Google Analytics

Google analytics is a tool which can be used to measure traffic and activity on your website. I use it regularly for work and since starting this course have decided on some particular information to pull from to measure performance on our site.  You can also use it for campaign planning (any particular months see a jump in traffic) and keyword research (how are people finding your site now).

There is a lot of information available in the analytics but what I am going to focus on is:

– Visits to the site: measured month by month

– Location of visitors: are we reaching the target markets?

– Traffic Sources: Organic vs our Paid advertising, Social traffic and referral sources (other sites who’ve add a link to us, e.g. clothing bloggers), Direct traffic (brand awareness)

– Keywords: how are people currently finding the site, measure brand awareness

The Google analytics social section in traffic sources mean it’s now much easier for me to access figures on how my activities on social media sites are affecting traffic to the site- which will help me prove to my boss why it is worth continuing to put effort into them.

Some of these analytics I will track month by month, but others will be tracked quarterly.  For 2012 I intend to gather the quarter by quarter information and set goals to reach for 2013 based on this information. As one of our brand is relatively new I will expect to see growth in all the statistics next year.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is a very important part of any digital strategy. You have to know what you customers will be searching for when they are looking online for a product or service. The terms people will use to search are based on what they need and not necessarily what you would call the product.

This week in work I was working on a blog post for suggested Christmas gifts for men, as I began to fill in the keywords associated with post I realised that people searching in Ireland might also look for ‘xmas presents’  as well as ‘christmas gifts’.

The Google Keyword tool will help you with this research. You can select to research in a certain location and the tool will give you global and local monthly searches for the keyword. This is very helpful in my case where I want to specifically target Ireland as a market but also know I have customers in international markets searching for our products.

You will need to know the terms people will be searching when looking for your products for your SEO, PPC, Blog Posts, Newsletter and Social media content.

Paid Media- P2- Alternatives

There are options for paid online media other than those I have mentioned in my earlier post on Online Advertising Formats. Which of these you decide you use for your digital strategy depends on where your customer are. For example Group Buying sites might not be useful for all types of brands.

Facebook

Facebook offers brands with a tool to advertise to specifically targeted potential customers based on the behaviour and interests of the customer.  Brands can create general advertisements or sponsored stories to reach customers.  The sponsored stories look more like recommendation from friends and therefore have a higher click through. The ads can be linked to the brands Facebook page or link through to a website; however the latter is more expensive. The ads can be paid for on a Impression or a Click Through rate and the ads can be set to run at the times to target customers more efficiently.

Twitter

Twitter, like Facebook, also offers brands a tool to reach customers based on the customers behaviour and in Twitters case based on what the customer is talking about. Twitter offers promoted Tweets, Trends and Accounts for brands to show up when a useris searching a relevant trending topic or hash-tag.

Advertorials

Advertorials are paid editorial coverage on a publisher site. Transparency is very important here- the customer needs to be aware that the editorial coverage has been paid for. Finding the right publisher for your brand is also very important to ensure you are reaching the correct audience.

Group Buying Website

Group buying sites such as Groupon and Living Social can be beneficial to brands offering a product or service. These sites can target customers in the geographically and based on their interests. e.g. groupon have offers for the Dublin area (good for example a Dublin hairdresser) but also Nationwide (a brand offering a product which can be delivered nationwide).

LinkedIn Ads 

LinkedIn is an excellent platform for those brands who’s focus in B2B. The ads can create further awareness of what your company offers by directing them to either the LinkedIn Business Page or directly to the company website. The LinkedIn business page can list the services provided by the company and all relevant contact information. The page usually connects to the current employees and new users to the page may already have a connection within the company.

Media Planning Tools

Also in week five we explored some helpful media planning tools media buyers and agencies might use.

Media Planning Spreadsheet

The media planning spreadsheet is essentially a list a media buyer will have to keep track of the various publishers and relevant information on each. This list could have different tabs to divide up publishers who would target different audiences- e.g. Sports Websites, News websites, e-commerce sites etc. The list would include Impressions per month, visitors per month, audience demographics and ad formats available.

Google Ad Planner is a very useful tool to use to compile this list. On it you can search a website and it gives you information on the traffic statistics, demographics, audience interests and the ad specifications.You can also create your media plan within the Ad Planner.

Measuring, Ad Server (Double Click)

An ad server can be used to create tracking codes or tags to track while the advertisement is online. Double Click is a very useful tool for this. Both the advertiser and the publisher must be using the system and Double Click will create the tags and will measure click through and impressions. Using this system means both the advertiser and the publisher can see all the measurement statistics from the running advertisement.

Double Click for Publishers (DFP) also gives the small publisher an easy to use ad management tool for their website. the publisher can manage all their various advertisements running on the website and plan dates and times to run each accordingly.

Insight into the world of a Digital Project Manager

We had a guest speaker – the Operations Director of a top Dublin agency. The lecture was on Project Managment in the digital sense and how she operates her project management within her company.

One of the main things which stood out for me in this lecture is the importance of proper lines of communication with all parties involved. I understand how difficult it is when working with many different agencies and trying to get everything timed for the project to stay on deadline. The guest speaker’s presentation on all the tools she uses, highlighted for me the amount of time spent managing the people working on a project and how to keep track of the changes each make.

Communication on what the client is expecting and what the agency will create needs to be clearly defined before all the work begins. Further discussion in class proved that interpretation of a client’s idea has to be worked through as some people may have different understanding of phrases or words. Examples are one of the best ways to get the client to illustrate what they are looking for, rather than only getting them to give a brief.

A second point I thought was very interesting was the amount of developer programmes our guest had taken upon herself to learn e.g Java, Photoshop. When dealing with so many different parties it’s important to understand what their jobs are (to an extent).  This way if a problem arises within the project you as the Project Manager can support the people who are working with you as you have better understanding of their work. I completely agree with this as any manager: project manager, digital manager or even store manager, should understand the tasks their employees are working to complete. I believe this will also help planning times and deadlines more appropriately.

And finally I realised the importance of planning. We talked through the early stages of setting up a website and wire framing. Looking back on a project I worked on, I see we were in the right direction with the initial wire frame however our planning ended there  and the process of working through the user map wasn’t planned correctly.

Overall I found the lecture very interesting and insightful.

Best Advice: Get everything signed off by the client so they know what to expect and you know what to deliver.