How Important Is Web Analytics?

Posted on June 19, 2011 by Super

I had the opportunity to speak this week in front of several richmond business owners and managers. The topic of the talk was around web analytics and online trends. It was my hope to simplify the topic of web analytics into something actionable. To do this, it was necessary to over come the biggest burden faced by web analytics: the over-abundance of metrics and reports. Google Analytics alone gives you access to nearly 300 different metrics and dimensions, wrapped into over 80 different standard reports.

That’s a lot.

Access to this much data often times leads to inaction instead of action. Or worse, action taken based on metrics that are given more importance than they deserve. So given this rather glim scenario faced by many companies and organizations, we needed to reestablish not just the importance but the criticality of utilizing web analytics. To do this, I asked everyone in the room a series of questions. The first two were:

1) have you ever used data from your website to make a strategic decision?

2) do you use data from your website to make strategic decisions on a regular basis?

A little less than half raised their hand to the first question. Fewer raised their hand for the second.

I then proposed the hypothetical situation of the internet going away completely and for everyone in the room to determine where their business would be in that scenario. They either:

1) wouldn’t be affected because the internet has a negligible affect on their business

2) would be affected to a degree but the business could survive without it

3) would be forced to close up shop.

The point of this exercise was to reveal that any business that relies in part or completely on the internet should have some sort of measurement process to understand the return on their investment. After all, a business that relies on the internet to generate revenue in likely making an investment into it – be it a website, search engine marketing, social media etc.

So where to start? Remember from above there are nearly 300 different metrics and dimensions to use when analyzing your website. To make sense of the myriad of data, it’s important to understand the question you’re trying to answer. In this case, we’re trying to answer the question of ROI.

The one report we can use to answer this question is a Source/Outcomes report. This report serves to answer two questions: “where did my visitors come from” and “how well did they do at completing my site objectives?”

This is the 10,000 foot view that can quickly tell us which investments are paying off and which ones ares not. It can tell us more about our site than almost any other single report. If you aren’t looking at any reports about your website or you haven’t made a decision from one, this is the report to get started with. It will very quickly tell you what is paying off and what is not in terms of investment.

Beware: making use of this report is a little like opening Pandora’s box. Once you get the taste for blood you’ll be thirsty for more. Inevitably you’ll have more questions about why certain channels aren’t working as well as others or what it is about certain channels that make them work so well. That’s where the other couple hundred metrics start coming into play.

Quick note:
Before signing into your Google Analytics, realize that this report doesn’t come automatically (what good things in life do, right? :) ). No matter what web analytics platform you use, it can’t automatically decipher what your site’s objectives are. That up for you and your team to decide. From there, the proper configuration needs to take place (ecommerce, goals, goal value, event tracking, etc) in order for the platform to show you what you want to see.

In future posts I’ll dive deeper into the content of last week’s talk. It was my hope that with the points made above I could set the stage for the importance of using data and where to start if you were at the ground level (similar to what I tried to do in this post). Although seemingly rudimentary, it is so vital to break through this first wall before trying to tackle anything else.

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Is social media changing our sociology?

Posted on June 17, 2011 by David McKillen

Question: Is Web Social technology consuming us, pulling us away from traditional/physical sociology? If so, is this a bad thing?

It’s funny how we spend so much of our lives now communicating in ways that don’t require speech :) . It seems most of our day it is possible to get from dawn til dusk, socializing and interacting with our peers and work colleagues without ever uttering a single word. With instant message, Skype chat (something I am using more and more), emails, Facebook, Twitter etc. it is possible to complete your entire day without touching, seeing, feeling or speaking to another human being. The sales folks amongst us might be the final frontier in this regard.

The question becomes then is this a bad thing?

On the one hand it can be argued that it is our very nature as social beings is to interact in some “space” with others. Something we innately need whether we realize it or not. On the other hand I wonder if it is becoming more and more acceptable that this “space” actually be “cyber” based and not necessarily physically. When we sit face to face with a friend or work colleague there are likely hundreds of social nuances and signals from which we feed – that define who we are as a society. Perhaps in some way, we feed off the mere presence of another person in the room; some base, primal need is being auto-filled without us knowing, keeping us whole in some way.

Social media might be affecting HOW we communicate, but is it true that we are being forced to become more polite and error on the side of being a little overly cheery to give ourselves a little more insurance on the IM post? What is interesting about our non-physical communications is that if you look closely, we tend to have to exaggerate the niceties in our comments, tweets and posts just to ensure whomever we are speaking to receives our message in an appropriate way. We have a tendency to really enunciate and over exclaim our “Thanks much!!” and our “good to talk to you again!!”  To indicate our mild amusement we might even “LOL” or “RFLOL”, but did we really Laugh Out Loud? Even in some of our more formal emails we will scatter a few smiley faces, in an attempt to keep things happy-happy and light hearted as much as possible. Perhaps it is not enough any more to use just words to express ourselves in this online environment we find ourselves living in.

But it does seem more that we are content to pass Facebook and Twitter messages back and forth to one another without ever uttering a word. We silently chuckle to ourselves at the clever, witty little retorts our friends send us. We go to great lengths to ensure the latest link of our favorite pop video is posted on Facebook; We spend hours interacting via Twitter or Meebo rather than spending 15 minutes on the phone. It is clear that we use these social tools because we love to – not because we have to or just for work purposes. In reality the new social media wave is an extension of what we love to do and isn’t something we are driven to do by necessity.

Are we choosing to communicate in silence over speaking with someone?

There is the argument out there that a Social Tech bubble is forming; that some day it will pop as the Dot-Com bubble did in 2000. You have to wonder though if we are in fact choosing the silent social scoop over physical/verbal interaction because we love to, how can a bubble be forming? It is more likely that we are experiencing a fundamental shift in how society interacts with one another through Social Media as opposed to what happened with the Dot-Com debacle.

I know what you are thinking – yes – it is likely that I have gone just a little insane from spending most of my day alone with my computer. I’m starting to over think things. Next I’ll be having conversations with my coffee cup, God knows I’m already way past that point with my canine companion who faithfully abandons me to go chase squirrels outside. Maybe this blog post is the beginning of my path towards insanity and just maybe I have unknowingly already answered my own question :) .

David McKillen Web Strategies Inc.

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10 useful Joomla! install modules and plugins for starting out with Joomla!: Part 2

Posted on June 2, 2011 by David McKillen

Joomla 1.6It’s been out a while now but only recently have I felt ready to make the transition to Joomla 1.6. I have been super excited about the move because it opens up some fun extra functionality that 1.5 lacked. We are, I think, at a point where migration from 1.5 to 1.6 is possible in most cases because what I believe to be some of the main 3rd party extensions are finally 1.6 compatible! So here again is my list of a few of the nicer primary 1.6 3rd party extensions that make my Life easier in developing the average website (just some little updates from the original post):

5 Must haves:

1| JCE Editor: Really head and shoulders above the generic editor. Makes managing content a breeze (or as easy as it can be with a CMS) for the end user. Remember two things in regards to this: 1) After installing you need to “activate” JCE in the Joomla! configuration tab as it is still set to the default Tiny editor. 2) Make sure to go to Components > JCE Config. > Groups > default > Edit parameters > file directory path to set the images path to whatever you want (most likely images) as it makes it easier for your users to interact with the CMS. Now 1.6 compatible yay! It is a Beta but seems to run smoothly.

2| RSForms! Pro: A useful and flexible forms module that does pretty much anything you want a form to do. Stores user data in an exportable db too which is nice. Now 1.6 compatible yay!

3| Content Version Control: Ever finish a beautiful new Joomla! content install phase only to discover an inexperienced client has accidentally deleted some of your hard work? Well with Fatica’s version control plugin you can simply revert to an earlier version of the article! (A must have if you don’t want to have to rollback your hosting!). Now 1.6 compatible yay! I’m surprised J1.6 doesn’t have some kind of version control yet.

4| Akeeba core backup: Useful for backing up or even transferring an entire site from one Joomla! install to another. Apparently supports tranfers to legacy versions of Joomla! also which is nice. Now 1.6 compatible yay!

5| WordPress for Joomla!: Packed with all of WordPress’s professional blogging tools, you can now harness the power of WordPress without ever leaving Joomla!. Now 1.6 compatible yay!

5 Nice extras perhaps not needed for every site:

6| Frontend-User-Access: to manage user groups and content access: Perhaps not needed anymore due to improved 1.6 user management?

7| Docman: If you need to allow your users to upload, download, do just about anything with files and folders then Docman is a god option. The older version is now free and still extremely useful for a lot of projects. Not yet 1.6 compatible :( but we will just use 1.5 for any Docman focused projects – we’d LURV to see this made 1.6 ready though!

8| Virtuemart: A very serious useful E-Commerce option and really the primary option where Joomla! is concerned. The nice thing about this plugin is that you can use it simply as a catalog or as a more advanced onine shopping cart. Not yet 1.6 compatible :( but we will just use 1.5 for any eCom focused projects – we’d LURV to see this made 1.6 ready though!

9| Mobile Joomla: It’s crazy how easy this app makes producing a mobile friendly version of your website. Easy to install and takes care of most of the heavy lifting associated with making a mobile website. Not yet 1.6 compatible :( but we will just use 1.5 for any Mobile focused projects – we’d LURV to see this made 1.6 ready though!

10| JomSocial: Considering Joomla! has utilized JomSocial for a new “Joomla! People” community, I think it is fair to say that the JomSocial squad have produced an excellent package enabling Joe Bloggs to create his own social network! If you are looking to create your own social network, this one is hard to beat! Now 1.6 compatible yay!

Thanks guys!

David McKillen

Web Strategies Inc.

Posted in CMS, Joomla! | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Joomla! v WordPress v Drupal v …

Posted on June 1, 2011 by David McKillen

I over heard a couple of guys chatting about the never ending battle of the Content Management Systems and thought I’d make a quick post. I wonder does it ultimately boil down to this, or is there more to it than meets the eye?

1) Need a lot of custom extension work specific to your site AND have a reasonable large budget available? = DRUPAL.

2) Have a tight budget and don’t forsee the need to expand your website any time soon to anything needing a little more advanced extensions functionality = WORDPRESS.

3) Want to being able to produce a functionally advanced small to medium size biz website without costing an arm and a leg that doesn’t require re-invent the wheel specific functionality but are happy to use an extensive pre-existing extension pool = JOOMLA!

Is it really that simple? How capable the CMS is of handling SEO, usability and ease of integration with some other functionalities such as Mobile devices etc. obviously also play in. There is a reason of course that all 3 aforementioned are among the finest CMS options out there and that is that they all do at the very least serve their own niche very well.

David McKillen Web Strategies Inc.

1) Need a lot of custom extension work specific to your site AND have
> money to pay for this? = DRUPAL.
> 
> 2) Don't have a lot of money and don't forsee the need to expand your
> website any time soon to anything needing a little more advanced
> extensions functionality = WORDPRESS.
> 
> 3) Want to being able to produce a functionally advanced small to medium
> size biz website without costing an arm and a leg that doesn't require
> tons of re-invent the wheel specific functionality but are happy to use
> an extensive pre-existing extension pool (as is the case with many
> clients) = JOOMLA!

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Social Media Marketing – Making Daily Deals Work

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Neal Lappe

Social media marketing has so many new and emerging opportunities.  One of the most popular these days are the daily deal sites – Groupon and Living Social being the most prominent.  However, there are more deal sites popping up all the time targeting more niche spaces.  These properties have brought many great deals to consumers, including me, but are they working for the merchants?  This post provides some suggestions about how to make one element of social media marketing, the daily deal sites, work financially for the business.

The economics of these sites are daunting for most businesses.  First, you have to provide at least of 50% discount off retail, and then you have to give about half of the revenue to the deal site.  So, if you sell something for $100 normally, you must offer it to at no more than $50 and then give about $25 for each item sold – resulting in the business receiving about 25% of normal retail price.  If you sell 500 items from the deal site, you’ve just sold $50,000 worth of your products/services for about $12,000.  Your margins have to be pretty good to make this work, and most of the cases these services are being sold at a loss.  So, how can a business make it work?  Usually the only way is to upsell the customer to a more profitable product/service that provides real value to the customer.

Here are some ideas about how to make it work.  First, go into it with your eyes wide open knowing the economic impact of what you are doing – selling your product/service for 25 cents on the dollar.  Next, figure out the easiest way to create more revenue from the customer interaction that truly adds value for your customer.  If you are a restaurant, you probably want to offer something like $50 of food for $25, and then sell appetizers, desserts and drinks to re-capture lost margin dollars.  Plus, give the customer such an awesome experience that he/she wants to come back and perhaps even a coupon for their next visit.  If you are a painter for instance, you may want to offer 50% off painting one room and when you arrange the job with the customer offer a small discount on painting another room.  Use this upsell opportunity to re-capture some of the lost margin on the original deal.  And always, always, always – make the customer experience so great that you create a raving fan and repeat business at regular price.

Selling 25 cents on the dollar results in a lot of lost margin dollars but if you are creative about how you position the deal and turn the customer into a raving fan, you can make those daily deal sites work for your business.

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Customer Service – The Age of “Emotionomics”

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Neal Lappe

I’ve read a good deal on the topic of “emotionomics” and it has continued to make an impression on me.  Emotionomics in general is the confluence of the products and services with the customer’s emotional experience using those products and services.  For someone who operates an internet marketing agency, I think of emotionomics as the experience our customers have during a project…a web development project, an seo project, etc.  In other words, if we produce great seo results but the process the customer experienced during the project is painful, then the customer thinks poorly of us even though we might achieve awesome results.

Developing a high quality, custom website is a challenging effort with a lot of moving parts.  In some cases the customer might have a good deal of work to do to complete the project.  In other cases the customer has some particular graphic requirements that might be difficult to articulate or for a designer to understand.  Customer frustration grows and the emotional elements of the relationship start to get strained.  In the end the website might be incredible but if the whole development process produced stress and frustration, the “emotionomics” of the arrangement aren’t so good and the customer leaves with some “emotional scars”. 

For those of us involved in the development of complex projects, we need to pay special attention to the customer’s experience.  We might be the best at what we do, but if the process we use to do what we do sucks for the customer, then that great product or service we deliver will be severely diminished if the whole experience was difficult emotionally on the customer.  The end result could be little repeat business and a poor reputation in the marketplace. 

Make sure your process works for your customers.  Teach/coach your employees and partners about how to interact with customers.  Pay special attention to how the process affects the emotional state of your customers.  If you can produce a great product or service, and the experience the customer has during the process is good, you will win in the end.

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Web Analytics – Separating The Good Data From The Useless

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Chris Leone

This is the beginning of a series of blog posts that focuses on going back to the basics of digital marketing. In this post, I want to highlight some of the web analytics do’s and don’ts when it comes to metrics. There are dozens and dozens of different metrics available to us, enabling us to evaluate the performance of a website. Some of these metrics aren’t nearly as valuable as we think they are while others that hold the keys to success are often ignored completely.

It is my hope in this blog post that I can begin to help shine some light on where we should focus when evaluating how good a website actually is and where we should stop paying so much attention. Beyond that, I hope to correct some common misnomers when it comes to web analytics data. Let’s dive in…

Hits: ‘Hits’ are one of the most widely used (misused) terms when it comes to web metrics. In most instances, hits are used as a way to measure a site’s popularity. Not only is it unwise to measure a site success based solely off total volume, but the term hits is not analogous to a visit*. Most web analytics tools don’t even report hits as a metric. You’re best off removing this term from your vocabulary.

*a “hit” occurs when a file is requested from a server – this includes web pages, images, self hosted video, etc

Total visits:
Everyone wants to know how many people are coming to their website. But at the end of the day, how much does this really tell you when it comes to generating meaningful value to your business. I could have 100 visitors come to my site one day and 10,000 visitors come to my site the next day. But if those 10,000 visitors are not part of my target market, how meaningful are they? It’s a delicate balance between quantity and quality, and we can’t get so obsessed with increasing the quantity of visitors while overlooking the quality of the visitor and the quality of their experience on our website. Getting more traffic to your website is easy. But getting more meaningful, targeted traffic to your website that accomplishes your websites goals is something completely different. Make sure you’re shooting for the latter and then find ways to increase THAT volume.

Average time on site:
It’s easy to make a big deal out of this metric, however it does fall under the umbrella of metrics we see over emphasized. It’s interesting information, but it tends to be used in aggregate. In other words “my average time on site is X minutes and Y seconds, so I’m happy (or sad).” While measuring average time on site for all traffic is a mostly hopeless endeavor, you can quickly make use of this metric by segmenting it by different traffic sources. For example, how does average time on your website differ by visitors who come from a search engine or social media or through an affiliate program? If your search engine traffic spends 80% less time on site, start looking at other metrics (bounce, goal completion, etc) that support this source of traffic as being less effective.

Another simple way to make use of this metric is to establish meaning or an outcome associated with more time on site. For example, in the video on your home page the sales pitch occurs at the 1 min. and 5 second mark. Your twitter traffic time on page doesn’t exceed 40 seconds. You now know your message is failing to reach that segment of visitors.

Pages per visit:
Pages per visit is like average time on site in that we think the higher it is the more engaged our visitors are. But like time on site, we need to dig a little bit deeper to understand the meaning behind this metric and what it means in terms of activity. For example, most websites have pages of all different purposes. Some pages encourage the visitors to take certain actions – which have a meaningful impact on your business. While some pages are a lot less interesting and probably do very little in terms of selling the visitor on your brand, service or product. Knowing how many visitors look at the key pages on your site is more telling than the average number of total pages any given visitor views when they come to your site.

Total page views:
Unless you’re selling advertisement space and the key driver of ad revenue is impressions, don’t get too obsessed over the total number of pages on your site. Like the metrics listed above, it falls far short of translating directly into value.

—–

Now that I’ve given you some tips on metrics that aren’t quite as lovable as you first believed, I’d like to share a few that should capture our collective attention…

Goal value by traffic source:
Every website should have more than one objective. It’s usually easy to identify the primary objective (make a purchase, submit an RFQ, etc), but the secondary objectives of your site carry meaning (and value!) as well. More on establishing website goals in this blog post. When we can identify the different interactions we want a site visitor to take and we can associate an economic value with that action, we can tell which campaigns (social media, SEO, PPC) are generating the most value.

Loyalty:
If you run a nonprofit and the goal of your website is to get membership sign-ups, how do you measure success? Number of visitors that sign up as a member? Take it a step further. You may get 2000 sign-ups in the month, but how many are coming back to your site? What good is there in just signing up if they’re not taking any action beyond that? So we look at the number of people who are signed up and then look for how many of those members continue to come back to the site and take part in our message/campaign/program/whatever.

If you’re an e-commerce site trying to get up off the ground, are you most interested in the one-time shoppers or the visitors that become customers and brand advocates for life? Of course, you want the latter. And one of the best ways to know if you’re building loyalty is to see how many of these visitors continue to come back after they’ve made their first purchase.

Campaign ROI:
This one seems obvious, I know. But when you’re investing in traffic building campaigns such as pay per click, we are very capable of being able to import our click charge data and place it right alongside the revenue generated by those visitors. At a glance, we are able to see which keywords in our campaign generate a positive return on investment and which ones do not. There is no clearer roadmap for where to focus your efforts in a campaign than this metric.

Bounce rate:
While bounce rate is not an end all, be all metric, it is perhaps one of the standalone top-level metrics we can use to determine if something is working or not. Bounce rate of 80%? Either you’re attracting the wrong audience or you’re showing them the wrong stuff on your site. Bounce rate of 25%? Your visitors like what they see (at least, initially). The one exception to this is if a visitor can accomplish everything you want them to on the first page. For example, if you write a blog, a visitor will land on your site, read a post, then leave the site. Bounce? Technically. Failure? No way. While this would technically count as a bounce because they only viewed one page, they accomplished the goal of your blog – the consumption of your content!

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It is important to note that most web analytics metrics are meaningless when they’re not put in the context of another variable. One of the greatest sins of web analysis is only looking at the dashboard and trying to draw a meaningful conclusion; that is, looking at your data in aggregate, one metric at a time. This is why I encourage you to get your eyes away from total visits and average time on site for all visitors and instead, measure outcomes separated by traffic segment. This gets us away from looking at our site traffic as one giant blob of people and instead separates them into nicely organized groups; separated by a characteristic and/or their ability to accomplish an action. This is where the real magic begins to happen and where we start finding actionable data and insight.

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Website Design – Is Beauty More than Skin-Deep?

Posted on April 23, 2011 by Neal Lappe

Money may not buy happiness, but beauty buys both money and happiness, says a study published online recently that gauged happiness and attractiveness among more than 25,000 people worldwide.  This recent study was conducted about how beauty affects happiness and prosperity.  This really caught my eye and after reading it, I was fascinated.  The researchers concluded that “better-looking people generally earn more money and marry those who are better-looking and higher-earning.”  They went on to report that “the top 15% of people ranked by looks are more than 10% happier than those ranked in the bottom 10%.”  Remember, these are results from a study, not my personal opinion.  Thank God because I’m clearly not the most attractive person around!    

An associate professor of psychology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., who studies well-being, says these findings make perfect sense to him.  He goes on to say…“Think about it as a gateway to getting what you want from life — job interviews, first dates, making those initial impressions, persuading and influencing other people,” he says. “Attractiveness gives that slight edge. They’re getting the benefit of the doubt at first sight, and unattractive people aren’t.”

So what does this concept mean for website design?  There are similarities.  When someone comes to your website he/she gets that first impression.  Is that first impression a good one or one where the visitor asks “what the h— is this place?”  There are two important considerations when it comes to web design.  First, if your product has an emotional element to it then you better make sure your website graphic presentation exudes the emotion you seek.  For example, if you are a spa then your website better communicate relaxation, introspection and beauty primarily directed at women.  On the other hand, if you are a sports bar, then your graphics better communicate fun, activity, sports and the like.  You know what I mean?  The second consideration is more basic – simply what I call the “credibility hurdle”.  That is, when someone comes to your website do you look like a credible, quality operation? 

If you are in a “non-emotional” business, then your graphic presentation primarily needs to meet/exceed the “credibility hurdle” to make sure people coming to your site are impressed by you, you look competitive and present yourself as a quality operation.  Many firms in the commercial construction business fit into this arena.  They are selling capability and not necessarily an emotional experience.  On the other hand, if you are trying to communicate a special message that sets you apart and resonates with your target customer, then you better step it up a notch or two or three and make sure that emotion you want to communicate through your website hits the mark.

In summary, beauty on a website is almost always more than skin-deep.  It is just important to know who your customer is and what turns them on.

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Search Engine Optimization or Social Media for Small Businesses

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Neal Lappe

A recent survey by American Express and SEMPO revealed that small and mid-sized businesses (SMB’s) are investing more in social media than in search engine optimization.    Considering the challenges in measuring social media ROI, I was ambivalent about this finding.  I mean on one hand I am not surprised businesses are really interested in social media.  After all, it is what everyone seems to be entranced by.  On the other hand, search engine optimization is such a powerful tool to actually generating leads and it can be more easily measured.   

Marketing for Small Business

There is little question that SMB’s value word-of-mouth as the most effective way to acquire new customers.  Social media certainly can result in greater brand and top-of-mind-awareness and it is pretty cost effective if the personnel involved are highly skilled and productive at it. Interestingly, search engine optimization was considered fourth on the list.  After that, advertising in the more traditional sense is taking a lesser and lesser position on the list of what is important to new customer acquisition.  

On the contrary, a different survey sponsored by MerchantCircle found that local small businesses were more likely to say search engine optimization was a more effective channel than social media, at 40.2% vs. 36.7%.  Because some social media platforms like Facebook have become part of the very fabric of our society, people know how to use them and the learning curve is relatively easy.  On the other hand, the costs, technical challenges and mystique of search engine optimization may be discouraging factors to more SMB’s using this marketing approach.

I wonder if a survey was conducted with SMB’s who are doing both social media marketing and search engine optimization, whether these business owners would say social media or search engine optimization was better at actually generating leads.  Our experience clearly indicates at this point in time that search engine optimization is far more effective at actual lead generation.  After all, what better situation can you have then a qualified customer going to Google, typing in a search phrase to find a product or service provider and virtually asking who out there has what I am looking for?  I mean, think about it. 

Now, this is not to say social media marketing should be ignored in favor of search engine optimization.  Considering the social media trends we are seeing, both are critically important and should be considered for serious investment.  The nuances of your target market, their shopping and buying patterns and the strength of your competition are all factors to be considered to determine how much of each is right for you.

Posted in Digital Marketing, Internet Marketing, Local SEO, SEO, Social Media, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

How Social Media Plays in the Online Shopping/Buying Process

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Neal Lappe

GroupM Search and comScore, two reliable sources of research about online buying behavior, recently released findings of a new study that focused on the impact and search and social media, and the synergy of each channel. The results were quite interesting and may provide insights that could alter your current search and social media strategies.  A meaningful excerpt from the study revealed the following:

  • 58% of purchase decisions started with an online search compared to only 18% that started their research with social media.
  • 51% of people in the study only used online search in their decision making process, while 48% used a combination of search and social media.

 What can we conclude from this powerful data? 

  •  Search remains “king of the hill” when it comes to online research.  From an online marketing perspective, firms who put more effort into social media compared to search engines will not see as good results as those who invest in search engines first. 
  • Social media is gaining in importance.  It has quickly become a place where shoppers can ask their friends about a certain brand or service provider.  Consequently, companies should be investing in optimizing their brand on the appropriate social networks – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

 Here are some suggestions about how to make this research data actionable for you…

  1.  If you are in the B2C space, check your visibility online.  Key in some important search phrases for your business and see what comes up.  Is your firm positioned above-the-fold on the 1st page of Google or Bing?  Are your competitors?  Also, take a look at your LinkedIn and Facebook pages.  Are you keeping things up to date?  Are you posting credible, customer-friendly content?  Are you being one of those annoying marketers constantly throwing out messages that scream “buy me, buy me, buy me?
  2. If you are in the B2B space, check your visibility online just like in number #1 above.  Take a look at your LinkedIn profile.  Do you look credible on LinkedIn?  Do you present a credible competitive advantage on LinkedIn?  Are you putting our content on LinkedIn that positions you as a “thought leader”? 
  3. Regardless of what space you operate in, do a search for your company’s name.  Click into your Google Places and Bing Local profiles and see what is in there.  If you have some bad reviews, you need to figure out how to deal with these and get more good reviews.  Build out these local online profiles as these are becoming more and more important, and getting much more visibility than before.

 In summary, search engines remain the most important resource for online research about your company, and the social media platforms are clearly gaining in their importance.  Get good positioning in the search engines and make sure your social media properties (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Local Profiles, etc.) are built out and populated with meaningful information for your target markets.

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