Web/Tech Archives - McLellan Marketing Group

Change like we can’t imagine (yet)

August 26, 2020

Voice technology is changing everything. I know that’s a ridiculously bold statement. But let’s go back in time.

It was about 1989 and I was walking through an airport. I spotted a man on one of those bag phones and thought, “why in the world would anyone ever want to carry a phone with them all the time?” If someone had stopped me that day and said, “mobile technology is going to change everything,” I wouldn’t have believed them and I certainly couldn’t have imagined the critical role that our cell phones play in our lives today.

In fairness, voice is changing everything, at least initially, thanks to our cell phones. We’re at the caveman stage of understanding how to harness voice technology and how it will dramatically alter the way we live, work, play and communicate.

This sounds like hyperbole but we’ve been watching our world build up to this since cell phones came on the scene. As they became commonplace, another element that is critical for voice was also gaining some steam – artificial intelligence (AI).

Remember back in the 90s, when you first experienced an automated phone tree, where you were asked simple questions and based on your answers, routed through a series of pre-recorded messages? I don’t know about you, but for me, that was rarely a positive experience. I typically ended up shouting at the phone in an attempt to be understood and hitting zero as often as I needed to, to get to a human being. The natural language processing technology just wasn’t that good yet and while the intention was sound, the experience was not.

Fast forward to this past week. Using my cell phone, I was able to contact United and get a real-time update on where my lost luggage was in 37 seconds. Thanks to AI and voice technology, it was seamless, easy, and efficient. Think about the conversations you have with Siri, Alexa, or Google. And even with that huge leap forward, we’re still at the inventing fire stage of this shift.

As marketers, we are always looking at whatever is new and wondering, is it a fad? Is this just another channel? Is this something that is going to be widely adopted by my audience or industry? We’re already working with limited resources – do I need to invest in this too?

Voice, I believe, is a seismic shift, like the internet and mobile phones were. And in a way – they’re all simply the next wave of the same shift. But voice will touch everything. It is already changing SEO and search. This year, it is estimated that over 50% of all searches will be conducted by voice. The whole idea of wanting to be on the first page of a Google search result will go by the wayside because voice searches don’t offer up ten options. It offers up one. Suddenly it’s the featured snippet or nothing.

There will be a day when people going to your website can navigate through it without ever clicking on a link. How we think about our owned media, like our websites, is going to be flipped on its head.

If you aren’t learning more about voice, as a marketer you need to make that commitment. Here are two conferences worth considering:

MAICON: The first annual Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference took place in July 2019 and although the 2020 conference has been canceled due to COVID, the dates for the 2021 conference are locked into place – July 13-15, 2021. We heard a lot about the merging of AI and voice at the first conference and the conversation is bound to grow in 2021.

Voice Summit: This event has been in existence for four years and is the largest voice-first event with over 5,000 attendees last year. They are still on track for their event, October 5-15, 2020 but keep up to date here for any changes.

Now is the time to learn and explore this new opportunity.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

How to get ratings and reviews

August 5, 2020

A couple summers ago, my daughter and I went on a three-week African adventure. As you can imagine, we stayed in many different hotels, resorts and safari lodges while we were there. We also enjoyed the company of several different tour guides, tour companies, restaurants, and venues.

Every one of those businesses survives and thrives on word of mouth recommendations, and in today’s world – rating and reviews from crucial sites like Trip Advisor, Yelp, and others.

What I found fascinating is the range of ways they did or didn’t ask for our feedback and/or reviews.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating – I don’t care what you sell or who you serve, there is power in capturing customer feedback. I’ve never known a business, no matter how amazing it is, that can’t benefit from candid input from a recent customer. Not only can you up your game by heeding their observations and unmet needs but you can earn their loyalty by responding and sharing how you are going to take their feedback into account.

Beyond that, research shows us time and time again that ratings and reviews play a significant role in influencing buying decisions. I think one of the most foolish misperceptions surrounding ratings and reviews is the idea that you shouldn’t ask for them, because you’ll get bad ones. Guess what – you’re going to get the bad ones, whether you ask or not.

People are much more inclined to share their bad experiences and frustration on review sites and social media channels. The only way to counter-balance that is to ask your best, happiest customers to leave a review too. It takes 10-12 good reviews to nullify the impact of a bad review, but the good news is – the more good reviews you earn by asking for them – the further down those bad reviews go.

How do you get ratings and reviews? There’s no one right answer but trying a mix of these tactics should net you some good results.

Be extraordinary: The easiest way to get positive reviews is to be worthy of them. This is not as easy as it sounds. I’m not talking about being satisfactory. I am talking about knocking their socks off with your service. This takes time, training, and a shared vision of what customer service looks like in your organization.

Have signage at the point of delivery: If you own a retail establishment, be sure you advertise that you’d welcome reviews and ratings in your store. If you run an online business, include a postcard with links to the review sites that mean the most to your business.

Share your reviews on your social channels: Let everyone know that you are actively monitoring and responding to reviews by sharing a few. Better yet – share one that is not a 5-star and talk about how you are going to evolve your business based on that feedback.

Follow up after the sale: Call, email, or send snail mail to your customer a few days after delivery. Genuinely ask about their experience and if the product/service is meeting their needs. Once you’ve engaged them in the conversation, invite them to leave a review.

Don’t forget your older sales: It’s definitely worth putting together a campaign aimed at people who have purchased from you, but maybe not in the last couple of months. You might score a twofer – a great review and trigger a repeat purchase!

Soliciting ratings and reviews should be part of every organization’s marketing plan. This is not a one tactic fits all situation, so experiment with several of these until you find the right combination. Don’t leave such an important aspect of how potential customers evaluate your business to chance.

Are you hiding in plain sight?

March 4, 2020

Who doesn’t want to be found? Whether you have a retail shop or sell your time and talent – every business needs to be findable. There’s an expression that says “if Google doesn’t know you exist, then you don’t exist” and in today’s world, there’s a lot of truth in that statement. You need to make sure you’re not hiding in plain sight.

We know that 80+% of people use the internet to do research before making a purchase. That number gets even larger when the purchase is expensive or is business-related. If Google doesn’t offer you up as an option, you may never get the opportunity to try to win the sale.

For many businesses, their circle of influence and potential customers are within a certain radius of their physical location. If you’re a dry cleaner, then you know your radius may not be more than a couple of miles. But if you’re a financial planner or lawyer, it may be 100 miles or more.

There are some strategies you can employ to make sure you’re found when someone in your local market conducts a search for your kind of business. None of this is a promise of first-page placement but the more of these tactics you put into place and keep updated, the better your search ranking will be.

You absolutely can spend money on Google Adwords or other paid search options. But before you do that – make sure you have a strong foundation laid.

Make sure you are listed: Go to https://www.google.com/business and search for your business. You can claim your business (you’ll have to verify it through the mail or by phone). Be sure to include quality photos of your business, your team and even a few of the items you sell.

Even though Google is the king of search, don’t neglect Bing, Yelp, Apple Maps, Facebook and any other directories specific to your industry.

Establish citations: Citations are websites where you can list your business. There are a bazillion of these sites, so don’t try to do it all by hand. There are sites out there called aggregators that will provide your information to all of these citation sites. Or you can use a service like Moz Local (https://moz.com/local/overview) or Yext (http://www.yext.com/).

Actively seek reviews: Most business-to-business organizations dismiss reviews as being “a retail thing.” And most retail businesses dread the review discussion. The truth is, you’re going to trigger reviews, whether you want them or not. So why not influence them so you can invite your happiest, best clients to speak out?

Unless you’re in an industry that has a very well-known specialty review site, focus on Google and if it makes sense for your business, Yelp. Don’t waste a lot of time on obscure sites that don’t get a lot of traffic.

Credibility links: Are you a member of the local Chamber? Or is your company profiled on a trade association’s site? Think about all of the places your business exists online and link to them within the context of your site. Whether it’s a membership, an award or even a media story – take advantage of the power of the other sites’ credibility and Google juice by linking directly to them.

Build your site with search in mind: Some of the basics really matter. As you write or add content to your website, remember to be smart about keywords, the number of words on each page and other organic search basics.

No matter what your company does, search is incredibly competitive. You can’t afford to ignore this marketing playing field anymore. But, before you spend a dime, make sure you’ve done everything you can for free to impact your listings. That will become a much stronger platform to launch from.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

The Mechanics of a Successful Webinar

January 29, 2020

When I’m talking about a webinar, I am not talking about a one-on-one web-based demonstration or sales meeting. I’m talking about an event you would promote to a larger audience, and the event itself is intended to be a group experience.

Webinars are a smart tactic if you want to:

Educate prospects or customers
Field objections and questions in a live environment
Demonstrate aspects of your product or service in an interactive way
Establish your thought

Note that “drive sales” is not on that list. A webinar is not a hard-driving sales tool. It’s higher up in the funnel and serves more of a marketing function. That doesn’t mean you won’t garner sales from the webinar. But it shouldn’t be your focus. Webinars are successful if they’re helpful, if people connect to the presenter and feel like they walked away with knowledge or insights that are valuable.

Here are some mechanics to consider as you think through your webinar strategy:

Tools: There are many good webinar tools out there and the right one for you will depend on price, number of attendees possible, the ability to record and other factors.

Timing: Assuming you mostly serve North American clientele, shoot for 1 or 2 pm eastern. The east coast attendees aren’t so close that they’re wrapping up for the day and at the same time, the west coast is up and into their productive zone by then.

Promotion: Webinars are not a “build it and they will come” sort of thing. You need to get the word out and issue multiple invitations. Give yourself at least a 30-day window for promotion. If you already have a list of prospects, that’s a smart place to start. You’ll get your biggest flurry of sign-ups around ten days before the event. If you make a big deal out of the fact that they’ll get access to a recording of the webinar whether they attend or not – you’ll get more takers.

Leave behind: I think of my PPT deck as a leave behind when I am working on a webinar. I’m always going to offer it to the attendees at the end, so I build it with that in mind. Unlike a deck for a speech, where I might have a single image and no words, I use a lot of bullets and text for my webinar decks. I know I am in essence taking notes for the attendees, so my slides are a little denser in content.

Format: As you think about constructing your webinar, explore easy to grasp “packages” for the information you want to share. Like:

Five mistakes to avoid
Ten questions to ask before…
Four unexpected benefits of…

This style of formatting will help you tease and promote the content. It will also help you avoid trying to pack too much information into the webinar. It lends itself to a strong wrap up for you as a presenter and gives your attendees something to grab hold of and remember.

No matter how or when you deliver your webinar, be sure you know what you want to happen once you sign off. Do they get a “thanks for attending” email? Do they get a link to deeper content on one of your key points? Don’t lose the momentum. When the webinar wraps, it’s not the end, it’s the beginning.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

Do you or don’t you gate your content?

December 31, 2019

Your website is your marketing workhorse. The more people who visit it and find the content compelling, the better. It should reflect not only what you sell but also who you are as a company and how you connect with your customers.

Unfortunately, it’s not a “build it and they will come” sort of a deal. We need to go out and find our audience and entice them to visit our site. For many organizations, creating compelling content is one of the core ways they get that done.

Creating content that is of value to your audience is a topic we’ll explore in the future because it deserves more than a mention. But for now, we’re going to assume you’ve already created some killer content that will really teach your audience something of value and that they’d be anxious to get it.

Once it’s been created, the question becomes how you do want to allow them to access it? Do you want to just let them download it without you requiring any information or do you want to gate the piece? If you don’t know, gated content refers to the act of putting something on your website or landing page that people want and asking them for information in exchange for that information.

There are some distinct advantages and disadvantages to both methods.

Advantages of gated content:

You’ll know who is accessing the content so you can gauge the content’s effectiveness in terms of attracting your target audience.
You’ll have some contact information so you can continue to market to them with additional content/offers.
When people have to “pay” for something with their email address or contact information, the perceived value is higher

Disadvantages of gated content:

Many of your website visitors will opt out of downloading the content because they don’t want to give up their anonymity.
If you’re using the content to earn links, shares and social amplification, the barriers will make that tougher.
Depending on how you protect the content, you may lose SEO opportunities.

Advantages of open access content:

You will get your content into the hands of the largest possible audience if there are no barriers to accessing it.
If you’re going to use retargeting, a larger audience is ideal.
Social shares and unlimited access will drive traffic metrics, SEO benefits, and page rankings.

Disadvantages of open access content:

It’s tough to create leads or connect eventual sales from anonymous visitors.
You can’t follow up or proactively offer additional content or support to your site visitors.
It’s difficult to know if your content is attracting your ideal audience when you allow them to remain anonymous.

There’s no right or wrong answer. And gated versus open access aren’t the only two answers. You might want to consider a hybrid solution.

You can create semi-gated content or layered content. With this strategy, you would create an introductory piece that you would give away without restrictions. As a part of that piece, you’d invite them to get even more goodness, if they want it. Then, you expand on the original piece to create something with so much value that people will gladly trade their email address for it.

Whether you gate, ungate or semi-gate – it all boils down to offering something that is truly helpful or valuable. It can’t be about you or feel like a sales pitch. Once you have something good to offer, carefully consider your end game and weigh the advantages and disadvantages carefully.

There isn’t one right or wrong answer. But odds are there is a strategy that is more aligned with your goals.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

Be findable!

December 18, 2019

We know that 80+% of people use the internet to do research before making a purchase. That number gets even larger when the purchase is expensive or is business related. If Google doesn’t offer you up as an option, you may never get the opportunity to try to win the sale.

For many businesses, their circle of influence and potential customers are within a certain radius of their physical location. If you’re a dry cleaners, then you know your radius may not be more than a couple miles. But if you’re a financial planner or lawyer, it may be 100 miles or more.

There are some strategies you can employ to make sure you’re found when someone in your local market conducts a search for your kind of business. None of this is a promise of first page placement but the more of these tactics you put into place and keep updated, the better your search ranking will be.

You absolutely can spend money on Google Adwords or other paid search options. But before you do that – make sure you have a strong foundation laid.

Even though Google is the king of search, don’t neglect Bing, Yelp, Apple Maps, Facebook and any other directories specific to your industry.

Build your site with search in mind: Some of the basics really matter. As you write or add content to your website, remember to be smart about key words, the number of words on each page and other organic search basics.

No matter what your company does, search is incredibly competitive. You can’t afford to ignore this marketing playing field any more. But, before you spend a dime, make sure you’ve done everything you can for free to impact your listings. That will become a much stronger platform to launch from.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

The evolution of customer service

December 11, 2019

If you’ve been in business for a few decades, you probably remember discussing whether or not you should get an 800 number to up your customer service game. Why not let your customers call you for free? Mobile packages and unlimited calling have made that notion pretty obsolete. You also published your mailing address on your packaging or your sales literature so customers could send you a letter if they wanted to communicate. When was the last time that happened?

Back in the 90s, the web took center stage and you might have added a contact us form or link to your very first website. You might have even created a customerservice@yourcompany.com email address. Even though that was almost 20 years ago – for many companies, that’s where the customer service innovation stopped.

Unfortunately for those companies, their customers’ expectations aren’t stuck in 1999 anymore. Whether we’re ready or not, consumers aren’t content with anything less than real-time customer service and they are taking to review sites and social media, expecting us to be there listening.

In this era of the digital age, social media channels like Facebook and Twitter have become a customer experience/service channel. Consumers turn to these sites because they’re right at their fingertips and they’re looking for a response. Now. Research shows that when consumers reach out to a brand on a social channel, they expect a response within an hour.

This shift is being called social customer service and if you want to earn and keep loyal customers, its adoption is not really optional. While the consumers are flocking to these new channels, brands are not there yet. In fact, a recent study conducted by Rational Interaction discovered that 95.2% of brands are failing at social customer service on Twitter.

The study examined communication patterns from 76 brands in a variety of industries including retail, tech, and healthcare after a consumer had directly reached out about an issue or problem. Remember, they’re expecting to hear back within 60 minutes. But instead, 58% of customers don’t get a response at all. That’s not just rude, it’s bad for business.

When a consumer’s tweets go unanswered, they’ll do more than unfollow. 55% of consumers reported switching to a different brand because of poor service on Twitter and 60% have then tweeted about the poor customer service they received, which has a ripple effect that can cost you money and your reputation.

Maybe it’s time you consider how you’re handling social customer service? Here are some best practices:

Create a customer service handle/identity: Rather than using your brand’s marketing handles, why not create @service-your company Twitter handle or Facebook page? That way, customer communications won’t get lost in the flurry of marketing activity and these specific channels can be monitored 24/7 but staff who are equipped to deal with customer issues.

Use hashtags to flag customer concerns: If you don’t want to monitor multiple channels, you can teach your consumers to use a hashtag like #yourcompanyhelpme to signal that they are looking for a response. You will still need to set up monitoring tools so you don’t miss a communication.

Create a team to monitor your channels 24/7: You can’t think of this as an M-F, 9-5 type of communication. Use a dedicated smartphone that can be passed between team members, but someone should always be “on call.”

The study from Rational Interaction showed that companies that take one of these approaches missed less than 5% of the customer service related tweets and were 28% more likely to get compliments from their loyal tribe.

Social media is the great equalizer. It allows small organizations to behave, connect and succeed like their bigger counterparts. Don’t miss this simple but critical way of connecting to your consumers. Are you going to be there when they reach out?

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

Tools of the trade

November 13, 2019

One of the best outcomes of the proliferation of the Internet into all of our worlds is the access that it affords us to information, each other, and tools that make our jobs easier. In our work for clients, we’ve found some tools that allow us to help clients react faster, smarter and produce more relevant marketing materials.

Help A Reporter Out (helpareporter.com): This site allows reporters to post stories they’re working on and in response, for brands to offer themselves as a source to those reporters. Three times a day (5:35 am, 12:35 pm and 5:35 pm) you will receive an email filled with source requests from reporters.

If any of the stories they’re working on are related to your product or service, you just email the reporter, answer the questions they’ve specified and if you’re a good source for the story, the reporter will reach out to you for more details, an interview, etc.

The story topics and media outlets are as varied as you can imagine. But these are not no-name publications. Reporters from the New York Times, Fast Company Magazine, Good Morning America and many other mainstream media use the tool on a regular basis.

Just Reach Out (justreachout.io): This site in some ways is the flip side of Help A Reporter Out. Instead of reporters listing what they’re working on, this site allows you to add keywords or a competitor into a search query and the site will search news, blogs, and articles to find reporters who have written about something similar to what you do.

Then the site will show you the journalists, their contact information and offer up templates that you can modify so you can reach out to the reporters. The site also helps with timing your pitch and other elements (subject line, etc.) to increase your hit rate.

Sell Hack (sellhack.com): This is a tool that will help you build out your list of potential sales leads. SellHack is a browser extension that helps you build targeted lists so you can reach out to people who you’d like to reach. Let’s say you went to a conference and got a list of attendees but not their email addresses. You can upload that list into SellHack and they’ll do the heavy lifting by uncovering your sales prospect’s email addresses while searching their social profiles.

SellHack checks the information you provide against multiple data sources. If the search is successful, you will get a validated email for the profile. If SellHack can’t find a valid result, it will present a ‘copy all’ button to copy/paste or email the different variations it generates.

Video Lean (videolean.com): This website allows subscribers to create template videos on the fly. We all know how important video is on the web and for many companies, producing a custom video is just not in the budget. Don’t misunderstand – the videos you can make on the site are a far cry from a custom project. But if you need to produce some down and dirty video content for your website or blog – this may be the ticket.

You choose a template based on your type of business and the kinds of information you want to convey. You customize the template by adding text, images and music in a very simple to use interface and three minutes later, you are served up a low-resolution preview so you can tweak any of the details. Once you’re happy with the video, you can download a high-resolution version to add to your website, YouTube or wherever you want to use it.

Give these a try and let me know how they work out for you!

Power up LinkedIn

October 23, 2019

When business people and marketing types talk about social media, they immediately default to networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram but the true powerhouse network, LinkedIn, is rarely mentioned.

If you live in the B2B world and you’re not spending time on LinkedIn every week – you’re missing out on an incredible opportunity. For most LinkedIn users, it’s nothing more than a digital Rolodex. That makes me sad because it’s actually an incredible brand building, SEO increasing, and prospecting/business development tool, when used well.

I want to give you some best practices and tips for really leveraging LinkedIn to your full advantage. Fair warning – this is going to require an investment of time on your part, but the rewards will far outweigh the costs.

Brand Building

Customize your URL: Most people’s LinkedIn URLs look like http://www.linkedin.com/in/634923481 but it’s very easy to customize yours so it looks like http://www.linkedin.com/in/drewmclellan. This makes you easier to find and the URL easier to share.

Make your profile personal: Most people just cut and paste their resume or CV into the profile section of LinkedIn. Instead – write it so it sounds like you talk. Make it engaging and weave your personality into the content.

Be bold to catch our attention: Your opening statement in your profile should be provocative and make me want to read more.

Show work samples: One of the most underutilized portions of LinkedIn is the ability to show work samples. Be creative with that definition. Maybe it’s actual samples of your work or it could be a PDF of a case study or testimonial.

Add some background color: Like Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn now allows you to add a background photo on your profile. Use the opportunity to create a background that says something about you or the work you do. Make your image 1400 x 425 pixels for an easy, perfect fit upload.

SEO

Your headline should be loaded: Loaded with SEO rich keywords that someone might use in a search to find someone who does what you do. Don’t waste characters by repeating your name.

Pepper keywords throughout your profile: Identify the top 5-10 keywords or phrases that your sweet spot customer might use in a search to find a new partner or connection. Make sure you work those words and phrases throughout your profile so you show up.

Be findable: I know this seems rather obvious but if you have your privacy settings clamped down too tightly – we can’t find you. Be sure to make your name and headline (at the very least) accessible to the general public.

Prospecting/Biz Development

Publish: LinkedIn’s publishing tool, Pulse, is a really smart place for you to be uploading content that you and your team have created. Again, be mindful of your keywords and the types of topics your potential clients might be looking for.

Get social proof: Testimonials have always played a role in B2B business development but in an era where consumers are constantly looking for social proof, it’s even more critical. LinkedIn’s recommendations (not to be confused with the relatively useless endorsements) are very powerful. How do you get more? Give more. Identify your best clients and vendors and leave them some recommendation love. Odds are they will return the favor.

Save your search: LinkedIn has a robust search functionality that you can use to track down prospects and connect. Experiment with the search criteria until you narrow it down to serve up the optimum blend of people. Then, save that search, so it can return to it again and again.

Export it: Did you know you can export your LinkedIn contacts so you can load them into your CRM system and begin to cultivate relationships from there? It’s easy and smart.

Spend some time with LinkedIn. You won’t regret it.

Metrics that matter

October 16, 2019

One of the most famous quotes about advertising is from a merchant named John Wanamaker and he said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Back when I started in the business much of the work we did was difficult to measure all the way through the sales cycle. For example, if we bought a TV spot during a Cheers episode, we could count on certain demographics and the size of the audience but that was about as detailed as we could get. We often tried to link exposure to the message to a behavior but unless they were redeeming a specific offer or calling a campaign-specific phone number, we could only hypothesize that a surge in sales, inquiries or some other behavior was tied to the marketing efforts.

Today, we have the opposite problem. The volume of things we can accurately measure is staggering, especially if you are communicating digitally. It’s easy to get paralyzed by the data because you can’t possibly sift through it all before making a decision.

One of the phrases I’m sure MMG clients get sick of is “Just because we can measure it, doesn’t mean it matters.”

I thought it might be useful to identify some digital metrics that are actually worth watching and using as a bellwether for decision-making. We’ve previously discussed the importance of owning your own digital hub. For most organizations, that’s your website. I’m going to assume you’ve built your marketing strategy in a hub and spoke model, with your web site being one of your core hubs.

Given that assumption, let’s talk about metrics that matter for most organizations. You may find that one or more of these aren’t relevant to your business so don’t assume you should track all of them. But for most of us, these are pretty spot on.

Let’s look at metrics focusing on two factors – are you bringing the right people to your site and once they arrive, what do they do there?

Prospect attraction: Are you capturing the attention of the people you’d like to talk to about your products and services? Are you holding their attention long enough to get on their radar screen?

To measure your effectiveness in this area, you might look at:

Bounce rate: Bounce rate is the statistic that measures how many of your unique web visitors go to your home page and then immediately leave the site, rather than digging into the site to learn more. Your goal should be 30% or less.

What do people do on your site: Odds are you have a lot of pages on your website. Do you know which ones get visited most often? Or which ones capture the attention of your visitor for the longest period of time? Do you understand the traffic patterns (people go from what page or link to what page or link) that show up again and again?

To get that kind of insight, you might look at:

Page depth: Page depth is a stat that shows you the average number of pages your visitors view during a single visit.

Top viewed pages: As it suggests, it lists the individual pages of your website in the order of visit frequency.

In-page analytics: For your top viewed pages look at this report and analyze the click patterns. It will help you understand navigational patterns and issues on your website. You’ll also get some insights into your visitors’ intent.

Marketing is all the better because we use data to be more helpful to the people we want to serve. But to do that well, be careful that you’re looking at the right data and not drowning in meaningless numbers.

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