small business marketing online – Page 8

October 17, 2011

Do You Know Where Your Web Traffic is Coming From?

I recently added Google Analytics to my small business blog and now I have a much better idea of where my web traffic is coming from and what is influencing this traffic.

You can access Google Analytics if you have a Google account (e.g. Gmail). All you do is identify the site that you want Google to monitor and then add some code provided by Google to the coding of your site.

The “Traffic Sources Overview” above for one month of web traffic to my HR Consultancy business site shows that 63% of web traffic is coming from organic search engine results, 21% from sites that have a URL link to my small business site (backlinks) and 16% from people who access my site directly by using the business web address.

Google Analytics provides considerably finer detail on visitor sources and visitor behaviour. The following screen image shows a breakdown of primary traffic sources:

This more detailed report gives you a clearer indication of the search engine traffic sources and identifies the primary sources of referral traffic (people visiting via links on other sites).

In relation to visitor behaviour, Google Analytics tells you how many pages visitors access per visit and how long they spend on your small business site. The more fine-grained information provides this visitor behaviour analysis in relation to each primary traffic source – so you can see what traffic sources provide the more “sticky” traffic and which sources result in the largest “bounce rate”:

So in the above analysis for visitors to my human resource consultancy site, you can see that the different traffic sources (shown in the previous image) vary across a range of variables:

how many pages are viewed per visit
how long a visitor spends on the site
the percentage of visitors that are new (“unique” visitors)
the bounce rate (the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the landing page – in other words, viewed only the page they landed on).

From the above information, I have developed a chart to compare four sources of traffic and the behaviour of the traffic from the different sources:

From this analysis, you can see that traffic from Yahoo spends an average of 33 seconds on my site, views 1.44 pages and has a bounce rate of 77.78%; in contrast traffic from Google search results spend 3.07 minutes on the site, view 3.71 pages and has a bounce rate of 53% – overall much better quality of traffic from Google than from Yahoo.

Critical information in relation to traffic behavior is the high quality of LinkedIn traffic – which is to be expected given that our business is in a professional arena – provision of human resource services. The LinkedIn traffic spends 11.52 minutes on our site, visits 10.58 pages and has a bounce rate of 25%. LinkedIn is clearly a valuable source of traffic for our business and we need to put more energy into developing this traffic source.

A number of key points come out of this basic analysis:

not all traffic is the same in quality
the number of visitors is not the primary measure to be considered for small business marketing
small businesses need to focus on the primary sources of quality traffic to their website/blog
social media can provide an increasing percentage of traffic if cultivated.

The “numbers game” will vary in significance according to the nature of your small business. For example, for our human resource consultancy business the value of one sale can vary from $50 to $10,000+ – varying from a single registration for a one hour training workshop to a public sector client commissioning a series of tailored, in-house training sessions or a number of recruitment exercises.

So core considerations in relation to web traffic analysis are the nature of your business, the type of customers you want to attract and the purchase behavior of your ideal customers. Gross traffic numbers is a very poor indicator for planning your small business marketing and this is why Google Analytics is an essential tool for small businesses.

Google Analytics also gives you information about the primary keywords that people are using in searches that result in access to your site. Other useful information includes what pages visitors are landing on, together with an analysis of traffic behavior for each page accessed – time on page, % unique traffic and bounce rate. There is also a map showing visually the countries that are the major sources of your traffic.

Google Analytics is a key tool for small business marketing – it tells you where your traffic is coming from, provides information about the quality of the traffic and gives you the basis for informed marketing decisions.

October 15, 2011October 15, 2011

Backlinks: To Buy or Not to Buy, That is the Question!

Backlinks are one of the core measures that Google uses to evaluate a small business website/blog and determine where the site will appear in search engine results.

Unfortunately, many small business owners have been convinced by some Internet marketers to buy links to build up the ranking of their websites.

Matt Cutts, speaking on behalf of Google in the video above, makes the point that buying backlinks is contrary to Google’s quality guidelines and will not add value to a website in the final analysis. Elsewhere, Matt Cutts has stated that Google is improving its capacity to determine whether or not backlinks are artificially generated. While you may experience a temporary surge in rankings on Google by buying backlinks, you will suffer in the long run.

Recent history shows that Google eventually enforces its quality guidelines. For example, for a long time Google had been warning about duplicate content (information on websites copied from elsewhere) and many sites enjoyed a temporary benefit from using this approach. However, early in 2011, Google punished the sites that had ignored their duplicate content guidelines:

Google’s response to Poor Quality Sites

I predict the same will happen to websites that have created backlinks artificially by buying large numbers from suppliers who have little concern for the quality of the small business website being promoted or for the relevance of the backlinks being offered at a price.

What Google really values, as Matt Cutts explains, is organic backlinks – backlinks that occur naturally because of the quality of the content on a website. Matt argues that if you create great content then people will not only visit your site more often but also create backlinks to your articles/blog posts by mentioning them on social media sites and their own blogs or websites.

Here is a perfect illustration of this principle of organic backlinks which occurred in the last week. A French Chef, Alain Braux, created a blog post about his Raspberry Souffle which was picked up by a website with a high page rank and this created a quality, organic backlink for his Healthy Chef Recipes blog site:

http://www.celebrations.com/blog/?p=4969

Alain Braux’s site, which draws on his cooking and nutritionist background, offers French recipes that are easy to make and healthy to eat. His attractive and informative site was designed by my friend and business partner, Anne Corcino, of SEO Praxis.com. Alain offers many recipes on the site as well as his healthy French recipe books.

As Matt Cutts argues, in the final analysis what is important for a small business blog/website is to offer quality, relevant content that will generate organic backlinks from people who value what they read.

October 15, 2011October 15, 2011

What is Your Marketing Style?

Are you aware of the marketing style that you use in promoting your small business? Developing a consistent and congruent marketing style is one aspect of effective business branding.

This point was brought home to me by Nancy Marmolejo, a visibility expert, who teaches small business owners to “step into the spotlignht” by understanding and developing their preferred marketing style. She suggests that if you use trial and error to develop your style it will cost you time, money and effectiveness. Your marketing style is what you use to persuade people to take action (basically, your influencing style)

In a recent webinar, Nancy identified three basic marketing styles:

1. Practical Engineer

The core theme of this style is “follow my instructions”. The Practical Engineer is methodical and uses facts, figures and logic to influence people to buy their products and services. They are the ones who will give you the “numbers” as proof, focus on the outcomes and spell out the steps to get there. In a managerial context, these people are described as the “assertive persuaders”. Nancy highlighted Tanya Smith as a person who was able to dramatically grow her busines by getting in touch with her own preferred influencing style, the Practical Engineer:

http://www.spicyhatsystems.com

2. Trusted Advisor

People who use the “Trusted Advisor” marketing style typically do not like to sell – their focus is on being connected, developing relationships and demonstrating authenticity. They are able to persuade through their reputation, knowledge, credibility and the relationships they develop. The trusted advisor will be the person who is non-competitive and who gives endless free information. They build trust easily and are typically warm-hearted and nurturing in their approach. However, the downside in terms of developing their small business is that they find it hard to ask for the sale and are very indirect in their approach to marketing. The danger for the trusted advisor is that they can be generous “to a fault”. In a managerial context, they are equated to people who use the “participation and trust” style of influencing. Nancy identied Cathy Jennings as an exemplar of the Trusted Advisor marketing style:

http://www.nopressurenetworking.com

3. Brand Evangelist

The message of the “Brand Evangelist” marketing style is “follow me”. They are the visionaries who help people see the future, to envisage possibilities. They tend to be charismatic and propose that their way will work for everybody. The downside is that other people may be wired very differently – we are not all the same. For example, there are many different learning styles and people differ in relation to these learning styles. In a mangerial context, the Brand Evangelist is described as a person who uses the “Common Vision” approach. Nancy identified Allison Rapp as an exemplar of the Brand Evangelist marketing style:

http://www.getthepracticeyouwant.com

While Nancy Marmolejo’s “Spotlight U” approach is particularly useful for those who own consulting or coaching businesses, it has relevance across the whole spectrum of small business. In her own coaching, she helps small business owners to get in touch with their preferred marketing style, to understand the “shadow” or inherent weaknesses of their style and to develop marketing activities consistent with their preferred style.

Nancy has many testimonials where people report that her coaching program enabled them to really get in touch with who they are and how they like to operate. Participants felt relieved that they did not have to be “everything to everybody” – they could really be themselves, play to their strengths and attract the kind of people they want to work with. Where your marketing style lines up with who you are, everything becomes a lot easier – you are not pushing against natural forces.

Having heard the testimonials and seen Nancy’s passion for what she does (in her typical Brand Evangelist style), I feel comfortable in recommending her coaching program.

Postscript:

I’ve found that I have used different marketing styles in different arenas. Typically, I have only drawn on two marketing styles – Trusted Advisor and Brand Evangelist. These two styles are related and are quite different in orientation to the Practical Engineer style.

When I was President of ALARA (Action Learning and Action Research Association), my goal was to develop a global, not-for-profit organisation that would establish a strategic network of people who shared a common vision about improving equity and justice in the world. So I adopted a “Brand Evangelist” approach and spent a lot of time influencing people to use these intervention modalities to improve their local situation (whether in schools, organisations or communities).

When I started to focus on building expertise in social media and small business marketing, I adopted very much the Trusted Advisor marketing style. I built up my reputation and credibility online by developing and sharing expertise and building lots of relationships. This approach was reflected this year in the joint development, with friends in the US and Germany, of a social network for online writers, Wizzley.com.

In marketing my own Human Resource Consultancy business, I have adopted a Trusted Advisor marketing style.

October 10, 2011

Are Your Listings in Local Business Directories Accurate?

I was checking the search results for my business name, Merit Solutions Australia, in Google and was surprised with the results from local business directories.

A lot of the entries in the first two pages of Google results were listings from local business directories.

These directories create business listings (much like Google and Facebook have done recently) by scraping content from the Internet. The only problem with the local business directories, as I found, is that a lot of the information is incorrect (because it is out of date).

So I noticed that while local business directories had eight (8) of the listings in the first two pages of Google results, most of them had inaccurate information – wrong address, phone numbers or business categories.

So I set about correcting these entries. Most of the listings are free, so all you need to do is go to the site and claim your listing and update it. Some allow you to add your logo and images, so it is well worth the effort to get accurate and comprehensive information about your business on the first two pages of Google results for searches on your business name.

Some of the local business directories also offer “premium” or paid listings – but you need to evaluate these offers in the light of the ranking of the site, the potential additional traffic and the added value in terms of potential increased sales.

An added benefit of listings in local business directories is that these sites often have high page rank – in other words, Google values their content and gives them high ranking in search results. This means that your listings create quality backlinks to your site and thus add value to your own website/blog. One of the key local directories is hotfrog.com which has a Page Rank of 6 and is ranked (in terms of traffic) in the top 6,000 sites in the world.

So whatever you do, make sure your listings in local business directories are accurate.

October 9, 2011October 10, 2011

Small Business Marketing: A Personal Odyssey

Merit Solutions Australia — Human Resource Consultancy

Our small business was created in 1996 and following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008, we found that we had to become actively engaged in online small business marketing.

Up until the GFC, our gross income had been growing at around 20% per year and we did not have to actively market our small business. Most business arrived by word of mouth through the professional services provided by our HR consultants.

However, with the GFC, our business income dropped by 50% in six months. So we had to look at ways to improve the income from our small business.

We decided to do three core things:

expand our service offerings (e.g. include training)
broaden our client base
actively engage in online marketing for our small business

In 2010, we engaged Anne Corcino to redesign our static website into a dynamic WordPress website. Anne’s website services are offered through her small business, SEO Praxis.

The new website design became a real platform for our online small business marketing. Our HR consultants were proud of our site and our clients were suitably impressed. Because the site was built on a WordPress platform, it has SEO embedded and is easy to update and add value. Our RSS feed from the blog is an important aspect of our marketing.

What I will report here is my own experiences and ideas in marketing our small business. So this blog is very much my small business odyssey – my journey into the challenges of small business marketing.