DaBrian Marketing Blog: News, Insights, and Digital Marketing

Google Authorship and You: It’s Not About the Rank

April 17, 2013 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Google Authorship isn’t a new phenomenon; it was actually announced back in 2011 by Google’s web spam guru, Matt Cutts. Its purpose? To easily attribute and connect authors to the content they create across the web. Since its release, the authorship process has evolved and changed numerous times. If you Google around, you’ll find boatloads of posts sharing the ins and outs of setting up your own authorship, and before you know it, you’ll be able to confidently proclaim, “There is my content, hear it roar!”.

But that’s not what we’re going to talk about today. This week, we’ll discuss how authorship can change both the way you approach content creation as well as how it affects your overall strategy for digital marketing.

First Things First

It’s not all about AuthorRank. There, we said it. It’s neither what this post is about nor authorship itself. Many resources out there have discussed this elusive metric as both the key to a higher search engine ranking and as Google’s sick and twisted way of making the SEO world even more complicated. The real marketing value, both of Google Authorship and your individual AuthorRank, boils down to one thing—valuable content.

You may be wondering what this means, but think about it. Grabbing hold of the notions that a) implementing authorship throughout your business’s marketing will boost your overall search ranking and b) AuthorRank is the only thing about Authorship that matters, sounds like a pretty narrow (and risky) approach to content marketing and SEO.

With these two marketing powerhouses, it’s vitally important to keep in mind that each takes a certain level of devotion and that each is a process. These campaigns evolve and change as your business’s goals do. They reflect the marketing efforts of top competitors, and most of all, they must be able to account for changes and updates from Google.

So, What's the Reward?

So what’s the honest-to-goodness value of Authorship? Let’s break it down:

Authorship allows content you’ve authored to be attributed directly to you and sites you’re affiliated with. Generally, this leads to more site traffic, CTR’s, and conversions, not to mention a major boost in your credibility
Authorship affords additional link building opportunities and more visibility due to the direct tie it shares with social media
Authorship will create major opportunities for more specific measurement tactics and better analytics tools in the future
Above all, Authorship can play a huge role in crafting a more effective content marketing strategy and reinforces the connection between all digital marketing campaigns

And, of course, there’s always that SERP ranking and increased organic traffic. But now we know it’s so much more than that, right?

How has your experience with Authorship shaped your marketing strategy? Give us a shout in the comments below!

Making a Smooth Transition to Mobile PPC

April 11, 2013 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

If you are running Pay per Click ads using Google AdWords, you’ll need to be ready for your ads to start showing up on smartphones. Once yourLegacy Campaigns are upgraded to the Enhanced Campaigns, your ads will begin showing on mobile. Before this happens though, there are a few things that you can do to prepare.

Targeting Devices (or not)

First off, if you absolutely do not want to be advertising on mobile at all, there is a way to do so within Enhanced Campaigns. The Bid Adjustment feature allows you to target specific devices. By setting your bid adjustment to -100% for mobile devices, you will prevent your ads from being shown on phones. But with the noticeable rise in smartphone use, are you sure that is the best marketing decision?

Mobile-Optimized Ads

Another option is to prepare our ads accordingly. A great way to do this is to utilize the Call Extension. Although this extension can be used to target all devices, it is best suited for targeting mobile users. This extension will allow searchers on mobile devices to not only find you, but connect with you via a phone call with a single click. Another additional feature that comes with this Enhanced Campaigns extension is day parting. This means that the call functionality can be set to coincide with your business’s operating hours. On top of all that functionality, Google has also dropped the additional charge that formerly came with using a Google forwarding number.

Using the steps above, you can make sure that your PPC account is ready for the Enhanced Campaigns upgrade. These new features and extensions allow you to reach new customers no matter what device they’re using!

We’d love to hear which aspects of AdWords Enhanced Campaigns you’re using to improve your PPC ads. Let us know in the comments below!

5 Things you Need to Know about Google Universal Analytics

April 3, 2013 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Google Analytics has recently expanded its Universal Analytics into a public beta. In 2012, Google Analytics expanded their analytics offerings to include Google Analytics Premium and Mobile App Analytics to help analysts manage all their diverse data sources. With the increasing use of “Big Data,” attribution modeling, and predictive analytics, we need more efficient methods to collect and integrate the data. Below are the 5 ways that Google Universal Analytics will help you do just that:

Data in Sync

Universal Analytics provides you with an opportunity to sync online and offline data for better analysis. You can run correlation analyses to see whether there is a relationship between the data (online & offline) and sales growth. Note: Always remember that correlation doesn’t imply causation!

Customization

You can track more than just your website, which provides an opportunity to collect and send data from just about any digital device with JavaScript, SDKs for apps, or Measurement Protocols. This should lead to more customization at the client level as well as more streamlined data for data visualization solutions.

Custom Dimensions & Metrics

You can create your own dimensions and metrics specific to your industry for better insights. Adobe SiteCatalyst’s calculated metrics & report builder were the first features that came to mind when I read about this. I would assume that the custom metrics are based on existing metrics within Google Analytics. The question is whether or not it will deliver with the same simplicity as Adobe SiteCatalyst V15. We’ll let you know the results of our internal testing soon!

The Latest & Greatest Features

Get access to new features as soon as they’re released. As we all know, analytics isn’t going away, so new features, functionality, and integration possibilities will continue to evolve as the needs of businesses change. If you’re using GA, I would recommend testing the Universal Analytics functionality to weigh the risks vs. rewards as well as your long-term organizational goals. Make sure you communicate any possible changes to your data and reporting.

Integration!

You can implement Universal Analytics with Google Tag Manager, simplifying the process while still using custom metrics. It will be interesting to see what impact this change has on other solutions that are already associated with the “classic” version of Google Analytics, such as SEOmoz and HootSuite.

Are you as excited as we are for all the possibilities that Universal Analytics will bring? Let us know in the comments below!

VIDEO: Discover Marketing ROI using Google Analytics

March 29, 2013 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Marketing can be one of the most fun and exciting fields to work in, but sometimes there’s those times when a campaign doesn’t seem to yield any incremental business. A real buzz kill, to say the least. This might be an indication that the campaign was a wash, however there’s still a chance that it may have had more of a positive impact on your bottom line than you may have thought.

Our lead Web Analyst Brandon Wensing’s latest video demonstrates how you can improve the measurement of those marketing tactics to allow for better insights on ROI. Focusing on the multiple touch points that your customers have with your website can shine more light on campaigns and mediums that you may have written off before simply because they weren’t leading directly to purchases or conversions in the same session.

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel for more updates and tips like this for improving your marketing effectiveness!

How Email Marketing Can Generate Sales

March 20, 2013 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Email marketing plays a major role in any digital marketing strategy. According to a Forrester report, repeat customers tend to be more heavily influenced by email. Email allows you to reach out to customers, gain increased visibility with prospects, or share your latest news and promotions. When done correctly, email marketing platforms bring together a host of tools that drive more leads, sales, & revenue.

Build Awareness

Email marketing is more than just sending out a generic email and hoping that prospects read it and respond. In order to build awareness through email marketing, it is crucial that you send out email communications with your customized brand, look, and feel. Including your colors, logo, contact information, and social networks will help entice prospects to not only read but also click within your email communications. The integration of social media within your email communications will help you build awareness as well. Integrating social media will allow you to publish emails straight to your social networks after you send. It will also give your readers the option to share with their friends and followers which will expand your reach and visibility.

Increase Engagement

One of the best ways to increase engagement through email marketing is to segment your lists to target prospects with tailored content. Segmenting your lists will allow you to create the perfect message for your group of customers. Email testing, optimization, and response tracking will also help to increase the engagement of your email campaigns. There are several different components that you can test within your emails. These include: subject line, day of the week, time of day, layout of the email, etc. Testing, optimizing, and tracking will help you to identify and analyze what works best so that you can make improvements which will help increase engagement.

Automate Email Campaigns

Auto-responders are a great way to automate your email campaigns. Automation helps businesses drive revenue by converting more leads into customers. It will allow you to follow up and reach out automatically based on your readers’ actions or important dates, and gives you the ability to send more personalized messages with less time and hassle.

Summary

Email marketing can be a great way to reach out to customers and gain increased visibility with prospects. Following best practices and using everything at your disposal are crucial to a successful email marketing campaign. Using the tools explained above to build awareness, increase engagement, and automate your email campaigns will help you generate leads and gain more sales opportunities.

If you would like to learn more about how Email Marketing can help your business drive sales, please comment below or call us at 610-743-5602.

Post Smarter on Social: Leverage Social Reports in Google Analytics

March 13, 2013 by Dabrian Marketing Group 1 Comment

It’s no surprise that more organizations than ever are allocating additional time and resources to establishing a solid presence in social media. Strategies are cooked up by marketing and brand managers. Page designs, cover photos, and icons are designed with care. Facebook and Twitter badges are placed on marketing pieces and business cards. As a member of a team of digital marketers and analysts, this is a glorious thing to behold. But (there’s always a ‘but’), how effective are these strategies? Is there room for improvements? Are these organizations really connecting with the right customer segments, or are they just shouting in a room full of the wrong people? These are just a few of many questions that Google Analytics Social reporting can help answer.

These reports can be found under Traffic Sources and range from Referral data to landing pages, Trackbacks, Conversions, and more.

These social reports can shine light on a wide array of facets of your social media presence, including referrals, social plugins (Likes, +1’s, etc.), social conversions (online purchases, submissions, or requests performed by social visitors), as well as the flow and paths of social media traffic into your website. Let’s take a look at three of these reports and features a little closer and see how they can be leveraged to bolster the effectiveness of your social media assets.

So, Where Are You From? – Network Referrals

One of the more fundamental reports available in the Google Analytics social section, the Network Referral report, is very similar to the main Traffic Sources report we’ve all come to know and love in the past. Much of this referral data was available within Google Analytics for some time, however in the past we had to perform some manual slicing and dicing to get a clear picture of social media traffic. This report does much of that manual labor for us, shining light onto what social media assets are actually referring visitors to your web properties. Since this is essentially a modified derivative of the original Traffic Sources report, you also have access to advanced filters and regex functionality.

See what social platforms are sending the most traffic to your site – and see how relevant they find your content!

What Google Analytics report would be complete without some drill-down functionality? There are some juicy insights beyond just the names of the social media websites that referred traffic. Clicking on the various network names drills down to reveal what URLs on your website were shared and how many visitors landed on each. This is where you can really turn insights into tactics: Leverage the information here to determine what social posts and links are being deemed relevant to your target audience. If they’re clicking on the links and getting to the site but aren’t spending enough time on the page to do much of anything, there’s a good chance that there’s a disconnect between the post’s message and the content on the shared page.

Thanks For Sharing! – Trackbacks

A crucial element in establishing a solid foundation on any social media platform is to secure advocates of your brand or product. One very powerful way of leveraging this is getting these advocates to talk about you! In today’s world this can take the form of social posts or even blogs. With the Trackback report in Google Analytics, you can see exactly where some of these kinds of social referrals are coming from. Just last month we found a very interesting tidbit for one of our financial services clients using the Trackback report. A prominent travel blogger recently posted a very in-depth evaluation and review of their global credit card that detailed his experiences using the card abroad. Not only was this critique extremely useful for optimizing their product; but it also expanded their brand and product visibility to a significant and extremely targeted audience. Overall, this is not a report to be ignored! Trackbacks may come and go depending on the size and volume of your website, but every now and then there might be a hidden gem worth taking a look at.

Thank You, Come Again! – Conversions

It’s great to know how many visitors reached your site from Facebook versus Twitter, what pages they landed on, or who’s talking about you; but how do you know that your social marketing is really effective? By using the Social Conversions report, of course!

Whether we like it or not, marketing always comes down to Return on Investment. Since social media is one of those weird areas where the emphasis is more on customer relations than sales, it can be a bit tricky to directly tie social media success back to ROI. So whether you’re leveraging social media for sales, customer relations, or both, you can gain much greater visibility into the end result using the Social Conversions report in Google Analytics. This report provides a look at whether or not your social traffic is performing the conversions you’ve set up in Google Analytics. If you’re leaning more towards using social media as a customer relations tool but still want to see if all of that hard work is leading to increased long-term sales, you can employ the use of the utm_nooverride parameter on your shared URLs to ensure that the first touch-point with social media gets credit for the conversion over the long-term.

Measure, Rinse, Repeat!

It should be noted that these are only a few of the measurement capabilities that Google Analytics has with regards to social media. Some of the other reports and features within the tool can easily be sliced and diced with filters and advanced segments to uncover even deeper insights into your social media marketing effectiveness. The biggest thing to keep in mind: any marketing method (social media, traditional, pay per click, etc.) can only be improved if you have a measurement strategy in place. In the case of social media, leveraging Google Analytics brings your insights full-circle and provides actionable insights to keep your customers happy and your marketing budget even happier.