BEM Blog: Marketing | Analytics | Design

BEM Interactive Joins Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (GAAC) Program

2010-03-03T09:05:00.001-05:00

GREENSBORO – BEM Interactive, an industry leader in interactive design, development and digital marketing, announces the company is now a Google Analytics™ Authorized Consultant, joining a group of organizations worldwide.

Google Analytics™ Authorized Consultants are organizations that demonstrate sophisticated expertise in Google Analytics™ web services, which report how website visitors search, navigate, and convert. To qualify, potential organizations undergo the application process and meet qualifications, including being able to provide comprehensive and complex Google Analytics™ case studies. BEM Interactive's Google Analytics™ consulting services include: implementation, assessment, customization, consultation, training, and ongoing support services.

“BEM Interactive is honored to have received this designation from Google,” says Malinda Pengelly, founder and president of BEM Interactive. “Becoming a Google Analytics™ Authorized Consultant represents our company’s steadfast commitment to providing exceptional interactive expertise.”

“In today’s online savvy business world, Google Analytics™ is instrumental in helping organizations understand and leverage data about their website visitors rather than simply collecting it,” adds Pengelly. “With the assistance of our Google Analytics™ in-house experts, our clients are seeing real returns, growing their businesses, and maximizing overall web effectiveness.”

About BEM Interactive
Founded in 1996 and based in Greensboro, NC, BEM Interactive provides award-winning interactive design, development and marketing to more than 350 clients, ranging from small start ups to Fortune 500 companies. Focused on delivering positive, measurable results for clients, BEM Interactive is known for innovative designs; reliable web development; comprehensive digital marketing solutions, including search, email, mobile, social marketing, and Google Analytics™ Services. The BEM Interactive Education Center, located at the company headquarters, offers seminars on Internet, marketing and technology topics critical to success in today’s increasingly online savvy business world.

Google Analytics Audit - 3 Quick Tips

2010-01-22T12:47:00.002-05:00

It's a simple fact of life: like George Lucas's continual "improvements" to the Star Wars trilogy, your perfect, flawlessly executed Google Analytics implementation will suffer at the hands of routine website maintenance and updates. New pages will appear out of the ether, untagged and untracked. Your exquisitely customized tracking code will inexplicably have a link to a dancing hamster gif inserted directly in the middle of it. That guy in IT will somehow gain admin access to the primary GA account and make "creative adjustments" to your custom reports, citing mysterious and illusive "corporate reporting standards". Then he spills a Mountain Dew on your keyboard.

"Revenue? Why are we reporting on THAT?"

Simply put, the more people touching your site, your data, your analytics kingdom, the more watchful you have to be. The best defense is constant, proactive vigilance, but even then, things will slip by you. Designers, programmers, and developers have their jobs to do, and analytics tracking quality is usually an afterthought. A well-developed QA process and management's emphasis on its importance will do wonders here, but in the meantime, here are 3 relatively quick ways to audit your Google Analytics implementation.

1. Are all pages tagged and passing information correctly? Sounds obvious, but lots of questions on missing, incomplete, or "weird" data in Google Analytics can be answered by identifying one or two untagged pages. Without the ability to capture user data set within the GA cookie on every page, you're going to start seeing a lot of odd data in your reports. In fact, I'll go on record as saying that if you haven't tagged every page on your site, you can not produce sound business recommendations from your analytics solution. This seems obvious, but depending on the site, a simple, untagged "About Us" page can throw a wrench into the whole works.

You have a couple different options here.

Visual confirmation. View the source code of the page in question (in your browser of choice, right-click and "View Source"). For a basic installation using the current Javascript code, your code should be inserted immediately before the closing tag - hit Ctrl + F and type "ga.js" to quickly find the code. While the presence of this code on the page doesn't necessarily mean its firing and passing data to GA, you'll be able to visually inspect for proper placement and/or random code insertion.

WHAT.

Scanning tools. For sites with more than 3 pages, the above option isn't really feasible. A great free tool is EpikOne's SiteScan, which will scan the first 100 pages of your submitted domain, then generate a very helpful CSV file with the results. Premium users get some additional features, but for smaller sites, the free service typically fits the bill. For an in-house solution, WASP (originally developed by Stephane Hamel of immeria) is an extremely robust extension for Firefox that will manually crawl your site and deliver all sorts of information on a wide variety of analytics solutions, not just GA. Extremely helpful is the fact that WASP doesn't simply look at the page's source code for tracking code, but actually tracks if the code fires. The free version is limited to 20 pages per crawl, but this is such a useful tool that you'll probably want to purchase a license if you're serious about tag audits.

2. Clean your filters! Functioning as a data bottleneck or net for which information gets displayed in your reports, filters in Google Analytics offer a fairly advanced level of customization. However, improperly formatted filters can result in inaccurate statistics populating your reports - or, in fact, block important data from being passed to GA at all. When first setting up a new filter, or if multiple users have access to edit existing filters, make sure to:

Always maintain a default, unfiltered profile. Since filters function as a kind of "data net" that prevent certain information from showing up in your reports, it's important to realize that once you apply a filter, that data is gone. If you set up an exclude filter on February 1st to block all internal traffic from appearing in your reports, then realize on the 28th that you've somehow managed to exclude all tracking data on visitors coming from Google, well...that's that. That data is gone, with no way to retroactively find it, and now you've got to explain to your boss why organic search traffic dropped 95% in February (and why you didn't catch it until the last day of the month!). Always maintain an unfiltered profile.
Brush up on that RegEx. Regular expressions offer an extremely flexible way to craft your filters, but can be fairly confusing at first. An inadvertent "." can completely change the data set you're capturing, so be sure to take some lessons and make use of another handy EpikOne tool, their RegEx tester. If you're simply trying to exclude internal traffic from a certain IP address, or a range of IPs, you can verify your coding skills with Google's RegEx generator for IP addresses.

3. Verify your incoming link tagging structure. If you have control over an inbound link (say, your specified destination URL for a Bing PPC ad), you can append the URL with some tracking variables to properly categorize that traffic in your reports. For example, my Bing ad, when clicked on, might take visitors to example.com/product.html?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=adcampaign1 - the bolded variables in this URL are captured by Google Analytics and let you know that the visit came from Bing, but was in fact from a CPC (cost-per-click) ad within your "ad campaign #1". Now that this information is tracked, you can analyze these visits in the same CPC reports you use for advertising in Google and do some nifty slicing and dicing.

I've covered link tagging in Google Analytics in more detail before, so here I'll just say - make sure your variables are logical and consistent. Don't tag paid Bing traffic as "ppc" when Google AdWords is grouped under "cpc". Remember that these tags are case-sensitive - "keyword" and "Keyword" will show up as two different items in GA. If you're doing banner advertising and paying for bundles of impressions, not clicks, don't throw that in with your pay-per-click campaigns! Doing so will only make analysis more difficult on your part - a well organized hierarchy of link variables can make the difference between spotting a staggeringly awesome opportunity and blowing past it with a "Traffic Sources" report that runs for 3 pages.

A lot of issues with Google Analytics revolve around these 3 items, or a combination thereof, so it's important to audit regularly and intelligently. A corporate push for data quality and a rock-solid QA process are incredibly helpful, but a weekly rundown of these 3 areas (using some of the tools above) can dramatically reduce lost data, identify potentially inaccurate statistics, and hopefully pinpoint some opportunities or areas for improvement!

SEO Tip in Google Analytics - Spotting Broken Inbound Links

2010-01-18T16:24:00.000-05:00

Much of the challenge in SEO (search engine optimization) lies in link prospecting and maintenance - that is, tracking down high ranking, relevant, and/or authoritative sites and encouraging them to link to your site. This in itself is no easy feat - and nothing is more frustrating than discovering that great link from AwesomeSiteThatRules.com is now pointing to a broken or now-nonexistent page on your website.

Link monitoring is a time-consuming and fairly tedious process, but there IS an easier way to find referring sites that are linking to inaccurate URLs. If you use Google Analytics on your site, here's a quick snippet of code you can add to your 404 page to capture those sites.

Every page on your site should have the default, standard tracking code installed. To view this within Google Analytics, find the profile for the site in question and click "EDIT" from the account overview screen, then "Check Status". It should look something like this (click to enlarge):

That circled bit of "X"s will actually be your unique GA account number. Now to see what sites have broken links pointing to your website, you'll want to add the following segment of code to the standard tracking code on only your 404 page. In the call to trackPageview, you'll add ...

"/404.html?page=" + document.location.pathname +

document.location.search + "&from=" + document.referrer

And you should end up with (click picture to enlarge):

Once this is set up, you should be able to track your 404 page from GA's "Content" reports, including referring sites. Now it's up to you - start bugging those people to update their links!

Top 5 Signs You Picked The WRONG Web Design Company

2009-12-09T14:15:00.001-05:00

Top 5 Signs You Picked the WRONG Web Design Company

5. The Company’s portfolio is on cocktail napkins – Seriously, when choosing a web designer, be it an individual or company, make sure you see their portfolio. Look for a portfolio that has a wide variety of designs. If the designs look the same, so will your site. Look for fresh examples. Have the sites been built lately as well as over time?

4. The Company ‘also’ does web sites – Graphic design, as it applies to the internet is a unique animal. The elements that make for good graphic print design may or may not apply to your website design. Web design needs to allow for the dynamic nature of Internet viewing across multiple browser types, versions and screen resolutions. Make sure you have chosen someone who is a specialist in graphic design for the web.

3. The Company doesn’t need your creative input – Certainly we need to allow the people we employ to do a specific job – do their job, yet NOBODY knows your business better than you do. A quality web design experience must include input from you throughout the process to ensure creative direction accomplishes your marketing goals. Pick a company that invites you to share in the process from start to finish.

2. The Company doesn’t DO Deadlines – Creative work needs time to develop, true enough. However, the best designer has a process and timeline in place to help you meet your deadlines. The only thing worse than getting handed a website design you didn’t approve (see #3), is getting handed that website a year after it was scheduled to be completed. You deserve to be kept informed on the process and timeline throughout your project. Who needs more surprises?

1. The Company gives family members and friends as references – While it is good to have good working relationships with your kin, having verifiable business references that demonstrate the company’s ability to serve people over time is a must. Look for a variety of industry types and company sizes among the references – which, by the way, you shouldn’t have to ask for.

Google Analytics, Marketing Campaigns & Conversion Attribution

2009-12-03T18:16:00.003-05:00

In the words of web analytics commando Avinash Kaushik, "I humbly believe that the world of data perfection ("clean auditable data") does not exist any more." And he's right! In the interests of moving away from data regurgitation and towards drawing actionable conclusions in the sea of web analytics and statistics, the first step should be the realization that even today, with all the cool gadgets at our disposal, web analytics data is imperfect and inherently flawed.

I mention this not to provide an excuse for incorrect conclusions and strategy ("If only that tracking code was installed correctly on my blog, I would've known to avoid using flashing strobe banner ads!"), but rather as a step towards analytics enlightenment. Yes, data may be flawed, but this should be your call to arms - find out how the data is flawed (or, stated another way, the limitations of the data set) and what you can do, as an analyst, to draw real-world conclusions from these numbers.

Here's an example. To let you identify high/low performing marketing efforts, Google Analytics will automatically track the source of visitors to your site. These are segmented into a few default mediums.

Check out the first row. The "cpc" segment captures traffic from "cost per click" or "pay per click" campaigns, such as Google AdWords. From here, you can see how many visitors that clicked through from your pay-per-click ad actually bought something from you, filled out a lead-generation form, etc.

But! You now know that this data has issues. Remember, your newfound acceptance of this axiom shouldn't be an excuse, a crutch to lean on; instead, this should inspire you to dig deeper and not take these numbers at face value.

And here's why: there's a specific way in which Google attributes things like conversions and e-commerce transactions to traffic sources. Let's say a user visits your website several different times via several different mediums, and finally buys something or completes a conversion. How do you know which of these mediums drove that purchase? With one exception*, in Google Analytics, conversions are attributed to the most recent campaign or medium by which that user arrived. For example:

Due to a recent break-in at her home, Jane Customer is shopping for broadswords. To begin her buying research, she searches for "home defense broadswords" on Google. From the results page, Jane clicks on a PPC ad for ADT's line of security swords. She browses the site for a while, checks out prices, but does not make a purchase - Jane wants to check out some other brands and options.
After sifting through the highly competitive landscape of medieval residential defense products, Jane settles on ADT and clicks on one of their banner advertisements on her Yahoo homepage. She arrives on ADT's site and makes her purchase.

In this example, it's fairly clear that Jane's first visit, via ADT's pay-per-click campaign, was probably most responsible for generating this sale! However, the purchase actually occurred on her second visit, when she arrived via a referral site - her Yahoo homepage. Google Analytics will attribute this purchase as being generated by a referral visit from Yahoo...and all the while your PPC conversion rate sadly continues to drop, bit by bit.

Uh-oh. So how flawed is your data? Can you make a serious business decision regarding the effectiveness of any given marketing campaign, based off incorrect or incomplete information? (Or as Mr. Kaushik would say, the "known unknowns"!) In terms of severity, this can be a serious issue if you're selling a product that's fairly expensive, fairly complex, or otherwise has a high-involvement buying process - every time a potential customer returns to your site, whether to continue researching or to purchase, their previous traffic source data is being overwritten!

(*The exception! For repeat visitors that return directly via a bookmark or typing the URL directly into their browser, Analytics will attribute any conversions to the immediate preceding traffic source. In the example above, if Jane's 2nd visit to ADT was from a bookmark or simply recalling the URL from her first PPC-sourced visit, the conversion would still be attributed to the PPC campaign.)

So for e-commerce sites with these high-involvement/long buying cycle products, or sites with a very high Visits-To-Purchase ratio, analysts may want to direct Analytics to ignore these secondary campaigns and attribute any conversions to the first campaign that directed the visitor to your site. With links under your control (such as banner ads, external blogs, or links posted on your company Twitter account), simply append the variable "&utm_nooverride=1" to the URL. This will prevent the original traffic source from being overwritten, thereby preserving the origin of each visitor. (For more info on Google Analytics tracking variables, see our post on Tracking Facebook, Twitter & Social Networks in Google Analytics.)

Is this solution perfect? No way. But this knowledge of inherent error is what should keep you nimble as an analytics commando. The idea that you can always learn more and refine your conclusions...this is what keeps us on our toes.

Five Top Don’ts of Social Media Marketing

2009-11-24T13:35:00.002-05:00

Social Media Marketing – using tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Digg – is a hot topic in the worlds of both Internet Marketing and Traditional Marketing. If you are considering stepping into the world of Social Media, here are five common and deadly mistakes to avoid.

1. Don't rush. Take time to learn about Social Media and how it works. Before you rush to set up that LinkedIn profile, take time to write, edit and plan your content. Understand the difference between Company and Personal profiles and don’t mix the two. Know the advantages of choosing an appropriate Twitter ID, before you just select the first thing available and start building followers. Having something well structured and crafted in your Social Media profiles will win the long race over something fast – just to get started.

With sites like Digg or Stumbleupon, take some time to become involved in the community and learn the ins and outs of the different categories. Nothing will kill your great article faster than submitting it in the wrong category – just because you think it’s a “Technology” article instead of “Science” doesn’t make it so. Learn the norms and get a feel for the community before jumping in.

2. Don’t forget your overall marketing strategy. Social Media should work with, not outside, of traditional marketing. What are your goals? How are you taking your brand to market? Blasting out a poorly strategized campaign that doesn’t compliment your brand image is a surefire way to confuse and disorient your audience. Craft your desired message, make sure it’s aligned with your overall objectives, and THEN start engaging.

3. Don’t PUSH. Virtually all forms of Social Media are about being popular and seen as welcoming to others. While traditional marketing might scream “buy me,” Social Media needs to be invitational and position you as an advocate for your potential clients. Remember, your audience has spent time and effort building up their online network and image. A pushy, “sales-y” intrusion into their social community is the equivalent of hitting up your dinner party guests for an investment in your ergonomic toilet seat venture. Don’t push – respond.

4. Don’t go it alone. Social Media Marketing is a fairly new way of going to market with your product or service. Be certain to consult with others about what they are doing successfully and reach out to professionals for advice and direction. There are scores of “social media gurus” flooding Twitter right now, simply because it’s a low cost medium and fairly easy to build a large network of followers and throw out some buzz words. Turning this into measureable and meaningful business results is something else entirely.

Be wary of anyone who tells you that you can’t handle your Social Media Campaign. It may be a little daunting at first, but once properly conceived and set-up, most Social Media requires only measured attention.

5. Don’t do everything. Social Media and Social Sharing tools are as numerous as the days are long, and trying to incorporate every possible Social tool into your marketing will leave you diluted and make it difficult to measure results. Once you decide on your goals, select the Social platforms that will help you accomplish those goals best.

Social Media Marketing isn’t a fad. These internet based tools are transforming the way companies position themselves on the internet. Get started. Be deliberate, strategic and measured, but get going.

Google Launches Comparison Ads as Part of AdWords

2009-10-30T17:13:00.006-04:00

Google has today announced the launch of Google Comparison Ads. IT offers a multitude of options on getting various mortgage rates from different lenders based on your location, credit scores, prices etc. At the moment, the site presently offers only mortgage products.

Going forward, I can see a lot of applications of comparison ads, For example if you were searching for particular model of HDTV and wanted to know about prices across retailers, this would be a good starting point. Same goes for insurance quotes, no lengthy forms to fill out. Google Comparison Ads use IP detection to detect your location. For me, it accurately pinpointed that I am located in Guilford County, NC. According to Search Engine Land, the site uses the Cost per lead metric to charge for the ads. The users enter their information and Google issues a bridge number so that the advertiser never sees the real phone number of the user being contacted by the mortgage lender. Here’s a screenshot of Google AdWords Comparison Ads:

Click Image For Enlarged View

For retailers, it will be a double-edged sword; you can be the most price competitive and get good conversions if price is the prime motivatin factor for the buyer. On the other hand, if you are feature rich but not price competitive, you may see a drop. Of course, as I see it, Google must be refining the product for different areas in their labs and incorporate key features while product shopping. For comparison shopping sites, it might turn out to be an 800 lb gorilla to deal with. This will be new avenue for marketers and advertisers to venture into. Interesting to see how it unfolds and how much success advertisers manage to wring out of it.

New Google Analytics Features Rolled Out

2009-10-20T15:38:00.004-04:00

Well, the BEM Interactive team of web analytics ninjas is just tickled pink over the new Google Analytics features that will be rolled out over the next few weeks. Best of all, these improvements bear the stamp of a team interested in generating NODA; that is, Not Only Data - Action.

While it would've been relatively easy for the Google Analytics folks to simply implement a few new metrics and call it a day, these features are geared towards drawing additional insight from the existing data. Hop on over to the Google Analytics Blog for the full scoop, but here's a quick summary:

Expanded Goals - Each profile can now track 20 goal points rather than 4, and several new engagement goals have been added
Additional Mobile Tracking - a server side solution for more in-depth tracking of mobile sites and users
New Analysis & Segmentation Options - Tools like Secondary Dimensions and Advanced Table Filtering (no more looking for high bounce rate keywords and having to weed out single-visit terms!)
Additional Sharing - more options for sharing custom report templates and advanced segments
More Custom Variables via tracking API - opens up metrics and dimensions for more powerful custom reporting
And particularly awesome, Analytics Intelligence - An algorithmic intelligence engine that will spot significant data spikes, swells and changes in site traffic - for example, automatically alerting the user of a 400% jump in organic traffic from a particular keyword over the last 3 weeks. So. Cool.

Needless to say, we are pretty stoked on playing around with these new features! Visit the Google Analytics Blog for additional videos, tips and info on the new features, but kudos to the Analytics team for not contributing to the wealth of raw data floating around out there.

Weekly Giveaways on Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn!

2009-10-13T09:03:00.004-04:00

Starting this week and running from approximately now to whenever our interns collapse from exhaustion like overheated camels, we'll be giving away free stuff each week to our followers/fans/connections on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Follow us on your preferred social platform (or all three if you're really 2.0), and we'll generally announce the giveaway around Monday or Tuesday of each week.

Free Things You Could Potentially Win:

Buy things with iTunes, Dell, Amazon.com, Visa gift cards
Impress attractive members of the opposite sex with stylish BEM Merchandise
Look smart by carrying around (or maybe reading!) a free tech/social/marketing book
One year of free standard hosting
Free sessions with our digital marketing consultants

Sound good? Then check BEM Interactive out on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and chat us up!

Social Media Optimization - SEO and Social Media, Killing two birds with one stone

2009-10-08T16:42:00.009-04:00

To put Search Engine Optimization into perspective, as a brand/website online, it is all about being the popular kid in the schoolyard. The popular school kid usually has the coolest shoes, the latest branded clothing and a wealth of cool insight to share with other kids, which makes kids aspire to be more like him.

In terms of SEO and Social Media, you want adoring followers, sites finding value in your services and products and eventually working towards gaining the top slot in the search engine results. Now social media such as blogs, twitter, etc. give you a chance to be among the popular school kid of the websites.

Why should you be bothered about it and why you should bother about getting into it in the first place? Everyone has his or her domain of expertise. Even clients in industries as diverse as say, ball bearings have expert knowledge in their domain. In their duration of business, they have surely encountered unique problems and delivered tailored solutions to solve them.

A blog post about a problem faced and solution delivered in daily business serves as a historical document establishing expertise. The beauty of social media is not only a blog can be a historical asset; this asset can be passed around, if the users find value. The key thing to note is that as a writer or contributor, a focus on demonstrating the solution of a problem needs to be displayed, not a blatant advertisement of your products and services. That creates value for other users and eventually might get passed around.

Along with the post, a link to your site, a photo and logo serves as an important tool towards bringing in new visibility. It helps to have an important, oft-visited site point to your domain and an advertisement that users are tuning into voluntarily. Best of all, it is usually free or costs little! An industry journal or a forum would appreciate your time and effort, in return, they get valuable content and you, as a client get traffic and exposure. Additionally, it lends a personality to your company. Industrial clients, where relationships thrive, please take note! A personal touch can make a line manager exclaim, “I like this guy Larry, he knows his stuff. Lemme give him a call and have him come and fix our motor before this thing conks out.”

In summation Social Media Optimization:

Helps establish your reputation as a Subject Matter Expert (SME)
Increases exposure of your company, services and products
Gets valuable traffic originating from a high traffic website, generating buzz
Gives you valuable back links
Gives you historical assets for customer referral

Have you had any experience with similar situations? Please leave a comment, I would love to hear your feedback or any points that you may want to add from your experience.

Web Analytics: Stats, Data, and Unwavering Devotion

2009-10-07T10:07:00.005-04:00

Congrats (and apologies!) to Jacob Kildebogaard ("Webstatistik, Webanalyse og Effektmåling"), seen here perusing Avinash Kaushik's excellent book "Web Analytics: An Hour a Day".

Web Site Optimizing & SEO Mistakes ('Cause Tonight We're Optimizing Like It's 1996)

2009-08-31T14:03:00.003-04:00

It's rare that I see this nowadays, but please avoid doing this (for a variety of very good reasons).

GOOD: providing a link to a non-Flash version of your website:

BAD: This really doesn't work anymore.

Social Media Networking Becomes Actual Networking

2009-08-06T10:07:00.002-04:00

With all the buzz about Social Media and other methods of virtual networking, I am amazed at how little is being said about the need to take virtual connections to the level of conversations between real people.

I want to weigh in on the side of face-to-face networking and offer a reminder of the value of developing a skill set in order to be a successful networker in the world of flesh and blood people. For the purpose of this post, I’ll refer to networking in terms of attending events or meetings that are specifically designed for business networking (i.e. Chamber events, networking group socials, trade shows, etc.)

Networking is best handled as brief social interactions that involve the exchange of information in such a way that we can turn conversations into prospects. I like to think of several steps in an effective networking exchange: Personal presentation, Inviting conversation, Empathetic listening, Card exchange and Enticing introductions. Use the acronym P.I.E.C.E for remembering this process.

Personal presentation – One of basic components of networking is to remove the outward and visible obstacles to your success. Old sayings stay around because they are often true and such is the case for saying “You only have one chance to make a first impression.” Take care to groom and dress appropriately for the event. I have found it very useful to consult with a clothing retailer to learn about current styles and fashions. Traditional hair styles change gradually and the advice of a good barber or stylist can be worth much more than the price of a hair style. Beyond these sources, speak with a close family member or friend and let them help you identify any grooming or habits that you have that might make a less than favorable impression. Use little or no perfume or cologne. You might enjoy the scent, but there are as many disliked aromas as there are people – so any fragrance will offend someone. I certainly don’t want a haircut, suit or perfume getting in the way of helping someone to benefit from owning products and services they need!

Inviting conversation – Most 'networkers' make the mistake of thinking they need to tell people all about themselves and their product or service. Break the pattern and ask someone what they do and how you can help them. In addition, develop a short list of probing questions that will invite your future client to talk more about themselves and their business. Become well versed at asking questions. Remember, this part is all about how you can help them. NOTE: leave your cell phone behind, or at a minimum place it on vibrate. Nothing truncates a good networking conversation like an interrupting ring tone.

Empathic listening - There is one significant key to meaningful and productive conversation – listening. Be the sales representative that breaks the persona of being a chatty sales person. Listen to others, repeat their comments back to them, and let them know you are paying attention. Most importantly realize that your success will come by helping others. You need to know who they are and what they need in order to help. Remember the words of Zig Ziglar, “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”[1]

Card Exchange – Your most tangible networking tool is your business card. Your card should present you and your business clearly, but most importantly you must get and give cards to access relevant information. You need a reminder of who you met and they need to take you (your card at least) home with them. Get their card and make short notes about your conversation on the card. NOTE: Some business cards today are filled with text, or made of products that don’t allow for writing notes, so you might want to have a small notepad handy.

Enticing introductions – At some point in the conversation, you will get asked about yourself. If they don’t ask about you, dig further into who they are. There is natural law of reciprocity in conversation so be ready for it when they ask about you, your product or service. Every sales person should have an enticing introduction ready to present at anytime. Sometimes called the “Elevator Speech,” these introductions have a variety of components including, but not limited to: 1. your name and the name of your company, 2. a brief list of the two or three most significant facts about your product or service, 3. a reference to one or two of the benefits your clients receive and 4. a wrap-up sentence with your company’s name and a tag phrase summary. You can get more detailed instructions on how to craft such an introduction by searching resources online (see side bar links). The point here is to give the future client a whiff of what you can do for them and leave them wanting more. When you are asked for more detail, politely request that you contact them at a less rushed time and visit more with them. With permission to contact them later, you have been successful and can move on to the next future client and offer them a PIECE! NOTE: Remember to get permission to invite your new contact into your Social Media network to make it easier to keep in touch.
Happy Networking!

[1] Zig Ziglar, "Secrets of Closing the Sale", 1984.”

Facebook, Twitter and Google Analytics – Tracking Social Networks in Google Analytics, Part 2

2009-07-13T06:39:00.006-04:00

(for Part 1, see our previous blog Track Facebook, Twitter & Social Networks in Google Analytics Pt. 1)

Previously, we discussed accurately categorizing your social network traffic within Google Analytics. Instead of seeing your Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube traffic scattered amongst all other referring sites, we used a filter to group social media sites under one medium.

But what about tracking visitors down to a more granular level? For example, you know that 100 visitors came to your site from Twitter – but which tweet drove the most traffic? Do your Twitter followers click when you talk about one product vs. other? We can collect this information using two very simple tools.

Tagging Links in Google Analytics

I discussed this awhile ago (Top 3 Google Analytics Tracking Tips), but for this, let’s focus on tracking specific social marketing efforts. We want to know which specific link brought traffic, and be able to analyze that information. This is fairly easy and only takes about a minute to incorporate.

With a text limit of 140 characters, microblogs like Twitter or Facebook force users to keep it short and simple. Usually, there’s no room for long, drawn out URLs like www.example.com/products/XYZproduct.html. So, websites like TinyURL.com and bit.ly take web addresses, shorten them, and provide that hyperlink, which users then use to direct visitors – thereby giving them more room to include actual text. The great thing about these URL shortening services is that you can tag the original link with Google Analytics’ tracking variables and correctly identify the source of visitors. Here’s one in action:

Let's walk through an example. JimBob P. Yokel owns an online malt liquor supply store (“You ain’t never gon’ find no better booze, no how,” JimBob swears). He uses Twitter regularly to inform his customers of sales and specials, and like many other Twitter users, incorporates shortened URLs into his posts.

But before he shortens these URLs, he uses BEM Interactive’s Google Analytics URL Tagging Tool. This enables him to identify, down to the individual Tweet, how visitors found his site. So for a Twitter post promoting Colt .45 (“It’s the maltiest!” says JimBob), he might tag the link like so:

Source: twitter (the site he’s posting on)
Medium: social network (if you’ve created the filter described in Part 1 of this blog, this will correctly identify the traffic as belonging to that category. If not, this can be “tweet” or something similar)
Campaign Name: colt45 (if JimBob is grouping his marketing efforts by product type, and Colt 45 is a type of malt liquor that he’s promoting in the tweet)
Term: 7_15_11AM (identifies which specific tweet or post drew the visit. Here, JimBob has identified a post by time - July 15th at 11AM. This can be classified according to whatever works best for you – as long as it’s consistant)

So, if JimBob’s destination URL is http://www.JimBobsHouseOfMalt.com/colt_45.html, then the entire link, with tags, is:

http://www.JimBobsHouseOfMalt.com/colt_45.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social network&utm_term=7_15_11AM&utm_campaign=colt45

Pretty nasty looking, eh? A visitor arriving after clicking that link would be correctly identified and tracked – but a URL like that won’t even fit in a Twitter post! What’s to be done?

Here’s where the TinyURLs of the world come in! JimBob copies his resulting URL, complete with Google Analytics tags, out of the builder tool. Then he heads to TinyURL.com (or bit.ly, or any other URL shortening service), plugs in his nasty-looking tagged URL and hits submit, getting a cute little link in return! It looks better, gives JimBob more space to pitch the product (“Only the maltiest make the cut,” he vows), and perhaps most importantly, retains all the visitor tracking tags and information.

Maintaining the correct variables & formats of those variables, you can track all your website traffic from links in Twitter tweets, Facebook status updates, or any other links. This control and flexibility really comes in handy when analyzing the numbers and impact of social network marketing.

Track Facebook, Twitter & Social Networks in Google Analytics (Part 1)

2009-07-06T16:38:00.006-04:00

A cornerstone of any organization’s overall social marketing strategy should be reliable web analytics – that is, accurate tracking of traffic coming from networking sites on which you’re conducting marketing efforts. This will enable you to slice and dice statistics for those visitors, and hopefully align those numbers with your marketing goals - when a client comes to us and wants to engage in some form of social media marketing, this melding of analytics and strategy is always paramount.

Google Analytics will automatically track referrals from other websites, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and other networking sites. In your reports, you’ll see something like this:

However, these sites are grouped in with all other referring traffic! What if you want to track statistics for incoming traffic from ALL social network sites? It’ll be hard to do that if you have to sift through all your other referral traffic.

Additionally, how can you track what exactly someone clicked on to visit your page? Wouldn’t it be nice to know which of your Twitter posts (ah yes, which “tweet”) generated that $500 purchase?

With a few tweaks, we can track exactly that in Google Analytics.

Grouping Social Network Traffic in Google Analytics

Google naturally defines traffic as being organic, direct, referral, etc – so what we’re doing here is telling Analytics to place certain sites within a certain category, or “medium.” Chances are, this is how your Traffic Medium report looks right now:

Organic traffic covers non-paid visits from search engines, (none) means direct traffic (IE, a visitor typed in your website’s address directly), and all your social networks are grouped under referral traffic.

We want a separate category for those sites though! Using a filter, we can tell Analytics to remove specific sites from the “referral” classification and group them under a new medium.

(Note: This technique involves creating a filter. Create a duplicate profile (how?) before proceeding – any mistakes can screw up your historical data. We’ll install the filter on the new, duplicate profile.)

Once you’ve got the profile set up, click “Filter Manager” from the Overview Screen (the one that lists all your profiles), then “Add Filter”:

Name your filter something descriptive, then select “Custom Filter” from the Filter Type drop down box. We are advanced analytics ninjas, so select the “Advanced” button and configure the filter like so:

The “Campaign Source” and “Campaign Medium” fields can be customized based on your site’s traffic – in this example, we’re pulling any referrals that contain “Stumbleupon” or “ezinearticles”, and we’ve grouped them using the Regular Expression character “|” (directly below your Backspace key), representing “or”.

So, to pull out all traffic from Facebook, Digg and Twitter, I would type “face|digg|twitter” into this field – any referrals that contain these terms (“face”, or “digg”, or “twitter”) will be grouped into a new medium called “social network”.

After you’ve applied the filter, you should see this spiffy little line in your Traffic Medium report:

…and presto! Your social network traffic is grouped in one distinct category, separate from your Google Image referrals (man, that’s a lot of cat pictures).

In part 2, we’ll talk about tracking visitors down to more specific sources, enabling us to answer questions like “Which tweet drove more visitors, the one about lunch or the one about that jerk-face Bryan from accounting?” and “Does anyone really care about my Facebook status?” Stay tuned!

Note: Part 2, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Analytics is now up.

Follow BEM Interactive on twitter!

2009-07-06T09:05:00.006-04:00

We'll be dropping updates and info from our Twitter account - including random links and cool stuff we've found. Click here or on the adorable cat to follow BEM Interactive on twitter.

All I ever needed to know about Analytics I learned at....

2009-06-23T17:56:00.005-04:00

Jeremy Shaffer's Web Analytics 101 Course this morning.
...well, almost everything, of course he left us hanging a bit until the next Course 102, Date/Time TBD.
Here's a couple of tidbits that I found pretty neat:
-Add a filter in Google Analytics to exclude your IP address from showing up as a visit on the site. That way your internal staff that are frequenting the site, won't skew the results.
-35-40% is an average bounce rate for most websites.
- You can set up goals based on a conversion point on your site's contact us form, whitepaper downloads, or at checkout for e-commerce sites.

Drop us a line if you're interested in signing up for the next course and I'll add you to the notification list for upcoming sessions.

(Oh! And in case you're wondering whether we ate this cake pictured above...we did not. However, we did enjoy yummy bagels and coffee from Panera)

Search Engine Marketing & SEO Tips for MSN's Bing

2009-06-22T17:30:00.004-04:00

Microsoft's massive marketing engine has brought the world of search into the public eye with the launch of Bing. Bing has been labeled as not a search engine, but rather a "decision engine" - that is, capable of delivering intelligent results, rather than simply aggregated data. It's MSN's latest attempt to take on Google, and Bing is equipped with some pretty fierce weaponry for the job.

Attracting Traffic In A Sea of Options

From a business standpoint, the advent of engines like Bing and Google means a dramatic shift in the amount of information available to customers. Marketers and webmasters will have to adapt to users having a much larger set of options and greater access to detailed information. A great example is Bing's "Related Searches" options displayed on their results page.

Bing provides not only related searches, but provides subsets of similar information. Here, a search for "1966 GTO" yields multiple links to more specific data (click to enlarge).

Case in point: your vintage car dealership may hold the number 1 position on the search results page for the term "1966 GTO." In Google, this is great! Related searches are listed at the bottom of Google's search results page, and anyone looking for anything dealing with a '66 GTO is likely to click through to your site - simply because it's in the first position. But in Bing, the related searches are listed directly alongside the results! Someone looking for "1966 GTO body parts" may see that term displayed directly to the left of your website. Since that's what they're really looking for, they click, and boom - they're off on another, more relevant search, and your #1 position listing goes sadly unclicked. More than ever before, it's important to anticipate (as specifically as possible) what people are truly seeking, and optimize around that.

Learning How Bing Ranks Pages

But for many folks, the big question is still the same: how can I rank highly in Bing search results? Early analysis of Bing shows that when determining ranking, the engine is actually much more strict than MSN's previous incarnation, and perhaps even harsher than Google! One report indicates that Bing places lots of emphasis on domain age - that is, how long your website has been around.

Oddly enough, Bing seems to pay less attention to incoming links (other sites linking to your page). This is contrary to Google's appreciation for a keyword-rich, widely distributed network of incoming links. This ranking technique, among other innovations, made Google into the search juggernaut it is today - it's quite interesting to see Bing taking a different approach.

There's also some evidence that page titles, text-heavy pages, and even lots of outbound links to other sites (a no-no for Google) have much greater importance in Bing than other engines. Of course, this is essentially a brand new engine attempting to topple the search behemoth - expect to see some volatility in Bing's algorithms (as well as Google and Yahoo!) as the dust clears.

Avoiding the Internet Billboard - Incentivizing Your Website

2009-06-05T08:22:00.005-04:00

One question that's sure to come up when any website owner is dissatisfied with their traffic numbers/conversion numbers/what have you is The Big One: "How can I draw more traffic?" And, if they're thinking with a bit of strategy behind them, this question will hopefully be, "How can I draw more qualified traffic?"

As any wet-behind-the-ears web marketer knows, it's really not that hard to increase a site's hits. The trick is attracting the right people and incentivizing.

Incentivizing. Offering value to your visitors. You must do it. Your website is not a billboard.

This seems to be a staggeringly obvious, "well, DUH" statement, but it can be difficult to move past the idea of the website as a simple, traditional sales tool. It's a brochure on a computer, right? An internet commercial, if you will.

But the problem with not incentivizing your website is this: people don't have to be there. When you're driving, plopped in front of the TV, or otherwise trapped by the advertising powers-that-be, the biggest advantage they have is that really...you can't do much about it! You're a captive audience, and you will watch this commercial for mops and that's that.

And of course, that's not how the internet works. Users are drawn to your site because they need something - information, a product or service, entertainment. They're actively seeking out what you've got!

This is the big advantage that a lot of internet-based advertising has over the traditional, shotgun-style mass market approach: pay-per-click ads and search engine optimization, when done properly, will ensure that the right audience finds your site on their own. And therein, simultaneously, a huge weakness - the user is in control! They're not in front of the TV and the remote is on the other couch, or stuck in traffic and staring at a billboard; all they need to do is click the "Back" button.

Here's where incentivizing comes in - you've got an interested, qualified prospect hitting your page. Chances are, you've got some competitors that offer a similar product, service, or content. Providing visitors with an incentive to do what you want them to do will immediately give you a step up over other sites that just say, "Well, here's our stuff. NOW GIVE ME SOME MONEY."

So what are some incentives? Well, that depends on what you're looking for from your website.

Lead Generation. What services you provide, site design, how you present the company, etc - all these things are very basic and certainly affect the number of leads you get. However, between 2 similar companies, all things being equal, the one that provides an incentive for filling out a "Contact Us" form will probably get more leads. These incentives can be coupons, white papers, 50% off first month's service, etc - it really doesn't have to be much! The idea of getting something for free is a pretty big draw in itself.
Lots of traffic. As always, nothing pulls traffic like quality content. Controversial, informative, entertaining, useful - solid content is, by far, the best way to increase and maintain visitor numbers. And don't assume that just because you sell bumpers for industrial graders that you can't have interesting content! Start a blog and post - show your passion through your writing, and people with similar interests will come.
Product Sales. This goes without saying - price and free stuff have a lot of pull here! "Limited Time Reduced Shipping", "Free Widget with Every Gadget Purchased" - again, with all other things being equal, incentivizing the purchase will bring more transactions your way.

In closing - take a serious look at your website. Get into the perspective of a first-time visitor - they've found your site, they're already interested in what you've got. What's the value you're offering the user? Why should they submit their info for your sales team? Why should they spend time browsing your site if all you've got on every page is sales jargon but nothing they can use? Where's the value?

Just as no one would volunteer for more commercials or more billboards along their morning commute, no one will spend time on a website that offers them nothing in return. Delivering solid content or other incentives will show visitors something of value, and keep them coming back.

Get Ready to Laugh

2009-05-21T09:28:00.002-04:00

Thanks to Ginger Gallagher, president at MediaFit, for this little diddy.

Google Analytics Link Tagging Tool / URL Builder from BEM Interactive

2009-05-19T16:18:00.004-04:00

Hey all - just a quick heads-up that BEM Interactive's URL builder tool for Google Analytics is now available. Using this, you can tag inbound links in your newsletters, banners, non-AdWords PPC, etc, so Google identifies and categorizes the visitors correctly (you can read more about that in our previous post on using Analytics to track non-Google marketing & advertising).

We assume no responsibility if you mis-tag your links! But there are some instructions to go with the tool - so go nuts with our Google Analytics URL tagging tool.

How to “listen” for key information on the web

2009-05-15T09:30:00.000-04:00

Would you like to be sent an email whenever your company is mentioned on the internet?

How about when a competitor wins a big contract or issues a press release?

Well there are several ways to make this happen and it’s all about “listening” on the internet.

One of the key tools for digging up these juicy secrets is to use Google Alerts. You can setup a Google Alert for just about anything. Google will send you an alert either daily or weekly with the latest updates on all your alerts.

Google offers a great tutorial on how to setup alerts. Check it out here and you'll be on top of all the things you need to know.

Tips for what to listen for:

Listening for your company name will make you aware when you are the topic of conversation.
Listen for primary competitors names. You’ll be notified when they send a press release, win a new big contract, as they bring on new staff or if they have a layoff.
Listen for your trademarks and service marks to ensure you are on top of any potential legal issues with your protected marks.
Listen for key phrases related to your products or services to keep abreast of your industry.
Listen for mention of your customers to keep up to date with your key accounts
Listen for key vendors to make sure you know about any issues they are encountering

Although this is a great way to keep informed of key events, it’s not 100% reliable. Google catches many conversations and alerts you to them, but some will be missed.

Affiliate Marketing, Pay-Per-Post Blogging, and the End of Social Networking?

2009-05-12T09:28:00.003-04:00

Mitch Joel over at Six Pixels of Separation posted a great blog the other day discussing paid links and pay-per-post blogging in Twitter. In a nutshell, it's when companies pay avid bloggers or established social networking figures to post/blog/link to their product/site/whatever. Since social media sites thrive on accurate & credible word-of-mouth ("Oh, Joe thinks these sunglasses are cool and he's a pretty cool guy. Maybe I can get these sunglasses and be similarly awesome!"), these campaigns are much more effective without full and accurate disclosure on the part of the poster and/or advertiser.

In his post, Mitch pretty accurately sums up my feelings on the matter:

YES. I'm already weeping tears of joy that someone is with me on this, and then:

Awesome stuff, Mitch (the following is my comment on his blog).

One of the things I always attempt to pass on to clients is the genuine understanding and appreciation for XX Social Networking site (wherever they're trying to be). A lot of companies will assign the task to SOMEONE in-house in hopes that simply generating a presence on Facebook, Twitter, whatever, will help their company; of course, it DOESN'T, and sometimes ends up hurting the brand because of actions similar to the ones discussed in your post. There's NO overall strategy, NO matching of marketing objectives to the proper social media site (if there ARE any marketing objectives for the campaign), and ultimately, no understanding that for a social media effort to work, that company has to honestly contribute to and become part of the community.

As marketers, I really think we've got to be conscious of the personal effort people have put into constructing their social media personae and networks. To those folks, this ISN'T seeing a banner ad on CNN.com - affiliate linking (which, let's face it, is more credible/profitable if people think it's genuine and not a marketing campaign) and pay-per-post blogging is seen as an uninvited intrusion into the user's social network and personal life. I've heard dozens of stories of businesses diving headfirst into Facebook or blog networks and just RUINING their name by attempting some silly, heavy-handed traditional "push" campaign, or a poorly thought-out affiliate marketing design.

I don't think social networking will completely be destroyed by things like this, but it certainly will cause more user movement between different websites. Sites will build up buzz and momentum but ultimately, will be deserted as affiliate marketers, link farmers, what-have-you, follow the masses.

Great post Mitch, cheers.

The One Club

2009-05-11T14:04:00.006-04:00

The One Club is a graphic designer's dream! It acknowledges and features awards showcasing the best work in print, radio, television, design, interactive, and new media. This is an interesting site to browse through if you need inspiration on new media campaigns you may have in your future.

Here are last year's winners:

One Show Winners

One Show Interactive Winners

One Show Design Winners

The 2009 First-Cut and Finalists are out! Click here to view them.

Enjoy your stay at The One Club!

Happy Birthday Debbie Bohl

2009-04-30T16:12:00.005-04:00

450 Feet of Aluminum foil: $20
2 and half hours X 2 people spent foiling the cubicle: $250
Watching Debbie come in to a surprise birthday decoration this morning: Priceless!