Event Recap: Profit Driven Marketing 101: Know What’s Working

Written by Innovate New Albany@InnovateNA9 years ago

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Business owners who spend money on online advertising and marketing campaigns want to know if it’s working. Seeing results from their investment helps them make accurate business predictions and decisions.

There is a free tool at your disposal that can compile all of this information for you and more. It’s called Google Analytics.

Colin M. Donohue, founder and principal strategist of Root Deeper Marketing, presented, “Profit Driven Marketing 101: Know What’s Working” to a group of business owners at Innovate New Albany on September 25. The presentation was part of Innovate New Albany’s TIGER Talks luncheon series, which educates business owners on topics of Technology, Innovation, Growth, Entrepreneurship and Responsibility.

Colin said analytics are important, because business owners can easily monitor the performance of their advertising dollars.

Colin said your website is not just a brochure you put on the Internet. It has to be found by your visitors, fill a need they are looking for, and have a purpose, such as making a sale, generating leads, or providing content to build your brand.

Colin explained that Google Analytics provides reports that show how your visitors found your site and what they did once they got there. It’s an excellent tool for measuring effectiveness.

Some of the things Google Analytics measures are:

• Acquisition: How many visitors you had and where they came from. Knowing this information helps you to target future advertising efforts.

• Behavior: What your visitors did once they got to your site. Behavior shows how many visitors were new, and how many were returning. It will tell you how much time they spent on your site, the average number of pages they visited, and the average amount of time they spent on each page. This is a great way to see patterns.

• Click throughs: Visitors that click on your call to action buttons. This helps you determine what’s working and what’s not, so you can adjust and increase the number of people who click on your link.

• Bounce rates: People that visit one page and leave, without engaging with any other pages. Your goal is for everyone you attract to have an interest in what you are selling.

• Conversions: A completed activity that contributes to the success of your business. You should have a conversion goal for your website and all of your online marketing profiles and materials.

Colin said you can pull your analytics data into Google Adwords to see how much you spent and what your profit was.

He then showed part of a video from a Google all-stars event entitled, “Making it Happen – 5 Key Tactics to Transform Your Organization.”

Analyzing your data and understanding your online advertising results is a discipline that every business owner should have. He advised the group to know your margins, get solid digital data, and count net profit – not budget, return on investment or cost per acquisition.

Colin’s presentation will continue on Wednesday, September 30, when he will share a 40-minute Google Connect Livestream presentation called “This Ain’t Your Grandma’s Adwords…” led by Google Ad specialists.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about Google Analytics, Google Adwords, or analyzing online data for your business, contact Colin at 740-541-2531 or colin@rootdeeper.com.

Innovate New Albany, the city’s incubator for technology startups, entrepreneurs and small businesses, features 16,000 square feet of space within the New Albany Business Park’s Signature Office Building, 8000 Walton Parkway.