificial intelligence.

What is artificial intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. These processes include learning (acquiring information and rules to use information), reasoning (using the rules to reach approximate conclusions) and self-correction.

AI has been in existence for awhile, but with the emergence of computer-related technology, it is gaining more and more popularity. Speech recognition, expert systems, and machine vision are some of its common fields of application.

The relationship between AI and digital marketing

As artificial intelligence has been making waves for quite some time now, people from different industries are curious to estimate its applications, especially in digital marketing.

Although marketers were initially skeptical to integrate artificial intelligence into their marketing strategy, now marketers are embracing AI with open arms. They have realized that it holds a lot of potential and can be used to provide a better customer experience, targeted marketing, and more to get better ROI. In the coming years, it is surely going to get bigger and better.

Here are some potential areas where AI can contribute tremendously to digital marketing.

Personalizing user experience

One of the most significant areas where artificial intelligence can make a difference is personalizing user experience and making it better. Aligning your digital marketing strategy with AI can help you get valuable insights such as customer behaviors, patterns, interests so that you can customize campaigns on these factors and target the right audience.

AI-powered chatbots are another fine examples of how artificial intelligence is making things easier for marketers. Chatbots are programmed to interact with customers 24/7 and retain information. Unlike humans, they never lose patience and always treat customers in a friendly manner. Thus, AI has helped marketers personalize the whole user experience by giving the impression they are talking to a real person.

Better decision making with easier predictive analysis

Do you know that whenever you browse the web, new data is generated and collected for AI analysis to find needs, behaviors and gauge the future actions of prospects? With artificial intelligence, the collected information could be used to optimize your marketing strategy to provide customers with what they are looking for. This enables marketing teams to use the data in order to create a campaign targeting the right audience.

This predictive analysis lets you provide the relevant information to customers seamlessly and decrease their product research helping them make better and quicker decisions. Such AI-enabled algorithms have not only reduced the workload of digital marketing teams but have also enabled them to make way for better customer decision-making of customers with the help of predictive analysis.

By the way, our advanced analytics tool, Statly, can be the perfect companion along the journey to saving resources, optimizing data and reaching better management decisions.

Click the banner below to watch a video about exactly how you can achieve this with Statly.

Better ROI with image recognition

Artificial intelligence has now made it possible to use high-level image recognition and get a detailed description of that image. This is a feature that could find applications in various industries and sectors. Realizing the importance of AI, Amazon has recently come up with Amazon Recognition, which can recognize human faces and identify objects.

From faster payment processes to safer customer security, AI-enabled image recognition can be put into any use and tackle concerns involved in online transactions. What happens is that AI software looks for images in social media and compares it to a large image library to draw conclusions.

So, if you are a manufacturer, you can understand demographics and other factors that will help you align marketing strategies and extract maximum return on investment.

Easier search sessions

Though there isn’t anything wrong with users’ current search sessions they are often found to be confusing and not so responsive. It is guaranteed that, if you incorporate digital marketing with artificial intelligence, you will see much smarter and convenient search engines and sessions.

How, you might ask? That’s probably because AI easily tracks customer preferences and requirements, which help them to predict their future moves and decisions that could further lead to better semantic keywords.

Easier targeting of the right audience

One of the biggest challenges for digital marketing teams is to reach their target audience easier and faster. With various AI-enabled software, marketing teams seem to have cracked the code for this. Artificial intelligence powers you to find the right people that can bring value to the brand and assets related to it.

Based on people’s search preferences, interests, demography, search history and other important aspects, AI brings your product to those who might actually be looking for it, i.e. your target audience.

Optimizing your voice-search queries

There has been a dramatic rise in the number of voice search queries which has made it quite evident for digital marketing teams to optimize for long-tailed voice searches, so much so that around 70% of Google Assistant receives usual, daily-used words than the typical keywords by people during their voice-search queries in Google.

Whether it is a request to look for directions, dictate texts, find out movie times, or call someone, AI has found its application almost everywhere. Thus, it makes sense to use structured markup for optimization so that search engines can understand the context easily.

Wrapping up

Implementing AI in digital marketing is bound to result in a promising outcome. That is better decision making, more ROI, and predictive buying and selling processes.

Along with this, it is going to benefit both customers and businesses. Let’s hope it AI continues to do wonders in all the fields, especially digital marketing, and keeps solving customer problems.

The post How Artificial Intelligence Is Revolutionizing Digital Marketing appeared first on Done For You.

Too many marketers focus entirely on vanity KPIs, like social media likes and blog page views. And, while these metrics can help with your content marketing efforts, they’re not the be-all and end-all decision-making tools.

Way more significant metrics to think about are the ones that have a direct impact on your bottom line. KPIs like lead conversion rate and email subscriber counts are far more likely to influence your business’s growth that page views.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the best metrics you can utilize to measure your blogs’ success.

1. Blog traffic

Traffic to your blog has so much more in it than simple page views. You need to look at where those page views are coming from, and exactly where they’re going next.

Are the majority of your blog views coming from organic searches? If so, what specific keywords or key phrases are bringing viewers in? Or maybe your traffic comes mainly from Facebook or other social media? But, which platforms exactly? Knowing these basic web metrics allows you to streamline your marketing strategy to focus on what’s working for each post.

More than merely page views, you need to be looking at blog success metrics like pages per session, bounce rate, and how long people spend on your site (average visit duration). Look for these numbers in your Google Analytics account. For an advanced web analytics tool with a wealth of valuable information, opt for Statly. Get this 3-part video course to see how Statly will help your business turn more random traffic into sales.

Now, back to the success metrics of your blog. How do you increase the number of pages each user will see? Increasing the number of pages per session, means that people will read more of your content. There are a lot of plugins and strategies that can help you increase the number of pages per session. Let’s look at a few of the top options:

• Make your blog mobile responsive and mobile friendly. This point is an important one. You’d be shocked how many blogs and small business websites are not optimized for mobile traffic, which in a lot of cases is the majority of traffic.
• Make navigating your blog easy. Don’t make browsing your website too challenging, or visitors will leave. Have a structured menu, use sidebar widgets and add related posts after each blog post.
• Add Calls to Action (CTAs). Adding CTAs and subscription forms to your pages and posts will entice users to take another step before leaving your blog. CTAs will also help increase the number of subscribers to your list.

2. Post engagement

Now, another important blog metric is posts engagement, either on-site or off-site. Let’s look at social networks first. The more that your blog posts are shared on social media, the more visitors will start talking about your brand. Likes, comments, and shares on social network sites all boil down to even more traffic, and raised brand awareness.

You should also be motivating site visitors to engage with your blog posts directly. Allowing readers the to interact with your posts (like through comments or email contact), can help to carry on the conversation.

3. List growth

Is list growth a way to measure blog success? It definitely is! Subscribers are qualified visitors who have express interest in your brand or products, so they’re like gold for your online business. These are the people who enjoy your posts enough to want to hear from you again, and potentially receive promotions and offers. Your blog subscribers typically come in two forms – RSS and email.

Although RSS subscribers are a good indicator of how many readers want to keep in touch, email subscribers are a step up. These type of readers have allowed you to contact them directly through email. They enjoyed your material so much that they want it to appear in their emails.

Be very conscious which blog posts are generating the highest number of email subscribers. Use these articles as guides for future blogs to give a boost to your email list.

How do you captivate these prospective subscribers? Look at this post we wrote around the topic of growing your email list. It has some cool tips that will help you get traction.

4. Number of leads and lead conversion rate

Your lead conversion rate is arguably the most important metric of blog success.

At the end of the day, we want our content to generate more targeted leads, don’t we? Blogs can be a great source of visit-to-lead, and lead-to-customer conversions– so monitoring these KPIs is fundamental.

And, don’t forget to keep the buying cycle in mind when crafting your posts. Read this article about how to create content with the buyer’s journey in mind. Fill your posts with compelling content and instill value and trust in your blog readers.

Take this process a step further and observe the complete funnel. Where are your leads originating from? Social media? Email campaigns? Direct Google searches? Look at what types of content your readers land on.

Look at this sort of qualitative data and you may find that you have blog posts that are not attracting a large number of views but account for your strongest lead conversion rates. See how you can improve the content structure and CTAs to convert more anonymous blog readers into subscribers or leads.

Look at how you’re promoting these posts and make an effort to split test elements (like the title or featured image) to really make the most of them. Don’t forget – leads are what you need.

To double down on these important blog success metrics, you’ll need two basic tools.

• Statly. Statly allows you to track every visitor that lands on your website. With Statly, you’ll be able to visualize a complete, meaningful funnel – where your blog readers came from, which pieces of content they read, what actions they took next.
• Google Optimize. Whether it’s a custom-tailored message at checkout or a different blog post title, Google Optimize shows you which user experience works best with your site visitors. Google Optimize is a must-have A/B testing tool.

How do you measure your blog’s success

So, what do you think?

How can you measure the success of your own blog? What’s important to your business and your bottom line? How would you weigh individual blog success metrics?

And, finally, are you ready to let go of the idea that high blog traffic equals success? Can you imagine your blog succeed without the need of thousands of new monthly visitors?

The post How To Measure Your Blog’s Success appeared first on Done For You.

For instance, if your landing page is converting above a certain percentage - Statly will let you know so you can send more traffic.

... If your lander is converting less than a certain percentage, it'll let you know so you can split test it!

The same holds true for sales conversions. If your sales page is converting higher or lower than expected, it'll let you know.

We've got a whole host of these Analytics AI triggers that are being rolled out incrementally inside the software. The best part is, you don't need to do anything to activate them.

Simply sign up for an account, install the code into your web pages, and Statly will start crunching the data for you!

Now, Statly is free to set up and you get access to every single website traffic tool inside.  All you have to do is activate your account or install the WordPress plugin to get set up.

Click here to activate your Statly account today!

The post Get Alerts Whenever Conversions Change On Your Website appeared first on Done For You.

After looking at the definition it becomes quite evident why marketers want to boost their conversion rate. So, how can you achieve this?

This post is going to be the gateway that will give you a clear picture of 5 Google Analytics key metrics that will help you skyrocket your website’s conversion rates.

So, without further delay let us take a look at what those terms are.

1. Bounce rate

What’s the worst thing that can happen to a marketer? Visitors leaving a website as soon as they land on it.

This is exactly what bounce rate is all about. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.

In other words, when someone visits your website and leaves after visiting the page they landed on it counts for a bounce.

How does bounce rate play a role in conversion? When someone visits your website and leaves straight away without taking any action, how can you expect them to convert?

Consequently, high bounce rate means the content on the website is not engaging or encouraging enough for the visitors to take action.

Differences between bounce rate and exit rate

Bounce and exit rates might sound similar but they measure different visitor behaviors on a website. Bounce rate deals with a visitor’s first impression of a website. It measures the effectiveness of a landing page design and copy to persuade visitors to remain on the website and take a particular action on the landing page. Exit rate, on the other hand, is used to detect breakdowns in the process flow in the website.

2. Pages per visit

Now that you have sorted the problem of high bounce rate, how can you still be certain that the visitors are performing the action you want them to perform?

This is where pages per visit come into the picture. As the name suggests, pages per visit show you the number of pages viewed by the visitor while browsing your website.

There is no ideal number as to how many pages must a user visit while landing on a website. However, the higher the number of pages people visit the higher the engagement. And, higher engagement means better chances that the visitors will convert into leads and paying customers.

In short, engaging content and optimized pages per visit could eventually lead to a boost in your conversion rate.

3. New vs. returning users

A plethora of new users visiting the website is like a dream come true for an online marketer. However, what’s even better is to see an increase in the number of returning users.

A higher number of returning users means that people love your content and are willing to come back for more. An analysis of new versus returning users can eventually paint a clear picture of how successful your marketing endeavors are.

A key metric to remember is that a higher number of returning users is a reflection of how engaging your content is. At the same you must always keep an eye on the conversion rates coming from returning users. A low conversion rate means that your content is enticing but does not convince users to make a purchase. If that is the case, you need to work on your copy, CTA and product offering.

4. Page speed

Is your website fast enough to keep the visitor engaged? Or is it so slow that it makes the user want to leave?

Having a fast website matters to your business more than you probably realize.

You might be shocked to know that users abandon a website to never return if it takes more than just 3 seconds to load.

The first impression is the last impression. You cannot expect a web page to make an impression if it takes too long to load even the basic home page. Forget about utilizing the content on the website to boost your conversions!

How fast does your website need to be?

How long are you willing to wait for a web page to load? Five seconds? Two seconds?

Here’s the truth in numbers:

• 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.
• 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load.
• 79% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with website performance are less likely to buy from the same site again (and 44% also tell their friends about bad online experiences)
• A one-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.

How to improve website loading speed

First of all check your web page speed insights:

After a few seconds, Google will provide a detailed report of Page Stats & Optimization Suggestions. Just apply those changes accordingly!  That’s it!

5. Average session time

Last but not least, average session time is one of the most important factors in conversion rate optimization. A session last for as long as a visitor is active on your site during one visit.

A higher session duration means that the content is highly engaging and compelling. An average session time of 2-3 minutes is considered to be good for most industries.

Now, once you start using Google Analytics you will eventually notice how average session time fluctuates. Based on how your average session time is performing over the course of time you can eventually measure whether you are moving in the right direction with your content and web marketing tactics or not.

If you are looking for an advanced web analytics tool to help you create comprehensive reports and make sense of your data, try Statly.

Which metric matters the most?

This last point sums up the list of top 5 metrics that you need to take into account in order to analyze and improve your website’s conversion rate.

This is virtually a million dollar question. However, if you are looking for a one-word answer to this question, you are going to get disappointed. All metrics are important and should be used as part of a combined analysis to reach important conclusions.

The orchestrated interplay of all these factors is going to prove pivotal in your conversion rate optimization processes. You must have a thorough understanding of these terms and then create a plan to optimize your website content in such a way that can boost your engagement.

The post Top 5 Key Metrics To Skyrocket Your Conversion Rates appeared first on Done For You.

What it does is track EVERY exact path that someone takes through your website, all the way up to the conversion goal.

That might sound a little tricky - but hear me out...  Once you set up a conversion goal, say a report download or a purchase confirmation, Statly goes to work figuring out how people are achieving that conversion!  That includes what they're doing, what they're clicking, where they're coming from and which pages they spend their time.

Then, automatically, it'll plot out this sunburst graph so you can see how each of the pages are converting, all stacked on top of each other!

Check this out:

So, what this does is plot out every page that someone visited before converting, assigning a weight to how many people went through that path.

Then, it calculates the conversion of each of those pages on the fly so you can simply mouse around and see if there's something in there that you want to drive traffic to!  In the example below, we see that page is converting at 47% which is incredible as it's not something we're currently driving traffic to.

If you continue going through the graph, you'll see blog posts, landing pages, even secondary pages all showing with conversion numbers as they relate to the goal you're looking for.

The other thing that this data feeds into is the "Analytics AI Alert Notifications."  When Statly sees something going on out of the ordinary, it'll send you an alert letting you know what's going on...  Things like a better than expected conversion, lower than expected conversion, a spike in traffic...

All of that data can be found in the main Statly Dashboard:

And your notification preferences can be adjusted under settings!

Now, Statly is free to set up and you get access to every single website traffic tool inside.  All you have to do is activate your account or install the WordPress plugin to get set up.

Click here to activate your Statly account today!

The post How To Pinpoint The Exact Path Buyers Took Through Your Sales Funnel appeared first on Done For You.

In fact, we think understanding website analytics is something that should be done for you - not something you have to struggle with and work to understand.

That's where Statly's AI-engine comes into the mix... Sending you notifications when it finds an opportunity or a bottleneck on your site - based on live conversion data!  There are lots of things Statly looks for to...

• Increased website traffic from a source
• Lead conversion opportunities and bottlenecks
• Sales opportunities and bottlenecks
• Higher lead conversion from a blog post
• ... Just to name a few.

At the end of the day, your website should be working for you...  Not the other way around!

Click here to activate your Statly account today!

The post Discover Opportunities On Your Website With Statly’s AI-Engine appeared first on Done For You.

It's important to know who's on your website, what they're doing, and what you can do to influence purchases... That's why we built Live Tracking into Statly so you can see exactly what's going on inside your pages!

And since all of that activity, all that data, is saved for analysis, you can go through and figure out how your sales funnels are working from beginning to end!

Click here to activate your Statly account today!

The post How To Track Visitors Live On Your Website appeared first on Done For You.

This is where the UTM comes in. UTMs can, however, be challenging to implement, but once you’ve correctly integrated them in your marketing data tracking plan, everything else will fall in place. UTM parameters are an effective way of tracking the performance of different URLs.

By tagging your campaign URLs with UTM parameters, you can get a deeper understanding of how your visitors are interacting with your website.

This article will reveal top UTM tips that will help you correctly integrate, test and enhance your UTMs for top-notch performance.

Test the tagged links before using them

Before you release your UTMs to do the hard work, be sure to test them and make sure that they’re actually working. The easiest way to do this is to load the URL links that contains the UTM tags into your browser.

If the tags go missing after loading, chances are they’re not configured correctly. In case you’re using AdWords auto-tagging, you need to make sure that auto-tagging is enabled in on your website.

Don’t tag internal links

Avoid putting UTMs in links in your own content that lead to other pages within your website. This is not necessary because Google Analytics already tracks the traffic on your website even without URL tagging. Additionally, if you add UTM tags on internal links, you will end up losing the information on where the visitor originally come from.

For instance, if someone comes from Twitter and clicks on your UTM tagged internal link, they will be recorded as a new visitor. And this will ruin your data and reports as you won’t be able to know the actual source of your conversions.

Be consistent with your UTM naming conventions

It really doesn’t matter whether your use “promote”, “paid” or any other tag to represent paid traffic from a certain ad platform. The most important thing is that you should always use the same tag to represent the same parameter.

If different team members of your campaign interchangeably use “promoted” and “paid” to represent the same type of traffic, it will be difficult to have a proper aggregate or overview of your data.

Additionally, UTMs are case sensitive. So, for instance, “Paid”, “paid” and “PAID” is not the same thing. If you’re not consistent and careful with naming your tags, you may end up with unnecessary different data sets representing the same thing. Generally, avoid using uppercase letters to minimize chances of naming inconsistencies.

Be careful about spaces

As you may already know, spaces are not allowed in the URLs and the same applies to the UTMs. If you must use spaces in your UTM tags, replace it with %20 and Google will read it as space.

This, however, will result in messy looking tags, so instead of spaces, use dashes or underscores.

Whatever naming format you choose, try your best to stay away from spaces and uppercases, make everything consistent and communicate the same to your team members.

Google My Business Insights is part of the package

Did you know that you can actually use UTMs to track visitors originating from c (GMB)? UTMs can actually help you track how users who come directly from GMB are interacting with your website compared to those coming from organic listings.

You will also get to learn more about the phrases triggering GMB listings and enhancing your local maps presence and searches.

If you ran a retailer store or shopping center, you might at some point see reduced organic traffic and think that your search presence has dropped.

In real sense, searchers and potential customers might be getting all they need to know about your business from map rankings and graph listings. In such a case, they don’t have to visit your website at all.

The UTM codes will give you clearer metrics about parameters that are usually thought to be intangible. You will be able to understand better where you stand with the non-branded search and improve the way you strategize your marketing campaign.

Fine-tune ad campaigns using UTMs

Using UTM parameters, you can track in detail very specific information about your marketing campaign segments.

For instance, you can track your Facebook Ads and analyze some of the parameters such as the age range targeted, ad optimization, interests targeted, the type of content used and much more.

The information tracked can allow you to fine-tune your ad campaign for better targeting. With this data in place, you can also refine your ads from Google Analytics console and even tweak your organic marketing efforts to fit in.

Knowing which ad campaign appeals to which interest group, for instance, puts you one step ahead of the competition.

Filter paid and organic social media properly

UTM is great at filtering data from different mediums. Chances are your marketing campaign includes videos, backlinks, emails, infographics, blog post and so on – both paid and organic. Being able to sort the traffic by medium will help you determine which ones have higher returns and focus on them.

Other than filtering incoming traffic by medium, you can narrow down and find out what content works best for different platforms such as Twitter or Facebook. You also want to determine how much of the traffic is paid and how much is organic. Whichever parameter you decide to track, make sure it’s well labeled in your Google account.

Tag all the traffic that you have control over

Remember to track all traffic and links in all your campaign material including the emails that you send out. If you’re using a third party tool, it most likely has a way of tagging URLs –look for that option and tag them.

Take a look at all your traffic sources in Google Analytics and figure out how to tag the traffic that you haven’t tagged yet. You might not be able to tag all the traffic, for instance, direct traffic, and that’s OK.

By the way, if you want to have a complete picture of your complete marketing funnels, i.e. which traffic channels your visitors are coming from, what pages they land on and what actions they take on your website before they exit or before they convert, use Statly as your all-in-one advanced analytics solution.

Bottom line

UTM parameters are a great way of having all your important marketing data in one place and analyzing it both holistically and deeply. You will get visibility and insights into your data like never before.

Using the above UTM tips, you will be able to correctly set up your UTM parameters and build your insights to appropriately optimize your campaign.

Register for this free training to learn how you can fix and optimize your sales funnel for better conversions without needing to increase your traffic.

The post UTM Tips To Enhance Your Digital Marketing appeared first on Done For You.

Once you are all set with the basic task of setting up landing and other funnel pages, you’ll then move on to creating advertising campaigns and email marketing autoresponder sequences. Then, you’ll have the ongoing task of landing page optimization, A/B testing, and making tweaks to ensure that all parts of the funnel are contributing towards higher conversions.

By the way, a prerequisite for sales funnel optimization is having sufficient and meaningful data. If you don’t track your sales funnels the right way, you won’t be able to extract all the important information you need. Statly is an advances analytics app that helps you track every visitor moving through your sales funnel and website while it delivers customized alerts to increase conversions, reduce bottlenecks and capitalize on hidden opportunities! Would you like to try Statly for free?

Part of that ongoing optimization work you have to do revolves around trying to achieve the maximum conversion rate of your landing pages.

But how do you do that? What can you possibly increase your landing page conversions even more?

Here’s what you can do:

Remove distractions

We are so used to designing landing pages the way we design websites that we think landing pages work exactly like websites do. Partly yes, but mostly no.

Elements that might look and feel naturally at home on a website are an absolute no-no on landing pages.

For instance, you’d use live chat or a Facebook Messenger prompt on your website – and that’s fine.

The same prompts on your landing page would probably distract your visitors from taking that all-too-important action that your CTA is working hard to accomplish.

Navigation menus, links, social media buttons, or any other element that is clickable (everything except the call to action) shouldn’t be used on landing pages – period.

Often, you’d design your landing page and sales funnels without these distractions in the first place, right from the go, even before you launch your campaigns.

But if you did, it’s time to start removing these distractions one by one.

Keep testing

Split testing is not a one-time thing; it’s an ongoing process to pit one variant against another to reach a point when you arrive at a collection of ads, landing pages, and email marketing sequences that get you the best possible results.

To get to that point, however, you’d have to continuously and diligently work with your split testing process.

You can’t stop. You can’t sit back and relax if you want the best results.

Split test your ads, your landing pages, the subject line of your email autoresponders, and all applicable parts of your sales funnels to get the best possible results. You’d need sufficient data, enough time, and an ongoing effort to make your split tests work.

Add geo-targeting

About 74% of online customers get fed up and frustrated when they land on web pages that are irrelevant to them or when the information they see doesn’t pertain to their interests. More than 84% of online shoppers claim that personalization impacts their purchase decisions.

Geo-targeting helps resolve these issues by making it possible to show more relevant content to your visitors while helping you personalize their user experience and content.

You can also use Geo-targeting to hyper-personalize your pop-ups or slide ins, launch hyper-local promotions to boost in-store revenue, launch local events, and more.

Utilize dynamic text replacement

One of the most important aspects of matching your ad with a message-matching landing page is relevance and continuity. It so happens that most ads don’t “connect”. If an ad says something or promises something, that story doesn’t extend to the landing page where your potential visitors are bound to arrive.

That’s the basics, anyway.

You could take this to another level with dynamic text replacement where a certain keyword automatically shows up on the landing page making it more relevant. You could use dynamic text replacement to dynamically show location names, specific keywords, or any other items you’d specify such as Pin codes, for instance.

In essence, DTR (Dynamic Text Replacement) swaps out a piece of text on your landing page with whatever keyword (or another valid element) your prospect might have searched for before arriving on your page.

Does DTR really work? You bet.

In a simple A/B test, Campaign Monitor found that using DTR helped with 31.4% lift in conversions.

How do you plan to optimize your landing pages?

What kind of ongoing work do you foresee with your landing pages and funnels? What are you trying to do continuously to inch towards better conversions?

If you need help designing high-converting landing pages and funnels or if you’d like to discuss your marketing strategy, please don’t hesitate to get on a scheduled call with us.

The post CRO: How To Make The Most Of Your Landing Pages (When You Thought You Couldn’t) appeared first on Done For You.

In fact, reports on the market share of web analytics services state that Google Analytics surpasses all other vendors combined (also see Datanyze and SimilarTech for more data around website traffic analysis services).

Website traffic analysis and visitor tracking done right

Our take on website traffic analysis and website visitor tracking solutions? It doesn’t matter if GA is the “de facto” standard – there is need for simple and efficient web analytics tools that are tailor-made to serve real business needs.

Our team at DoneForYou.com knows that business owners need to understand marketing data to reach important decisions. The way to do that is to have the right systems in place for website traffic analysis, web visitor tracking and website data analysis or web analytics.

This is why we created Statly, a powerful web analytics service: to give business owners a reliable decision-making tool that reveals what marketing funnels work better than others and what parts can be optimized to increase customer conversions.

But before we delve into what Statly can do, let’s see what the notions website traffic analysis, web visitor tracking and website data analysis really mean. These terms are often searched on Google, and we felt we had to explain what they are all about.

Website traffic analysis

Web traffic stats and analytics (briefly called web analytics) are the collection, measurement and analysis of web visitors’ data for the purpose of understanding, reporting on and optimizing a website. Optimization can occur from a marketing aspect or a technical aspect in order to provide a better user experience and convert more random visitors into engaged users.

What’s important to know about website traffic analytics is that it allows you to glean information like:

• the sources of incoming traffic
• how many of your visitors are new
• how many visitors are returning
• what pages they visit
• and more…

Website visitor tracking

Website visitor tracking (WVT) is a part of web analytics that deals with visitor behavior analysis on a website. Web visitor tracking allows marketers to display tailor-made content or provide users with access to different web pages that presumably relate to their preferences.

Web visitor tracking enables marketers to deploy automated sequences that are triggered every time a user demonstrates a certain behavior on the website.

Of course, website visitor tracking can be deployed on other web assets, too, including your sales funnels.

Website data analysis

Website data analysis includes the aforementioned branches; namely, web traffic analytics and web visitor tracking.

Cookies usually, anonymously, allow the website owner to measure the number of visits and unique visitors, among others, to the website and hence understand the user path and segment visitors that are new to the site from those that are returning.

In conclusion, web data analytics, or website data analysis, are broader terms that describe the science and the tools behind measuring and analyzing web traffic so you can optimize your web assets.

Why you need a prime web analytics service like Statly

Now that we’ve got the basic web analytics jargon out of the way, let’s continue with why Statly is the right tool for your business.

To start with, Statly can be used independently or concurrently with Google Analytics. We completely understand that you might not be ready, just yet, to drop Google Analytics – so you don’t need to.

We designed Statly with you, the business owner or marketer, in mind. Statly, which is already installed on hundreds of live websites, is our new advanced analytics and funnel tracking software.

With Statly installed on your website and funnel pages, you are able to better optimize your online sales process for better user experience and conversions. Statly allows you to streamline the buyer’s journey, fix conversion bottlenecks and entice more visitors to complete a purchase.

Statly is an advanced (yet simple) web analytics service for web traffic analysis, and visitor behavioral tracking, that enables marketing teams and founders to derive meaningful data.

Website and sales funnel metrics will be easier to understand because Statly tracks and reports on what’s important, like:

• the source of your highest-converting leads
• what pages on your site they land on
• what path they follow
• where they struggle or where they abandon your website
• what elements influence their purchase decision
• and all that for every visitor that lands on any page or piece of content

With Statly in your martech stack, all the previously intimidating numbers and funnel metrics finally make sense.

How to install the code and start the website data analysis

Statly’s tracking code is very easy to add. You can simply install our official WordPress plugin, or just copy and paste the tracking code to your web page’s source code. If your website is built in to practically any CMS (Content Management System), you’ll be able to easily add the code to your theme or template files.

Alternatively, if you don’t have access to the source code, your web developer will be able to activate Statly’s web analytics code for you in a jiffy.

Right after that, you’ll be able to see the first incoming real-time data. Click on the menu item Visitors to see on which pages visitors are landing, where they’re coming from, the type of device they’re using and a whole lot of other information.

For effective website data analysis, you’d want to go to Conversions and set up events and goals, which is pretty simple to do. Our support team will be right there if you need help implementing events.

With events set right, you’ll be able to track conversions and assign them a monetary value. And all that is done from the entry to exit point for each user, so you know the exact path they followed before purchasing your product or abandoning your website.

That’s it! You’re all set! Your new website visitor tracking and website traffic analysis service is up and running, gathering valuable web data. You’ll see that Statly is a complete analytics service to track and optimize your web properties.

And it’s free to try! Sign up for a new account to start analyzing your web traffic and user behavior!

The post Statly: The New, Advanced Web Analytics Service appeared first on Done For You.

Tracking visitors and page views are important metrics, of course.  What’s much more important to see what they’re doing though!

Tracking website visitors involves understanding where they came from, what they’re on your site for, what their demographic is, and which actions they take on your website.

What’s the visitor value? How many of them see the content you want them to see? How many take the desired action you need that moves your business forward, like signing up for your newsletter? And, how long do they stay on your pages? All these are questions that you should be able to answer with website visitor tracking and analytics software.

Website visitor tracking defined

Website visitor tracking is part of web analytics. It’s about measuring and analyzing user behavior on your web pages and sales funnel pages. It’s about tracking the user source (how they found your website) and behavior (journey on your website) during the present and future visits.

Your goal with web visitor tracking should be to optimize the user experience by customizing the kind of content that visitors see on your website according to their profiles (source, country, keywords used to find your site, ad they clicked on, presumed interests).

It’s also to measure the effectiveness of your sales funnel elements; like sales copy, landing pages, blog posts and supporting pages.

Basic visitor tracking metrics

Page Views/Page Impressions: The total number of times a website (or a particular page) is visited. Knowing your top visited pages helps you understand where most of your incoming traffic lands, and track people’s actions following their entry point.

Unique Views: The number of time a website (or a particular page) is visited by unique browsers. This is different from total views because it excludes recent visitors, so they’re not counted twice.

Referrer: A third-party web property where your visitor clicked a link to your site. Looking into your referrers will help you understand which backlinks or sources bring in the most traffic.

Bounce Rate: A “bounce” is when someone visits one of your pages and immediately clicks away (clicks the back button or closes their browser tab). A bounce usually means that they didn’t find what they were looking for in your content. Bounce rate is the percentage of people who exited from the same page they landed.

Goals/Events: Pre-defined actions that visitors can take on your website, like checkout, view a product, watch a sales video, fill out a survey, submit a form, or click of a button.

Conversion Rate: Of all the web analytics and visitor behavioral metrics you might track, the conversion rate is probably the single most important one. Your conversion rate is the percentage of web visitors who completed a goal on your site. Goals are things like submitting a contact form, completing a purchase or viewing a certain page on your site.

The right tool to analyze web traffic

All of these metrics should be looked into separately and combined to derive meaningful results. Statly, our comprehensive web visitor tracking and sales funnel analysis software, produces combined reports that showcase where your visitors come from, which pages they visit and at what point they convert. So, what Statly does is derive data from all important web metrics and combine them into marketing reports of value to decision makers.

Take conversion rate, for example, which is arguably the most important metric you should track with your web visitor tracking software. Conversion rate as a whole doesn’t say much. Instead, look at the conversion rate per traffic channel.

You want to know what’s the conversion rate of a specific audience coming from a particular Facebook campaign that drives traffic to one of your landing pages. This metric, when compared to industry standards or other campaigns that you run, is the ultimate measure of how successful your site and sales funnels are.

With Statly, you can visualize your sales funnels, see what converts, and find bottlenecks that you need to fix. Maybe you’re not attracting the right kind of web visitors. Or, maybe a page has a lot of bounces, so you need to optimize it. A sudden drop in conversions might mean that there’s an error in your shopping cart.

That’s the magic of website visitor tracking and advance funnel analytics. You can easily see what works and what needs to be fixed…  More than that, Statly even sends out triggered notifications when the AI-engine sees that there’s an opportunity (like a sudden burst of traffic) or a bottleneck (like a sales page that isn’t converting that well).

The wrong way to track website visitors

Now that we have explained what website visitor tracking is and how you can implement it using Statly, we also need to stress that there’s a wrong way to do it.

The wrong way is either using your hosting provider’s stats counter or installing a visitor counter on your website. Both these solutions will only give you fragments of information. With these web visitor tracking solutions you will only get the number of visits, but nothing more. No behavioral information, no funnel tracking, no conversion stats…

Track what matters

So, your only option is to use a dedicated advanced analytics solution from either the day that your site goes live or right now :0)  Once you get the tracking script installed, Statly saves all the conversion data for you to dip into later.

You probably know what Google Analytics can do, and you also know that it’s the industry standard.

However, there are other web visitor tracking tools, like Statly, that are tailor-made for real businesses that want meaningful data presented in a useful way. Of course, both Statly and Google Analytics can run simultaneously on your website, if you choose to do that.

Statly is a sophisticated (yet simple and comprehensive) web analytics solution for website traffic analysis and visitor tracking. Statly enables advertising and marketing teams as well as business owners to have access to meaningful marketing data.

With Statly in your MarTech (or AdTech) stack, big data finally makes sense.

Click here to sign up for a completely free Statly account – no credit card required. Install it in less than two minutes using our WordPress plugin (or just copy and paste the code), and start tracking website visitors instantly!

The post How You Can Track Website Visitors And Turn Them Into Prospects appeared first on Done For You.

At DoneForYou.com, we build high-conversion automated sales funnels. But when we’re done creating funnels, our clients need a comprehensive way to analyze and optimize conversions. What they said they needed was:

• A simple way to track leads from the top of the funnel up to the point where they buy
• A tool to clearly visualize the complete buyer’s journey, on a single screen
• A no-frills reporting tool for all the sales funnel metrics that actually matter

Of course, we used a combination of different tools, like Mixpanel and Google Analytics, to provide our customers with various marketing reports. But then, as it usually happens with online businesses, we thought, “Why not create our own unique web analytics tool that has the exact features our clients need without the complicated user interface?” We needed to create a simple yet handy funnel metrics tool.

That’s when we started designing Statly. Statly, which is already installed on hundreds of live websites, is our new advanced analytics and funnel tracking software.

With Statly in your arsenal, you are able to better optimize your online sales process for conversions. Statly allows you to streamline the buyer’s journey, and entice more visitors to convert into paying customers.

Statly enables marketing teams and founders to reach better decisions

Statly is an advanced (yet simple to use) analytics and sales funnel tracking solution that will change the way you use web metrics. It allows you to not only get access to marketing data that is crucial to decision making but it also enables you to actually make sense of this data and use it to make the RIGHT decisions!

See, the way we built Statly is to facilitate better understanding of where your highest-converting leads come from, what pages on your site funnels go to and what influences their decisions…and all that for every visitor that lands on any page or piece of content.

With Statly by your side, all the previously intimidating numbers and funnel metrics will finally make sense.

One tool to track and optimize your funnels

Statly comes with a patent-pending algorithm and a number of exciting features. Here’s a taste of what’s included in your free Statly trial (and every pricing plan):

• Visualize your funnels

  Website tracking: track every visitor that lands on your website

• Web visitor tracking: identify users at every stage of your sales funnels
• Online behavior tracking: track behavior as the leads move into becoming customers
• Funnel analysis: track important funnel metrics and analyze meaningful data
• Sales opportunities: identify opportunities for higher conversion rates
• Funnel optimization: find and fix bottlenecks and problematic funnel elements
• Conversion rate optimization: improve conversions and optimize the checkout process
• Web analytics reporting: produce accurate reports
• Funnel visualization: visualize complete funnels with a single click
• Real-time analytics: generate real-time web analytics reports
• Easy setup: easy to install on your website and funnel pages
• Mobile responsive: Statly’s dashboard is mobile responsive. You can access your funnel metrics on any device.
• State-of-the-art infrastructure: built on a stable, fast and secure infrastructure
• Support: responsive email support

Plus many more features are coming up as we release frequent updates, fixes and user experience improvements almost every week.

Statly integrates with your favorite tools

It’s very simple to install Statly on your website and start using it right away. If your site is on WordPress, our official Statly WordPress plugin will come in handy. Alternatively, you can easily add the tracking code to your site and sales funnel pages.

But it’s not only WordPress. You can integrate Statly with any CMS (Content Management System) or page builder you’re using, such as:

• Wix
• Weebly
• Squarespace
• Shopify
• ClickFunnels
• Kajabi
• LeadPages
• GoDaddy
• Duda

What this means, practically, is that whatever tool you’re using to build your sales funnels and webpages, you’re able to fully integrate with Statly and track web metrics effectively.

Sales funnel metrics and web analytics finally made simple

In our time, sales happen online. Your whole sales process has moved from talking to a customer that walks into your brick-and-mortar store to a guided online experience that works on autopilot.

That’s the new state of online sales and marketing, and with Statly, you can track, analyze and make use of all the funnel metrics that matter. After all, better data analytics drive more sales.

Don’t leave business success to luck! Try Statly free for a full month! 

The post Statly: The simple tool to track and analyze funnel metrics to improve sales performance appeared first on Done For You.

You see websites full of content. Some of them are designed beautifully. Heck, check out any website featured on Awwwards, and we guarantee that you’ll love the designs.

The problem is this: “Likeability” and “pretty-looking” isn’t anywhere close to what a business really wants: profitability. Of course, high-performance websites need to come with a beautiful design, but that’s not what will make them profitable.

So you have the most beautiful website in the world but that’s not enough. Good design is important for branding and grabbing the user’s interest. What’s more important though is high performance. Here’s what that means:

• How many leads do you generate from your website every month?
• What volume of annual sales can you attribute to your website?
• Do you have at least one sales funnel in place working for you 24/7?
• Does your website load fast, ideally within 3 seconds or less?

Funny thing is that most businesses don’t have answers to these questions at all. If they do, the answers are vague. All that is because the entire approach to website design and set up has been wrong from the start.

Businesses focus on design, structure and content but they neglect elements and systems that would make a website perform best in turning traffic into buyers.

The right way to go about creating high-performance websites is this:

High-performance websites are built to convert

It doesn’t matter if you use a pure HTML/CSS or if you use WordPress to build your website. When you launch an e-commerce site, it won’t matter if you use Shopify or Magento. What really matters is whether or not your website gets you the results you seek.

For common types of business websites, the sought after results can look like this:

• Blog or online publication? Number of regular readers and email subscribers.
• Company blog? Number of leads generated and then sales attributed to those leads.
• SaaS application website: Number of free trials leading to monthly paid users with MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue).

It’s possible to generate results for any level of traffic that’s coming to your website. Even if you’re attracting only a couple of hundreds of visitors per month, you should be able to convert at least a small number of them into customers.

When you develop a website, develop it from a marketing angle. If not, don’t even bother building a website, only to have a web presence.

No matter the type of website, you need to have at least one sales funnel in place. In other words, you need to push random incoming visitors towards a path of actions, that you have planned in advance, with the ultimate goal of turning some of those random visitors into paying customers.

See the difference? Instead of just counting on luck, wishing website visitors would buy more of your product, you come prepared; You create a well-thought sales strategy, and all of the pages, elements and systems behind it, to facilitate sales on auto-pilot. This is just another way to describe a digital sales funnel.

Use lead-generation elements on web pages

In the short time that you have to make that good first impression to your visitors, it’s hard to get your visitors to give you a vote of confidence, to build trust, or to convince them to buy.

To enable sales you need more time. The only way to have more time with your web visitors is to get them to engage with your brand long-term. The best way to achieve that is to use email marketing. Using one or several sets of well-written autoresponder messages, you can nurture leads and convert them into sales.

But how do you even get email subscribers in the first place? You do that by creating lead-generation elements such as pop-ups, slide-ins, welcome gates, in-line opt-in forms, or opt-in forms on your blog’s sidebar. The purpose of these lead-generation elements is to grab the user’s email address, so you can contact them again.

How do you attract more email subscribers? Make a valuable offer. Give away something of value to help your visitors go one level up on your relationship, and further convince them that you have the solution to their problems.

Websites are hubs; Landing pages are for focused lead generation

Your website is a central hub with oodles of information to keep your visitors informed, engaged, and to help them make well-informed decisions. Websites can work as knowledge hubs where you offer content, blogs, resources, tools, and access to your primary products and services.

Make a sitewide, all-purpose offer on your website for all your visitors to see. This offer is usually your flagship offer and also an evergreen one so that you don’t have to keep making changes to that offer.

However, you need to use landing pages to present specific offers based on different criteria, such as:

• a person’s location or country,
• important referral sources, like Facebook, or
• topic-specific or interest-based offers for particular audiences.

Landing pages are focused and specific, and visitors dig that sort of relevance.

High-performance websites: Use analytics, for everything

Use Google Analytics to ensure that you have a way to track visitors to your website (and every single page within, including each of your blog posts).

When you track visitors, you also get a glimpse of their behavior, along with several other data points such as locations, devices, countries, bounce rates, time spent on your site, and website page loading time, etc.

Click here to register for an upcoming webinar where we’ll learn:

• how you can track visitor behavior and visualize web paths with the click of a button,
• what metrics you need to analyze and how you can get instant access to them, and
• how you can learn how to fix and optimize sales funnels using one dashboard.

One of the most popular tools, Google Analytics, gives you a wealth of data to let you know what digital marketing efforts contribute to acquiring leads and ultimately to generating sales. If you need more handy features, consider using Statly for bringing in very specific numbers pertaining to your sales funnels. Statly allows you to visualize complete sales funnels, and find funnel pages or elements that facilitate conversions.

Plus, you can use Hotjar or Mouseflow to also get access to video sessions of users, heatmaps, form analytics, and click behavior on your website and landing pages.

While you are at it, be sure to keep track of the right metrics, the ones that help reach informed business decisions.

Your website should be built for a reason. Whatever your reasons are, it’s certainly not for “looking good” or for satiating your ego. Make your website work!

If you need help setting up the right strategy for high-performance websites, if you need to get on a profitable path to digital marketing, sales funnels, and lead generation, get on a scheduled strategy session with us.

The post 4 Requirements For High-performance Websites appeared first on Done For You.

The global eCommerce growth is stunning. In 2017, it was around $2.3 trillion and is expected to reach $4.5 trillion in 2021, according Statista. In the United States alone, eCommerce accounts for almost 10 percent of retail sales — a number that is increasing by nearly 15% each year.

Which eCommerce trends are set to dominate this year? In this article, we discuss the 6 most powerful eCommerce trends you need to know in order to keep growing and stay ahead of the competition.

1. Amazon Advertising

When you’re selling on Amazon, Amazon Advertising is one of the best ways to get traffic to your product listings.  It’s incredibly high converting traffic and you can narrow down on keywords and categories you want your ads seen in!

… And if you’re not set up yet, we can build an Amazon Store for you!

Here are some ways to do it:

1. Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands appear above the Amazon search results and help advertisers build brand awareness.  You can also promote multiple products inside the listing and, since Amazon is filled with buyers, these Sponsored Brands listings convert very well.

2. Product-level profitability

With Amazon Advertising, you can dig into your product level profitability.  That means you can track profit magins, gross profits and overall ad spend on each of your products and campaigns.

3. Increased Page-Level Conversion

Traffic, sales, and reviews are conversion drivers in Amazon.  Traffic and a solid organic search position helps your products earn the Amazon’s Choice designation, helping you stand out to buyers.  Then, the more sales, the more traffic…  It turns into a self-feeding frenzy.

4. Category-specific targeting

Sponsored Products are the most popular advertising option, and the one we use most often for your clients.

These ads appear above, below, and alongside the Amazon search results, as well as on product detail pages, and are similar to Google’s product listing ads.

Sponsored Products allow you to use category-specific targeting, which shows your company’s products alongside complementary products, increasing conversion from your competitor’s listings.

Using this functionality allows you to showcase your products right along with established brands and competitors in the Amazon marketplace.

5. Negative keywords

Negative keywords let you exclude specific words or phrases from a larger keyword search, making sure you don’t rank for the wrong search terms.  The quickest way to do this is to see which keywords are getting a lot of clicks but few conversions.  Is there a common word in the phrase that you can pull out?

6. Using Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS)

ACoS is a ratio of your ad spend to revenue. For automatic campaigns, ACoS is at the group level, but for manual campaigns, you get your ACoS on a product level.

Of course, the lower your ACoS is, the better.  However, when you’re liquidating a product, launching a new product, or trying to gain entry into a new market – you’ll want to set your ACoS higher.

2. Influencer marketing

Micro-influencers marketing has been riding on the back of the social media explosion. The marketing channels for this event have been Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. But blogging and Pinterest are also very effective.

The top end of the influencer spectrum is taken by celebrities like Kim Kardashian. Kim has reportedly had companies paying her up to $500,000 to share their brands with her 95 million followers. But you don’t need to be a celebrity to be an influencer.

At the other end of the spectrum, are micro-influencers who build a base of loyal and active followers through a niche interest or a particular passion. The niche could be any subject ranging from babies to business, cats to cars, or face cream to fashion, and anything else you can think of. These micro-influencers may have only 3000 followers or even 100,000 followers.

What is influencer marketing?

At a simple level, it is word-of-mouth marketing on a massive scale. The stay-at-home mom who runs a blog about parenting her pre-schoolers reviews a book about "How to End Temper Tantrums" and her 5000 devoted followers are straight onto Amazon to place an order.

Why is influencer marketing so effective?

Our stay-at-home mom, and the other micro-influencers, are changing how products and brands are perceived. Direct marketing is often impersonal and seen as having a vested interest. And consumers don’t know the product nor do they know the salesperson. Direct marketing often needs a two-step approach to making a sale and then a raft of bonuses and money-back guarantees to win over the customer.

But if a member of your family or a friend recommends a product you are more likely to buy without hesitation. A micro-influencer is seen in the same light. You can relate to them, you feel you know them, and they are trustworthy.

How can you work with micro-influencers?

Micro-influencers are for you if you have a micro-budget! It is easier and cheaper than other traditional forms of online marketing (think Google AdWords!). Check out social media platforms for your niche, and team up with those micro-influencers. It is an effective way to promote your product or service.

3. Email marketing

Email marketing and automation is a very effective way to connect with your customers, and others, who have subscribed to your mailing list.

So, why is email marketing included in current eCommerce trends? The modern consumer has evolved beyond the scope of this older marketing strategy. But when it comes to getting your product or service in front of your customers, email marketing leaves social media standing. Email converts readers to buyers at a higher rate than other marketing platforms.

Email is also evolving. You can target your customers with relevant special offers based on their buying habits. Emails are interactive. Now your customers can make secure purchases directly from within their email with just one click.

Email is an excellent method to establish long-term relationships with your customers. Email marketing allows you to educate your clients, and share tips and tricks related to your niche. In turn, you can receive great feedback from your customers and new product ideas by the creative use of competitions and surveys. Email is an efficient way to drive customers to your website.

4. Mobile marketing

Most of your customers use mobile devices. In 2018, more than 50% of internet traffic comes from smartphones and tablets (source: Statista). Therefore, a website that is responsive to mobiles is essential.

It is now more likely that eCommerce customers will reach your website from a smartphone or tablet.
Many people from across the age ranges are becoming more confident with buying products and services through their mobile devices.

Marketing Week reported that 33% of 18—24-year-olds preferred to buy products directly through Facebook. This statistic should encourage businesses to create a marketing budget for social media. Run a Facebook Ads mobile campaign directed at this age group.

Mobile marketing is changing the face of eCommerce, just look at the rise of Uber as an example. There are over a million apps available for smartphones and tablets. PayPal and Apple Pay working with banks and other institutions will affect the way we move our money. So now is the time to consider mobile-first, when creating your eCommerce marketing campaigns.

It's not too late to adopt a mobile mentality. Mobile traffic is the future!

5. Voice search

When voice search came out on Siri, few people had thought to buy products with their voice commands.

Apart from Apple’s Siri, we now have Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Assistant. They have different skill sets. For example, Alexa can tell you what the weather will be tomorrow. Google Assistant can book an appointment for you with your local hairdresser.

We can talk to our smartphone to make a Google Search or instruct our phone to call a friend. Many people who have used these voice search platforms wonder what life was like before they had them.

Why are people taking to voice search in such a big way? Here are the reasons according to one survey:

• It’s quicker than going to a website or using an app.
• I can use it while I’m driving.
• It’s more fun!
• And, it’s easier than going on a website.
• It’s a more exact way of searching.
• I don’t like typing on my mobile phone.

We type at 40 words a minute and speak at 150 words per minute. So we can get our question answered faster with a voice search.

Computers now understand voice commands. Anyone who has used the "voice to text" feature in Google Docs will know how accurate voice recognition technology is.

So, what’s the take on this for eCommerce? It is important to optimize your website and blogs for voice search. Then you can work on your product pages and descriptions for voice search. Start with using search phrases that people use and questions they ask, rather than keywords.

Voice search on your website makes it more accessible for those with physical disabilities. Offering clients an experience they are familiar with, you can expect to increase conversions in your eCommerce store.

6. Chatbots for a better user experience

Keeping your visitors engaged on your website is an essential part of digital marketing. This is often overlooked by eCommerce store operators. Lower your ‘bounce’ rate by letting Chatbots take the strain! If you don’t get that qualified customer, then one of your competitors will!

What are Chatbots?

We mentioned examples of Chatbots (Bots) in an earlier section, Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Google Assistant. If you thought Bots are just for the big boys, you can think again! Bots as pieces of software are now within the scope of a small business’s budget. So it is important to understand how they can help you succeed.

A Chatbot (a robot that chats!) is software that copies human phases. It works through voice commands, text chats, or both. Your customers can have a ‘virtual’ conversation by asking your Bot a question. And the Bot can give an automated response or carry out a task.

Bots work well with eCommerce. They can engage visitors. They can send newsletters, daily updates, and generate leads.

Using a Bot

A Bot is a virtual assistant that handles your repetitive tasks. This software is a great way to enhance customer relationships.

A customer can visit your website at any time of day or night and your friendly Bot pops up with a greeting. Your visitor asks “Do you sell widgets?” the Chatbot can recognize information and give a reply “We have the best stock of widgets in the county”. The Chatbot can ask your visitor “Can I help you with your order? Your customer might reply “I want information”. To which your Bot asks for name and email address to send information. The customer is added to your mailing list.

Advantages of using Chatbots for you and your customers are:

• Your customers are familiar with this communication.
• Bots offer a good user experience, can be programmed to answer FAQs.
• Customers can find what they are looking for quicker.
• A Bot helps create a personal customer experience.
• A Bot will help to create a higher profile for your business.
• Your customer service can run 24/7

Technology is improving by the day, and that makes personalization a must on customers' eCommerce journeys.

Moreover, there are some Chatbot services, like ManyChat, that allow you to create a Bot without code.

Powerful eCommerce trends — What's more?

Now that you know about the things driving eCommerce companies forward in today's marketplace, it's time to put some of it into action!

We'd love to help you put together a Growth Strategy for building your eCom business online, whether that be in Amazon, Shopify or any of the other eCom platforms.

All you have to do is click the button below, fill out the Action Plan form, and schedule a call with us!

The post 6 eCommerce Trends And Conversion Tools You Need To Know About appeared first on Done For You.

The importance of a well-rounded Martech stack

Today, technology is the pillar of most businesses who operate online. And marketing technology, as part of the whole infrastructure, can make or break your business. Needless to say that software tools and cloud apps that support your marketing processes can cost a lot. So, you need to find the right balance between cost and benefits if you want your online marketing to thrive without breaking the bank.

In today’s post, we will we will pick out 6 out of the hundreds of Martech tools that we at DoneForYou have created with the goal to address real business needs and provide the functionality you need to achieve your marketing goals. All of these tools came as a result of years in business, and are a product of interaction with companies who want to get the most out of each cent they spend on marketing.

What’s best about these tools is that they can get you results even if you hate the word “marketing.” Let’s face it: Not every business owner likes marketing or has time to do so. In most cases, you want to do what you do best; you want to work on your business, not in it. Therefore, with the right marketing stack, you’ll be able to free up resources and, most importantly, save your time so you can focus on business development and serving customers.

Here’s your marketing stack…

Without further ado, let’s take a look at the top six software tools you can start using right now to revitalize your online marketing, regain control of your customer-related processes and give an instant cash injection to your business.

1. Statly: Understand marketing data – Improve sales performance

If you want to succeed in your marketing, you must be able to track and analyze data. See, you may be successful at attracting tons of traffic to your website. But, what if only 2% of those visitors convert, while the rest remain anonymous? Don’t you want a way to identify who they are, track their behavior and keep them coming back? Of course you do.

How are users acting when they visit your website? In today’s competitive times, obtaining meaningful data is an important part of a successful marketing plan.

This is where Statly comes into the picture. As the complete tool that helps you in real-time tracking of users leveraging the sales funnel strategy, it can immensely help your chances of converting traffic into sales. Statly helps you obtain meaningful data so you can make the right business decisions.

But how does Statly work? Statly gives you a comprehensive idea of how your sales funnels are actually converting. It helps you spot opportunities and the parts of your funnels that need to be improved. Watch this video to learn more about what our patent-pending tool can do for your business.

Here are some of the salient features of the tool:

• Real-time website analytics
• Conversion tracking through sales funnels
• Tracking conversion opportunities
• Tracking sales and user behavior on the website

If your site is powered by WordPress, then all you need to do is install the latest version of our plugin to get started with Statly’s advanced analytics and sales funnel tracking.

With Statly in your arsenal, you will be able to better optimize your online sales process and the buyer’s journey, so you entice more web visitors to convert into paying customers. Sitting in front of a load of data wouldn’t do any good, would it? But with Statly by your side, all these previously intimidating numbers will finally make sense.

Click here to sign up for a free Statly trial!

2. Askly: Your customer has a voice; now you can hear it

It might sound like a cliché but it’s 100% true and often overlooked: You need to understand your customer before you actually sell to them.

As Peter Drucker put it, the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.

So, why is it that business owners tend to overlook the need for deep understanding of customers’ needs and behavior? It’s because they fall into a common trap; If they’ve been in business longer than a couple of years, they tend to be victims of the illusion that they know their customers.

In reality, most of the time our perceptions go through our subjective cognitive prism that stops us from really understanding the customer persona. This is why you need actual data to form better views and make the right decisions.

How do you acquire real in-depth data about customer needs? By asking customers the right questions at the right time and place.

To help you in this process, Askly provides all the insights and information you need about the customer to target them in the most efficient possible manner.

Watch the video below to see how Askly has helped dozens of businesses get valuable insight on their customers’ needs.

Customer engagement is the name of the game today. In order to engage customers effectively, you need to:

• Figure out their biggest challenges
• Send them the right information
• Get the conversion rate sky high

All of this you can easily get with the help of Askly. By providing valuable insights about the customer, Askly can eventually help you skyrocket sales with no hassles.

Click here to get started with Askly today!

3. Scriptly: Done-for-you content, email swipes and sales scripts

Scriptly is a must-have Martech tool for any online business. Let us back up this bold statement.

If we talk in terms of numbers, content marketing brings three times more leads to outbound marketing, while consuming 62% less money.

These numbers make it quite clear why investing in content marketing is the key. However, this is where a majority of businesses fall flat. They don’t have any idea how to write an engaging copy that will entice the user to enter the sales funnel.

To help you with this, Scriptly provides professionally written scripts that you can start using as they are or customize to better suit your business. These scripts or swipes will help you write high-converting sales copy right away, even if you’ve never written a line of sales copy before.

In fact, you can have complete sales pages created for you with the click of a button. Sound interesting? Watch the video below to see Scriptly in action.

And, it’s not only sales copy you get. As a Scriptly user, you’ll get instant access to:

• Autoresponder engine – This is set of dozens of email sequences that are completely done for you. Anything from affiliate autoresponder sequences to webinar sequences is there.
• Page builder – Create any kind of customizable landing page. All templates are tested and proven to convert to paid traffic.
• Customer avatars – No need for a separate tool to define different customer avatars, to customize your marketing material to address different target groups. We have it all covered in Scriptly.
• VSL creator – Video sales letter can be easily created using Scriptly’s well-structured templates. For every part of the sales letter script you can choose the sales copy that resonates with your audience.
• Webinar creator – Create your next webinar is minutes, not hours, with this unique fill-in-the-blank formula. The webinar creator is a handy tool that will help you get past the writer’s block in an instant.

Sign up here to try Scriptly at zero cost!

All these can play a vital role in creating a win-win content marketing strategy that can fetch you great results. See, with Scriptly you’ve got nearly all of your content needs covered, without having to learn copywriting or spend hundreds of dollars per hour of expert work. Which brings us to our next Martech tool for content, Curately…

4. Curately: Content curation at its best

We explained how Scriptly is a unique tool for your content needs. Although Scriptly covers nearly every aspects of content marketing, it leaves out blog post creation. And that makes sense because you want a dedicated tool to help you create fresh, targeted and optimized content for your blog. That tool is Curately.

Curately makes it easy for you to find and curate content from all over the web. With this awesome tool you’ll never run out of ideas for successful content that keeps your readers hooked.

Here’s how Curately works:

• Find the biggest content publishers on the web from your niche
• Get to know what they are writing and how they are using content
• Build your marketing strategy around those ideas
• Add a personal touch to the content you are going to publish.

And, that’s about it! Did you ever think content marketing could be this easy? Well, Curately makes it easy! Check out the tool now for free or watch the video below for a quick demo.

5. TimeSlots: Simple, centralized scheduling for your e-meetings

So, you devote resources to acquire quality traffic to your website. You have all your funnels in place, you’re tracking them, and you’re investing in paid ads or content creation. You want your qualified web visitors to be able to easily schedule a strategy call with you or book a demo of your product, don’t you?

The best way to actually qualify prospects and turn them into active customers is by providing them an easy way to get on a scheduled a meeting with you. However, for this to be effective it has to be done in a centralized and automated way.

This is where a marketing technology tool, like TimeSlots, becomes a lifesaver. Combining forms and appointments online, TimeSlots lets you qualify the prospects so that you can close them.

Here’s how the scheduling process works:

• Send a link to the prospect
• The prospect books a time
• You choose your availability
• The prospect schedules a meeting with you

Everything gets done with just a single click! What else can you ask for? Click here to see how TimeSlots works and how it can save you the time and frustration that come with other scheduling tools. It also comes with a free trial; sign up here to get it!

6. Axis: Convert customers with email marketing and automation

What is the flagship of outbound online marketing? Email marketing. No business can survive unless it is able to communicate directly with their audience in a way that will constantly bring in new prospects and, ultimately, sales.

You’ve heard it before: Email marketing has one of the highest ROI compared to other online marketing channels, and here are the numbers to prove it.

So, how can a marketing stack be complete without an email marketing tool? Axis helps you contact and convert more customers by building email marketing campaigns that actually work. From sending broadcast messages to deploying triggered autoresponder sequences, all is done for you in Axis.

With this tool you can achieve the ultimate goal of every business: get as many conversions as possible from the prospects that visit your website.

Watch the video below to find out how simple it is to use Axis, and how it stacks up against competitive email marketing tools.

Axis comes with a competitive pricing and a free trial which gives you access to all the tool’s email marketing and automation features.

Some of the benefits you can reap from Convertly include:

• Grow your email marketing list the simple way
• Send one-off broadcasts, i.e. email blasts
• Automate new subscriber onboarding with autoresponder sequences
• Create triggered email sequences that will automate your communications
• Effortlessly stay in touch with your past customers
• Re-engage your list and convert more subscribers into customers.

All these reasons make it a worthy investment for your business. After all, you need to do email marketing if you want to grow your business. There is nothing quite like reaching your customers’ inbox, when we talk about conversions!

How will these marketing tools change YOUR business?

This last tool, Axis, sums up our list of Martech tools that can help you transform your marketing strategies to change the way you run your business.

To recap, we discussed how 6 top-quality tools can help you tackle major aspects of your online marketing. These aspects are:

1. Data and analytics with Statly
2. Customer surveys with Askly
3. Sales copy and sales material creation with Scriptly
4. Content creation with Curately
5. Online scheduling with TimeSlots
6. Email marketing with Axis.

Now, picture this: You have access to all these tools, they are integrated with your site, and are configured and set up live. How would it feel having this online marketing machine streamlined and working for you on autopilot? You can feel safe that you’re doing the best you can to attend to your brand online and grow your business without the hassle of elaborate tools that take up too much energy and time to set up.

Although they are simple to use and fast to set up, you might feel like you don’t want to go through the onboarding process but want a done-for-you solution instead.

If this is the case, our experts at Done For You Marketing can do the heavy lifting and set you up with your new marketing stack in zero time. Our team will make sure that your accounts are configured properly and that all the individual tools are integrated with your site and working as they ought to.

From sales page creation to complete email marketing automation, we are here to help you get started fast. Click here to schedule a strategy call with us, so you can start growing your business right away.

The post 6 Marketing Tools That Will Change Your Business appeared first on Done For You.

It’s tough, and when you add the business of churning through customer and sales data (that helps you to spot trends and develop strategies), it can become hectic. So hectic that there’s the propensity for you to lose sight of vital areas of the online entrepreneurship game.

How then do you handle website metrics for digital goods without sidelining other critical components of your online business? It starts with knowing which metrics actually matter.

But before we delve into what these metrics are, here are some stats mastery tools you should already have.

Website analytics must have

Google Analytics

When it comes to website stats, Google analytics is probably the world’s most popular tool. This Swiss Army knife tracks virtually every core metric of your online business rather efficiently. Add that to its free nature, and it’s easy to see why virtually every digital product seller is a fan.

However, if you’re looking for a more tailored insight on your website metrics, then Statly is just what you need.

Statly

Like Google Analytics, Statly tracks your web visitors but with extra perks. While GA provides for only rudimentary information, Statly takes it a step further to provide real-time analysis through your sales funnels and website, so you’re better positioned to improve conversion and optimizing sales of digital products. Try Statly free for 30 days!

Now that that’s aside, what website metrics should you be looking at?

Number of users, sessions created and page views

Users

Users are individuals who visit your website within a particular time frame.

Sessions

A session occurs when a user visits your site and the goes on to spend time on the site browsing through your web content.

Page views

Think of page views as fragments of sessions. They occur when a user checks on to a particular page of your website during a session.

Together these three are essential in deriving an overall picture of the performance of your website as a whole and tracking the effects of an upgrade, update or modification effected from your end.

Time spent per session and your bounce rate

Time

Ideally, you want visitors to spend as much time as is possible on your website – it’s a surefire indicator that they are deriving value from what you’re offering and most times, it leads to conversion.

Bounce rate

When users check out a page and immediately end their session, then that’s an indication that there might be something wrong with such a page.

The rate at which they do this is the bounce rate. A high bounce rate is indicative of an underlying problem you should sort out.

User actions

Actions

It’s one thing for users to land on your web page and engage in a session. But what do they do subsequently? Depending on the structure of your website user actions can vary greatly.

Conversions

However, one core action you should be tracking is your conversions.

A conversion happens when a user does what you designed a webpage to make him/her do. It could be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or even simply engaging with the page content.

Regardless, as you might have already guessed, this metric is the primary indicator of the success of the overall marketing of your digital products. If you’re not converting, you’re not achieving your goals. The rate at which you meet your sales goals is your conversion rate.

Number of sales of digital products

Sales

Like your conversion and conversion rate, your number of sales is an important metric for evaluating the success of your digital product business.

While conversion requires calculations, your number of sales is easily derivable from your e-commerce dashboard or via a WordPress plugin.

Gross revenue/earnings from digital products

Revenue

The total of all the money you earn as payment or commission for the digital products that you sell is your gross revenue. It’s dependent on your number of sales and the basis of the equation for deriving your profit margin and your net profit.

Gross and net profit

Gross revenue is at the top of your profit and loss statement. Then, when you subtract the cost of goods, you arrive at the gross profit. If you want to calculate the final net profit number you need to deduct all other business expenditure and operating costs, like staff and marketing costs and taxes.

Refunds

If you are running a digital product business, you are most likely to have buyers who request a refund soon after they receive the digital download. Digital goods are easy to refund because there is no physical product, i.e. no product to ship and no shipping costs. In most cases, digital good sellers offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, which practically means that some buyers will be able to consume the product and ask for a refund in time.

This is why the number and value of refunds is another important component of the revenue-profit equation you should track. No one likes tracking this, but it’s business, and you’ll be needing it if you want to map out a strategy of how to reduce refund requests.

Recap – Key metrics for digital goods

Overall, these last three metrics comprise the revenue side of website stats. Their importance cannot be emphasized as they ultimately determine the bottom line and survivability of your business.

Paired with the rest of the bunch, these metrics give you an insight into just how your business is performing and what steps are needed to further bolster your competitive advantage.

As you probably know, the successful entrepreneur is the one who takes informed decisions as opposed to arbitrary resolutions. These metrics for digital products give you the insight needed to effect tailored strategies that guarantee the success of your business.

The post Important Website And Business Metrics For Digital Goods appeared first on Done For You.

The trouble with us humans is that we tend to have a lot happening inside our heads (including all of the above) when it’s time to make decisions.

Each of those parameters serves us well in the normal course of our lives. But when it comes to certain things such as contemporary marketing and financial planning, all of those have the potential to throw a wrench into a successful decision-making process.

If you wanted to decide which place to go on vacation, you’d do your research, but ultimately let your heart decide where you’ll land.

It’s not exactly that simple with digital marketing. But then, why should you even stress yourself when data gives you all the answers you need to help make decisions?

Here’s why you should let data dictate your decision-making and not your emotions, feelings, likes, dislikes, or preconceived notions:

Develop precise marketing strategies

With the cost of ads high at the time of writing this, and given that you are taking risks with every PPC ad campaign you run, you can’t afford to work on whims. Gut feelings are good but they aren’t good enough to ensure profitable PPC campaigns at all times.

To develop precise marketing strategies, you’ll need precise data.

Before you even launch your Facebook ad campaign, for instance, spending enough time with Facebook Audience Insights, Google Analytics, and Facebook Analytics for your web property (confined to your respective targeted locations and demographics) provides you with a wealth of data on which you can act.

While running Google AdWords, checking out other characteristics of your targeted user base on Google such as “In-market,” “affinity audiences,” “publications they read,” “income levels,” and other attributes – on top of your regular keyword research – puts you in good stead.

Good data allows you to build laser-targeted, focused, and effective PPC campaigns. Period.

Data is a digital marketer’s gift

One of the reasons why digital marketing truly trumps traditional marketing is its ability to let data flow in for us marketers to make decisions that matter. You have an ability (with digital marketing) to know exactly what’s working and why.

You’ll have a way to clearly see where your visitors come from (and how many), how long they spend on your web properties, what they do when they visit, which parts of your web pages are viewed the most (heat maps), and so much more.

You’ll be able to analyze which parts of your page are viewed most, where those clicks happen, and zoom in on which elements of your sales funnels are working better than the others (A/B testing).

No other form of marketing gives you such a wealth of analytics and data. There’s virtually nothing else — in marketing — that can help you make informed decisions without breaking a sweat.

For businesses and digital marketers, data is a gift. It only makes sense that we learn to use it well.

You never know what markets want

There’s a reason why every startup idea needs to be validated. There’s also a good reason why you can’t just create an ad and point the ad to a landing page. When you do it this way, you don’t get the complete story.

Digital marketing is an inexpensive way to validate your ideas, ads, campaigns, and sales funnels. In as much as a week’s time, you’ll know whether or not an idea can work or whether a campaign can be successful.

Since consumer behavior is complicated today and because you can’t just sit there and “assume” things, data-driven marketing helps you identify exactly what your market wants and then help you build products or services that serve these markets well.

Your instincts work…until they don’t

It’s only natural that we rely on our instinct, experience, and know-how to solve problems. Those basic instincts will also lead you to make your own decisions when you are about to create Facebook or Google ads, create landing pages, build sales funnels, and more.

According to ThinkWithGoogle,

Data analytics can work wonders. Highly data-driven organizations are three times more likely to report significant improvement in decision-making, according to PwC research. Yet, 62% of executives still rely more on experience and advice than data to make decisions.

The trouble is this: Your instincts work great, until they don’t. When they fail, as they’ll inevitably do, you have no recourse. Data, on the other hand, is reliable and more effective in helping you make decisions that will stand the test of time.

Do you use data to help yourself build precise marketing strategies and PPC campaigns? Do you use do data-driven marketing? Tell us about it.

The post PPC Campaigns: Why Data-Driven Decisions Are Mandatory appeared first on Done For You.

The fact that 51% of businesses have a well-defined, digital marketing strategy is a reflection of how things have changed over the last few years. And, the remaining 49% are doing digital marketing, but with no strategy.

How does click fraud come into the picture?

As we all know, companies spend huge amounts of money every year on their marketing campaigns. As a result, online activities have also attracted scammers who are here to eat up your marketing budget with fraudulent clicks. These people might try to sell you fake clicks, which means that you think you’re getting real human traffic to your website, while the truth is that it’s only automated bot visits.

You might be shocked to know that, in 2016 alone, marketers lost $7.2 billion to digital ad fraud. And, the loss is growing at a rate of 50% per year.

This is why click fraud is a major concern for marketers and business owners. You might think your marketing campaigns are working, because they bring in traffic, but in reality, all you get is fake clicks!

So, how can you identify click fraud?

Well, here are some of the most common red lights that should worry you and have you wonder about the quality of the clicks you’re getting:

• Repeated clicks coming from similar IPs
• Large search costs with extremely low conversions
• Anomalies in Google Analytics or other traffic data for no reason

If you’re facing any of these issues, then your marketing efforts might be compromised by click fraud.

Now, the question that arises is “How can you eliminate click fraud?” Is there a way to battle traffic scammers? Yes, there are… more than one! Let’s look at them:

1. Keep an eye on any anomalies

As already stated, if you find some weird numbers in your ad marketing statistics it could be the first signs of your marketing budget going in the wrong direction.

As a matter of fact, one of the first things you need to do in order to minimize the impact of click fraud and reduce it to minimum is by keeping track of everything that’s happening in your marketing campaigns.

Once identified, you can eventually take some strong steps to prevent the click fraud which we are going to discuss in the next few points.

2. Plan your advertising campaigns better

Where are you marketing your business? This one thing matters a lot!

Are you using Google advertisements? If yes, and you are not getting results, an intelligent trick that you can employ to fight the click-fraud elements is being smart in planning your ad-campaigns.

One of the many ways you can choose to plan it better is by setting different prices of the bid for different targeted sites. For instance, limit your posting to only relevant sites rather than just going on any website.

Or perhaps you can limit your ad campaigns to only reliable websites like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn based on your niche and target audience availability.

3. Don’t let your competitors do the damage

As annoying as it might sound, the fact of the matter is that the majority of businesses are not shy of employing this dirty tactic to destroy their competitor’s marketing budget. Therefore you cannot even think of ignoring your competition.

It has been found that many businesses are taking advantage of this strategy to damage their competitors by eating up their marketing budget.

A shocking statistic that might capture your interest here is that Methbot, one of the click fraud operations out there in the market, manages to generate $3 to $5 million in fraudulent revenue every single day!

So, can you check analytics data to figure out how many clicks are coming from your competitor’s IDs? If there is something that seems fishy, then you can take the required steps to reduce the damage done.

4. Turn to IP exclusions

The best way to identify and bring down these click frauds is to track the IP addresses. Once you have identified various addresses where you can see some notoriety happening, you can take this simple action – block them!

Reduce the chances of wasting your money on click fraud is by turning to IP restriction – it’s as simple as that!

This is something that does not require any technical expertise or any investment of any sort. All it requires is a little conscious effort on your end, plus a little situation-awareness, and you can easily end up saving quite a lot!

5. Stay updated with the latest technology

The best bet to keep your business safe is by befriending technology.

There is quite a number of software and tools available out on the market that can help you detect click frauds and save your business from overspending your marketing budget.

In fact, such software provides you a detailed report of the notorious elements that can come in handy in case you have to prove your case to the competitor firms or search engines.

All the major search engines are doing something against click fraud as well!

The good news for businesses is that looking at the seriousness of the issue, all the major search engines have started their mission to root out this problem.

For instance, Google plans to come up with its own campaign to fight click frauds. Google’s Ad Traffic Quality team has also planned to conduct manual as well as offline analysis of the clicks to ensure that advertisers don’t get robbed of their marketing budget due to these fraudulent click elements.

Keep calm and stay cautious!

But until there is something concrete to root it out, it becomes your responsibility to show awareness and keep your guard high against these fraud-clicking notorious elements.

On a concluding note, all we have left to say here is that the safety of your business and the success of your marketing campaign lies in your hands. More importantly, it lies in the awareness you show against fighting something like click-fraud.

So, are you up for it? Are you ready for some action and to start this battle against fraud-clicks for the betterment of your business?

The post 5 Powerful Ways To Eliminate Click Fraud appeared first on Done For You.

Every 39 seconds, there is a hacker attack on the web, which affects one in three Americans. According to the report presented by IBM’s Chairman, “cyber crime, by definition, is the greatest threat to every profession, every industry, every company in the world.”

What’s shocking in this statistic is the fact that 43% of cyber attacks impact small businesses.

Today, there’s something big happening in the world of data security. It is called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The deadline for GDPR compliance is May 25th, 2018.

What is General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)?

GDPR is a new EU regulation that makes it imperative for businesses to keep personal data secure and make sure that privacy of citizens within the EU member states remains intact.

Non-compliance with the regulations can be a red flag for a business in the eyes of the authorities.

Everything you need to know about GDPR

To make sure that your small business stays safe from the impact of GDPR, we are here with everything you need to know about the new regulation.

GDPR explained in 3 minutes

The compliance factor

When a data breach occurs in a business, the biggest loss happens to not just the organization itself but the people whose data has been stolen. More often than not, this occurs because the businesses don’t take data security seriously.

In order to ensure that this non-seriousness is eliminated, GDPR requires businesses to employ state-of-the-art measures to protect personal data. In order to comply with the guidelines, companies must do the following:

• Gather data legally, and under strict regulations
• Manage and protect it in the best possible manner
• Maintain respect for the data owner’s rights

If there is any negligence in any of the above-mentioned factors, the business must remain prepared for facing huge penalties.

Here’s an infographic that explains how you can collect and process data under GDPR.

Does it apply to every business?

There has been a huge uproar about the implications associated with the GDPR. The biggest question that has been looming in the market has been – does it apply to every business?

Well, the answer is no. it only applies to organizations that operate with the EU. This includes the organizations that offer goods and services to customers in the EU even though they based outside the EU.

As part of the regulation, there are two types of data handlers:

Controller – the person or agency that is directly involved (alone or in joint service with others) in determining the purpose of data processing.

Processor – the authority that is responsible for the processing of data supplemented by the controller.

What falls under personal data?

Another important piece of information that you need to know is what is classified as personal data.

Everything that is personal to an individual falls under the personal data protection laws. This includes information like:

• Name
• Address
• Photos
• IP address
• Genetic data
• Biometric data

In short, any kind of information that a hacker can use to identify an individual is personal data.

How will GDPR impact your business?

Companies are expected to benefit from GDPR. Compared to having many regulatory bodies to take care of data-compliance for businesses, having a single body is going to make things simpler and easier for businesses.

In fact, instead of having 28 laws for 28 EU member states, the new single regulation is going to help save a total of €2.3 billion per year across Europe. This is big!

At the same time, it will also guarantee online data protection, which has been a major concern over the last few years.

Businesses that fail to comply with the guidelines can expect to face hefty fines that may go up to €20 million.

How will GDPR impact consumers?

We discussed the impact GDPR is going to have on businesses – now, let us have a look at how GDPR is going to affect consumers.

GDPR can prove to be a highly beneficial regulation for consumers, as they will no longer have to worry about cyber criminals lurking around websites that hold their personal data.

Most important of all, the new regulation will allow consumers to ask organizations about their data security policy and processes, and how they handle an incident of data breach.

In other words, GDPR will make it easier for consumers to access their data and get to know how it is being stored and processed. Therefore, GDPR comes as a blessing for consumers.

Report within 72-hours of the breach

One of the strongest points of the regulation that has come forward is the way a data breach should be reported. Specifically, in such an incident, companies need to report to the Information Commissioner’s Office for UK organizations within 72-hours – unless the personal data breach is unlikely to result in a risk to individuals.

Businesses must also notify the consumers about the data breach within the same time frame.

This makes it more transparent for the individuals to know whether there has been an invasion of their privacy, ultimately making sure that businesses don’t forget the phrase – The customer is King.

Conclusion

Looking at the growing concern about the safety of customer data, GDPR seems to be a huge step in the right direction.

Not only does it pull the strings for businesses to upgrade their security policies, but it also makes the data safety more transparent, since GDPR allows consumers to know how businesses handle their personal data.

As of now, the deadline for GDPR compliance is May 25th, 2018.

So, any business that fails to comply with the guidelines can expect to face serious consequences.

As far as the success or failure of this endeavor is concerned, we all will have to wait and see what happens. Let’s hope it all turns out to be good; after all, this change is made for the benefit of the consumer.

The post General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Requirements, Deadlines And Facts appeared first on Done For You.

This single figure is more than sufficient to explain that businesses are not shy toward spending on paid advertising.

When it comes to paid advertising, there is a lot that you need to consider. This is exactly what we are going to discuss in this post here. We are going to talk about some of the key metrics that you as a business owner ought to measure while promoting and advertising your business.

So, without beating too much around the bush, let us get straight away to the point and take a look at those metrics that we are talking about.

Reach and Impression

These are the two lifelines of any ad campaign. If you are not versed with the terms, “reach” is basically the number of unique users who saw the advertisement and “impressions” is the number of times your ad was shown on any network.

Based on which network you are targeting, you probably need to analyze these two factors. This can prove to be the best way to get an idea of the success of your campaign.

The higher the reach, the better it is for your business. So, if you think that you are not able to get the expected reach from one creative or ad-content you can easily switch and try something else.

Number of Clicks

Once the viewer has seen your creative, you want him or her to take action. This action is always in the form of a click based on what you are showing them.

Whether it is taking them to your website or any resource (more often than not it is the website) the number of clicks on the advertisement can be a great judge of whether you are able to achieve the desired results or not.

Therefore, the second important factor to trace when running an advertising campaign has to be the number of clicks you receive on the ad.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

This is the measure of the total number of clicks on the ad divided by the total number of impressions.

In simpler words, this paints a clear picture of the total number of people who actually took action after watching the ad.

This can be the direct measure of success of your ad campaign, as you can easily get to know whether you were able to get the users to perform the desired action or not.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

This metric is important, as it helps you figure out if you are overspending on marketing and advertising.

To get an estimated CPC, you can use a simple formula – the total cost of all the advertising efforts that you are putting in divided by the number of clicks over a certain fixed time period.

Based on what you get at the end of this calculation will give you a clear idea on how much you are spending, and the results that you are getting out of the spent money. This can be crucial in setting up the budget and taking care of the financial aspect of your business.

Don’t ignore this metric, since costs can easily get out of hand.

Lead Conversion Rate (LCR)

There are two types of visitors that will come to your website after clicking an advertisement.

The first would be just to browse through the offer. The second would be the ones who are actually interested in buying something and are actively looking for it.

In short, you cannot expect every click to convert into a lead.

This is where tracking the LCR becomes quite important. By knowing how many people have actually been converted into leads from your advertising, you can eventually determine the efficiency of your campaign.

Cost Per Lead (CPL)

While CPC gives you a good idea about the success of your ad campaign, CPL is the one factor that helps you determine the actual return on investment (ROI).

Plus, it can be the best way to determine the effectiveness of different ad platforms. For instance, CPL for different platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter etc., will be different.

You can compare them to determine which is bringing the best ROI and hence make the decision about where to increase specific efforts to get the best results.

Lead to Close Ratio (LCR)

It all boils to this single factor in the end. You might be getting hundreds of leads from your advertising campaign, but until they are getting converted into paying customers it is of no use.

This is the reason LCR becomes the most vital metric to measure when you advertise your business.

Lead to Close Ratio gives you a clear indication on whether the campaign is performing the way you intended it to perform or not.

After all, the ultimate goal for every business is to make more money by investing some of the money they’ve already made. That is why this metric is so important to pay attention to.

Conclusion

This last point sums up our long list of metrics that you need to keep a close eye on when determining the success of marketing and advertising campaigns.

Remember, you can run the most innovative and creative advertising campaign ever… But so long as you don’t have the numbers to judge the performance of that campaign it is of no use for your business. If you don’t know why you are failing, it will be far more difficult to succeed.

After all, there is no point in putting efforts into something without a plan, and without knowing the direction in which those efforts are headed.

So if you are planning to run an advertising campaign, the best thing to do is make sure you keep a close eye on these metrics and keep evolving your campaign based on what you see in these numbers.

Success will come once you utilize the data determined using these metrics and optimize your ad campaigns accordingly.

The post Crucial Metrics To Measure When You Advertise In 2018 appeared first on Done For You.

Google Tag Manager vs. Google Analytics

While a lot of people still think of Google Tag Manager as something similar to Google Analytics (GA), the reality is that there is a world of difference between the two. And, in this post, we are going to shed some light on how Google Tag Manager is different than Google Analytics.

So, let us dive into the differences one by one:

GTM is the middle-man

Put simply, GTM serves the purpose of a middleman of any website’s GA implementation. You can simply use GTM to ad GA tracking codes to your websites without making any changes to the code.

In other words, you can deploy the changes faster and in a more efficient manner using GTM. Rather than playing around with the website code, you can simply use GTM and let it do the work for you.

GTM gives you ultimate control

While GA helps you make changes to the website directly, you need to take help of developers to hard code those changes. And, in case you need constant changes you will have to be entirely dependent on the coder to implement these changes.

With GTM it’s not the same. You could edit, add or remove the GA tracking codes all by yourself. What this means is that things are under your ultimate control. You don’t have to run after the coder to do the job for you. And, that’s the beauty of GTM – it brings everything under your ultimate control.

GTM events work as triggers

One of the most interesting things about GTM is events. These events could be used as triggers to define when a tag must be fired. Simply, you can use GTM to fire a GA tag corresponding to a certain action.

For instance, if GTM event ‘form submission’ is used as a trigger, it could fire the tag ‘form submission’ in GA. Got the point?

Google Tag Manager vs. Google Analytics: The two are independent of each other

The one thing that will clear a lot of doubts in your mind regarding the difference between these two terms is the fact that they both can exist independently. GTM does not replace GA or vice versa.

As a matter of fact, GTM serves the purpose to implement GA changes easily and quickly. For instance, you can deploy GA event code snippets and define rules, when each tag must fire and do a lot more with the help of GTM.

GTM does not make GA obsolete

A lot of people have this doubt in mind whether the rise of GTM means that we are going to see an end of GA or is GA going to become obsolete in the future?

Well, the simple answer to this question is a BIG NO.

Both GA and GTM are independent. GA is one of the many tags that you can insert through GTM. GA is still going to be your pit stop to track website traffic and user behavior, and gather all your important metrics. GTM has the sole purpose of making it easy for you to send more custom data to your GA account.

It’s as simple as this!

By making it easier for you to implement changes in the code of your website without playing around too much, GTM eventually serves the purpose to manage and track GA data lot easier than it used to be.

So it won’t be wrong to say that it supplements the need to speed up the analysis process using GA.

You cannot pull reports out of GTM

Your reports will be in GA. But you can make the process of report creation faster and easier! That’s the beauty of GTM.

It allows you to implement a custom data layer to your website code enabling you to collect information you would like to pass to the GTM. It could be anything – user status to page category to blog tags and blog author name.

GA is efficient but GTM saves you all the hassle

GA is a great tool to gather and analyze website data. And, it will continue to be. However, GTM is something that adds to the value of GA by making it easy to implement the changes on the website with ease.

GTM brings a touch of dynamism to GA data, allowing you to leverage the minimum IT sources to get the maximum out of GA.

Not only do you get custom data in a faster and more efficient manner, but you also get to save quite a lot of time as well.

The interplay between the two can help you make the most of your efforts

To sum it up, when you think of Google Tag Manager vs. Google Analytics, all we have to say is that by using both tools you can eventually end up getting the best out of your web marketing endeavors.

With an orchestrated interplay of GA and GTM you can reach your tracking and reporting goals, collect and analyze the desired data and end up creating strategies based on the data you manage to collect.

Saying that GTM makes GA obsolete or vice versa is simply not true! It is just that these two tools make the life easier for marketers by allowing them to take charge of their websites, rather than marketers relying on the developers for getting the changes implemented.

If you’re looking for an advanced but simple to use analytics tool, you need to try Statly. You can install Statly using a script or a WordPress plugin, and start tracking web traffic and visitor behavior instantly. Why use Statly? Statly will help you know what drives sales.

No need to be in the dark anymore. Your business needs you to make informed decisions. Now, you can see what’s important, and focus on campaigns and sales funnels that are more profitable. Click here to learn how Statly can transform pointless numbers into meaningful data that you can use to take action.

The post Google Tag Manager Vs. Google Analytics: What’s The Difference? appeared first on Done For You.

Also, the best idea is to come up only with some little changes. You don’t want those changes to be way too significant. So, things like adjusting the sending time, modifying the content a little bit or choosing the subject line can be extremely important and valuable for the A/B test.

Why do you need email A/B testing?

The reason is simple; you just can’t know how your audience will react to your campaign.

Sure, you can conduct a few studies beforehand, but the idea is still the same, results can vary. The only way to get amazing results is to opt for A/B testing.

As you can imagine, no two A/B tests are equal. Some of them are more comprehensive; others tend to be lengthy and so on. There’s no need to create multiple A/B tests that are identical to one another.

The idea is to come up with various types of tests that will make it clear how customers react and what they expect from you.

Identify the campaign goal.

Each campaign type will come with some unique requirements and benefits. Some of these campaigns are focused specifically on driving traffic to your site, in which case you have to focus on clicks. With some campaigns we want to accomplish a higher open rate, while with others we want to focus on generating direct sales.

The waiting time can differ based on each one of the winning metrics you want to focus on. According to MailChimp, the best waiting time for around 80% accuracy in the case of clicks is around 1 hour. For opens is 2 hours and for revenue focused emails is 12 hours.

But that doesn’t mean it will be the ultimate waiting time. Each business has a variety of clients. They pertain to various industries, work at different times and don’t care about being online all the time. In this case, you have to figure out what campaign goal works for you and how you need to adapt it based on the company specifics.

Also, some CEOs who focus on revenue and don’t care about testing will just use software to define this. And while A/B Testing software is pretty good, it can’t bring you the desired results. That’s why you need to put your knowledge and attention to work. Fulfilling this will be quite a challenge for a lot of people, but then again it will also be worth it.

Is a higher waiting time the best option?

It comes down to what metric you are focused on. But yes, if you wait a bit more, you may be able to get information that is a bit more comprehensive. A lot more people will open up the email, which means you have more accuracy and data to go through.

On the other hand, you don’t want the A/B Testing to last for a very long time. This is a test, not a full-fledged campaign. So, the focus has to be on identifying metrics as quickly as possible. Then, you will adjust the campaign and see which one works for you.

Criteria you have to focus on for A/B testing.

First, you need to take into account the size of that sample and the representativeness of it. Then you have the test period and the devices that you are testing. You also need to consider things like the statistical confidence level of that sample too.

The confidence level shows how certain readers are when they act on your desired system. The sample size is all about seeing how much the conversion rate will be affected based on the sample size, baseline conversion rate, and the detectable effects.

Business representativeness includes things like traffic sources and business cycles too, among others. The devices used for that test and timing can also be an important factor that you need to take into consideration. Again, patience is key, so you have to consider that.

Understanding the A/B test hypotheses.

You have two components here, the null hypothesis and the alternate hypothesis. The null one states the status quo so that you will get a null result. The alternate one is designed to challenge the null hypothesis, and it will show if there are variations and if those particular variations will bring in a much better conversion rate when compared to the original.

Here you have to take into account things like the P-Value, which is a statistical measure designed to figure out if the null hypothesis is correct or not. In case this P-Value is less than .05 or equal to that shows that the results shouldn’t be dismissed due to sampling error.

So, how much time should you wait?

That’s up to the type of metric you follow. Ideally, you should wait at least two hours if you want to find the right campaign for opens, one hour for finding out the winning idea when it comes to targeting clicks and twelve hours if you want to see which one delivers the utmost revenue.

The idea here is to be fair and to bring in front a great, professional approach. Who knows, maybe the A/B test that you don’t trust will end up being the winner. That’s why A/B test exists, to show you facts and to bring you a great insight into the reality of your customer’s needs and choices.

Set up your A/B test and then try to experiment as much as possible.

Trying out various ideas and approaches will work well here. Don’t rush, instead take your time and you will be quite impressed with the unique range of benefits that would be delivered. Once you have all the metrics in place, identify which ones work best for you.

Of course, you can try to pick two of the best tests and then run them again. You should always try to opt for A/B testing, as it’s quite helpful for your business and it does offer a lot of important information for your business!

The post How Long Should You Run Email A/B Tests? appeared first on Done For You.

A brand is defined by the customer experience.

In today’s competitive economy, customer experience has emerged as the one factor that contributes the most to the success of a business. Don’t believe it? Well, here are some numbers that will help you understand it better.

According to a Walker Study, customer experience will be the key brand differentiator by 2020, leaving pricing and product behind.

The same study quotes that buyers will be ready to pay more for a better customer experience.

So, it is quite evident that outstanding customer experience is going to be the next battlefield for businesses, as quoted by many industry experts.

Now, the question that arises is how a business can make the most of this opportunity? If you are also thinking in the same light, like countless other marketers out there then we have got the best advice for you.

Here is a step-by-step guide to help you adopt that piece of advice with regards to creating an amazing customer experience:

Step #1: It all begins with easy website navigation

The first place to begin with customer experience optimization is your website. Take a look at your top menu.

Is the navigation simple? Even if it is, could you think of a way to make it more intuitive? The point is to make sure that the customer does not feel lost while browsing your website.

So, take a closer look at the structure of the website and sit with the designer to see what can be done to make the navigation simpler than what it is right now.

Step #2: Multiple support options

The second important factor that plays role in optimizing customer experience is your customer support.

Your customer support can be the key differentiator between success and failure. But, it’s not just about having a support team.

You must offer the customer multiple support options.

For instance, instant chat, twitter support, email support and availability over the phone. These are some of the most common options you ought to give the customer.

Step #3: Your customer support team

Is your customer support team motivated enough to offer the customers a great service experience?

This is literally a million dollar question.

Remember, when it comes to customer service people prefer having an interaction with a real person rather than those automated IVRs.

On the other hand, a customer support team member who is not motivated enough is not going to sound much different than that IVR machine.

So before looking for external factors and streamlining them to build better customer experience, make it a point to motivate your employees to deal with customers as real humans. You will get to see an instant impact on customer feedback.

Step #4: A lightning-quick website

Your website’s page loading time is directly proportional to the experience the customer is going to have with your business.

Make it a point to bring down the loading time to the lowest.

Get to know about the elements that are making the website take long to load.

Figure out the challenges, and then come up with a solution to make it quick like breeze.

People are too impatient to wait for the website to load, and hence leave it in a matter of seconds.

In order to ensure that every single visitor that reaches the website gets a great experience, focus on bringing the loading time down.

And, it’s not just the home page that we are talking about. This rule applies to all the pages on your website.

Step #5: Build better user experience across all channels

Is your website mobile friendly? Do you have a mobile app? When was the last time you actually interacted with your customers on social media?

These are some of the common factors that differentiate a smart business in today’s time from a regular; not so smart one.

You need to find out ways to help and be available wherever the customer is. This is what the true meaning of customer service experience is.

Invest in efforts that can ensure the customer always gets to hear from you, no matter where he or she is, especially when they are facing any problem.

This single trick could make a world of difference.

Step #6: Offer something of value, apart from product/service

Another major trick that always works when we talk about optimizing customer service experience is offering the customer some rewards.

It is a fact that the term discount is always able to lure the customer towards a brand. But, this discount does not mean you have the leverage to compromise on quality.

It is these small factors that play a massive role in building a great business, which offers its customer true value.

Rather than giving something just for the sake of it, try to find out a smart offering that can entice the customers towards your brand, and then build a great customer experience from there!

The missing ingredient: It’s all about connecting with the customer

On a concluding note, all we have to say is that – the journey towards a great customer experience begins with the first step of understanding the customer needs. This lays down the foundation of what you have to deliver.

After all, you are in the business industry to offer customers something and sell.

And, you cannot expect to achieve this unless you are able to connect with the customer. This is where customer support comes into the picture.

The harsh truth is that the majority of businesses don’t pay attention to building a powerful support team. All they believe in is sales.

However, with the current economy, this philosophy will always fail. You need to have an adept sales team and an equally adept customer support team if you want your business to thrive.

Businesses that have accepted this fact have been able to make a great impact, and reap great rewards out of it!

On the flip side, those who fail to understand this are still struggling to find their feet.

Now that you know about the factors that contribute towards building a great customer experience, you can simply go ahead and begin implementing them in your business.

If you found this article helpful, please feel free to share it with a friend who might be interested in the topic of optimizing their customer service experience.

The post The Step-by-step Guide To Optimizing Your Customer Service Experience appeared first on Done For You.

Narrow focus of any sort, on any set of metrics, is a bad idea.

Whether you use Facebook ads or Google Adwords or other paid advertising methods (such as banner ads on Google Display Network, retargeting on GDN, or mobile advertising), there are only a few numbers that matter.

The metrics you pay attention to will force you make certain decisions which will inturn affect your campaigns.

What kind of paid advertising metrics that you track to will also depend on objectives. As Caroline of Retargeter writes, when your objective is purely branding and reach, any number of clicks on a regular display ad (or lack of clicks) won’t matter.

Pay attention to the wrong numbers and you’d be wasting time or there’s an opportunity cost for that.

In paid advertising, you have support metrics and you have “conversion-centric” metrics. Support metrics give you a wealth of information about a wide variety of things but they are all like signposts trying to guide you towards even more relevant conversion metrics – the final set of numbers that show you actual results.

Most businesses end up looking at all kinds of “support” metrics leaving conversion metrics aside. Or they end up watching only the numbers that matter and not pay attention to support metrics which help you make better decisions overall.

Here are some important metrics that you should be looking at then make the right decisions:

Traffic-focused Metrics

Platforms like Google Adwords are especially terrific since they have all the data on traffic-focused metrics when you run your ad campaigns. Such metrics are…

• Impressions,
• Clicks,
• CTR (Click through rate),
• Average CTR (Average Click through rate),
• …and others.

These metrics give you a holistic view of how your campaigns are performing, how attractive and relevant your ads are, how many clicks your ads get, what’s the ratio of how many times your ad appears on search versus how many people click, and more.

Some businesses are ultra-focused on traffic metrics to the point that all that they care about is about visitors.

Traffic has no relevance to your campaigns if it’s not targeted traffic (thankfully, if you target your ads well enough, Google AdWords does a fairly good job of showing ads only to those who are potentially interested in your products or service).

To bridge the gap between complex tools and your need to know what your marketing data really means we created Statly. Statly is an easy-to-install tool that will track important traffic data and produce reports with strategic insight. What’s more, Statly, which is free to try, gives you the ability to visualize complete sales funnels, so you you know which campaigns convert better, i.e. bring in sales.

Beyond getting people to arrive on your landing page, these metrics don’t completely help. Once your ads are clicked on, other sets of metrics take over.

Cost-based metrics

Since a startling 98% of all ad spend is a colossal waste of money, it only makes sense to watch out for your campaign costs.

Rising campaign costs are not always a result of bad paid ads management – you can also expect certain external factors (which you have no control over) such as increasing competition, higher cost per click for given keywords in certain markets, whether or not your products are seasonal, etc.

Cost-based metrics in AdWords are usually…

• CPC (Cost per click),
• CPM (cost per thousand impressions),
• Average Cost Per Click,
• Cost per conversions,
• Average Cost per Conversion,
• Target cost per acquisition,
• …and others.

Looking at cost trends over time helps you get a better idea of how your money is being spent. It also gives you a more realistic base to calculate your ROI too.

With Google Adwords, however, cost isn’t the only thing you’d worry about. Just focusing on “how much you spend” is only half the story.

Performance metrics

Are you making money off your campaigns or not? The answers to this question depend on your performance metrics.

Starting with platform-specific metrics (such as Quality Score for Adwords), performance metrics are usually…

• Conversions,
• Sales,
• CPA (Cost per acquisition or sale),
• Marketing ROI, and
• Revenue.

Your conversion “count” marks the number of leads you get off your campaigns, for instance. If you mark only “sales‘ as conversions and not leads, then conversions can also carry the average sale amount showing you accurate numbers on sales and more.

Conversion-focused metrics are right up there in the hierarchy of importance while traffic-focused metrics and cost-focused metrics are the “supporting” metrics.

But performance doesn’t just end with the conversion numbers coming in, as Jacob Baadsgaard writes.

Keeping an eye on these paid advertising metrics let you know how relevant, attractive, attention-grabbing, and profit-pulling your ads are.

When you are working with metrics for your paid advertising, don’t focus completely on one set of metrics only to ignore the others. You’d need to focus on all the metrics to make sure your paid campaigns deliver.

What are you paying attention to when you run your paid campaigns?

Join us for a free online workshop, where we discuss:

• How to use website data to make the right decisions.
• How you can find everything your customer is doing on your website.
• The right way to optimize your funnel without wasting resources.
• How to make the most out of your current traffic, without increasing paid advertising.
• How to find and focus on the content that is influencing conversions.
• …and so much more!

Click here to register for the upcoming workshop! It’s online, packed with value, and it’s free!

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