Let’s say you own a business or lead its marketing campaign. You have spent time and energy researching the best tools for search engine marketing, social marketing, and digital automation, and your company has invested precious money in maintaining these marketing services to promote your business. Well, is it worth the effort? And how can you tell? Getting feedback on the efficacy of your digital marketing is crucial to the success of your business. Positive feedback – yay, it’s working! – encourages your business to keep funding its marketing campaign, whereas negative feedback – well, not so much! – informs you on what to cut, what to adjust, and what to shift your focus on. Without assessing the success of your marketing efforts, you could be wasting money and losing business. At MyCity Social, a Tampa digital marketing agency, we can help you identify weak spots in your marketing campaign and introduce new, effective ways to promote your brand and boost your business. Below are a few areas our experts look at when assessing the success of your marketing. You can trust our advice because we are the best in Tampa!
How Your Keywords Rank In Search Engine Marketing
Perhaps the first place to look when assessing your marketing efforts is your list of keywords. When an internet user goes “shopping” online and seeks a particular product or service, they typically begin by typing in a word or phrase into the search bar. We have all done this, employing words such as “pizza near me” or ” grocery stores near me” to quickly find what we seek. These search items are called keywords, and search engines such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo strive to provide relevant search items in response to a user’s query. A relevant search result for “pizza near me” would be the website for the pizzeria down the street, not for a person with the last name Pizza or for a pizza place near the state of Maine (ME). A dutiful search engine will give the user the results they are most likely to click through. Unless the user types in the exact name of your business, a relevant keyword search could lead them to your competitors as well as to you. Because you want the customer to come across your website without having to peruse the internet, any relevant keyword should generate your website first. You can check how your website ranks against other websites on a search engine result page (SERP) by keyword. Keep in mind these rankings fluctuate constantly. While it may be a worthy goal to have your business in the number one spot, retaining a position on the front page is itself an effective marketing strategy.
Getting your website to the front page of Google is enormously helpful in promoting your business; most people do not venture past the first page of this most-loved search engine to find the product, service, or answer for which they are looking. However, keep in mind that many users prefer a different search engine or use a browser that embeds a search tool such as Bing instead of Google. Don’t merely search for your website the way you would do so if you were the customer; try searching your keywords on multiple engines, and see what comes up. If you have to look for your website, it isn’t visible enough. Don’t overlook the large volume of potential customers you may be excluding by ignoring their internet searching preferences.
Sources Of Your Website Traffic
Besides the highways of search engines, from where else is traffic coming to your website? Thanks to digital tools such as tracking cookies, you can access data on how a visitor arrived at your site. This information is essential in assessing which aspects of your marketing campaign are working – and which are not worth the money. By tracking a visitor’s cookies, you will see with your own eyes the keywords, links, and popups that brought the visitor to your site, kind of like the stamps on a passport. Identifying these ports of entry can help you create a more effective strategy for future marketing campaigns. Plus, tracking cookies can help you retarget potential customers who viewed a product similar to yours on a different website. Tracking data has been collected for years now on nearly every website; you might as well use this data to gain intel on where your website traffic is coming from and where it might be negatively diverted.
- The Relevancy Of Your Site Traffic
Just because people are arriving somehow at your website does not imply they want to be there. To use the above example, if my search for “pizza near me” yielded a result that was irrelevant to my query – for instance, a pizza place near Maine – I as the user may not realize the location of the pizza place until after I have visited the website and scrolled down to the bottom of the front page. For me, arriving at this website was a dead end, and the Maine pizzeria’s revenue is none the better for my click-through. Although search engines are sophisticated enough to avoid an irrelevant mislead, such as the example I provided, it can still happen in other ways. Perhaps a user was too ambiguous in their search terms and stumbled upon your pizza place when what they meant was “pizza ingredients near me.” If your marketing is being wasted on dead-end users, you may want to restrategise.
- Whether Your Traffic Interacts With The Sales Funnel
When assessing your site traffic data, it’s not enough to only identify from where your traffic is coming or in what vehicle it arrives. You should also assess how long your visitors typically stay and, most importantly, whether they spend money at your site. Sometimes it is okay for a visitor to simply browse your website without making a purchase. The fact that they found you at all is a marketing success, and by making your brand visible, you are building awareness of your product in the market. If you think of marketing’s goal as a funnel, then awareness of your website is at the wide rim of the funnel. By driving traffic to your website through search engines and social media, you can situate those consumers to hear your sales pitch and consider buying whatever you’re selling. Consumers cannot process further down the funnel into making a purchase without entering the wider part of awareness. So, although the awareness aspect of the sales funnel is important, the goal of your marketing should be to channel as much of your awareness traffic further along into the buyer zone. If a sizable portion of your site traffic ends up clicking away without signing up for a newsletter, ordering a free trial, or making a purchase, you may be attempting to funnel the wrong crowd. In that case, you may need to adjust your website or your marketing to ensure you reach the right people.
The People You Are Reaching
When you began your business or developed your product, you had a vision – not only of fame and wealth (wouldn’t that be nice) but of your product enriching the lives of other people. Who were those people you envisaged? Who is the target for your product or service? Suppose your website tracking data show successful search results and high numbers of visitors but no revenue. In that case, it’s possible your advertising is lost on the people – real people out there in the world – who value your product. Perhaps your keywords are highly ranked, and the search results are relevant to the user, but they aren’t biting. Consider the demographics of your visitors. Social media marketing can help you target the type of consumer your product best suits. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all feature slightly nuanced demographics in their user profiles. By moving your marketing campaign to social media, you can sharpen your focus on, say, young moms or newly-retired singles, or college students. Finally, as you tweak your marketing campaign, define some analytics goals to track, such as number of visitors, number of click-throughs, or diversity of traffic sources. A Tampa digital marketing agency like ours can help you create smart goals for your marketing so that your product is seen quickly and helpfully to the audience most relevant for your brand.
Contact Us
Every bit of your marketing energy should yield good returns and profitable revenue for your business. If you need help assessing or restrategising your search engine marketing, contact us here at MyCity Social. We are a Tampa digital marketing agency that Florida locals trust, with a depth and breadth of experience in not only creating effective strategies but troubleshooting and tweaking them as the market fluctuates. We want to help you get the absolute most out of your marketing; we have your back! Call us today at +1-866-955-3287 or email us at admin@mycitysocial.com to learn more information and to get started!
