Five Key Metrics To Look On Your Site

Digital has always been perceived as the most measurable media. But most measurements are restricted to clicks and impressions--maybe a deeper insights could also throw some important take-away for marketers.

Overall Site Traffic Trends
Most of them do not pay attention to this simple metric....very simple one...its there on your analytic page. Walk ins are counted very effectively, but any visit through website hardly paid attention to. 

Site visit details could give you simple insights as to what was the percentage increase when there was a TV campaign or for that matter a print ad mentioning the URL of the clients website. Probing a bit more can also give us insights if any increase happened on the web "contact us" pages and if the phone rang a bit more.
The varied sources of visits can also be mapped and correlated. Digital marketers often tend to down play the role of  traditional media because there's no defined click path, but actually, there is no click path either for banner campaign. The intent is the same to drive awareness and purchase intent. The available data needs to be just looked at.
 

Search Volume through branded keywords
Search can provide a good insight into a marketing campaign. It gets even more insightful when we start looking into branded and non branded search. The branded search traffic is always something which most of them ignore with an assumption that "people are aware of the brand".
How people become aware of the brand is a very important as the traffic generated through branded search can also throw some insights into how successful your offline campaign was.

Conversions
Conversions don't need to be typically attached to a monetary value, but it could also be a "contact us" form submission or even a weekly newsletter signups/registrations. But, apart from these standard definition of conversions, even if you could track down visitors who moved and search for "getting direction" to your store could also be a good indicator.
The same logic of defining "hot lead" v/s "cold lead" can also be applied to these scenarios.

Traffic of Conversions
With conversions in place, it is also important to understand the audience who came through...a simple search to keyword phrases of all visitors could throw insights on what were the phrases used to reach different pages within your site.
This could also help you analyze if you need a change in keywords and pay attention to certain keywords you are not focusing on.

Referrer Sites Data
Search and regular advertising need not be the only route to reach your site. People could also come in through referrer sites.
Researching this could also give some key insights on who these audiences are by mapping the sites they came through from. Maybe a different set of audience whom you may not be reaching would have shown interest also.

Clicks may not always be the right metric for measuring the effectiveness. The right data need to be looked at much harder.

Again, these may just be the basic ones to look out for...at least for a start.

The case of an awesome digital media strategy!

Ever faced a scenario of a faulty digital media strategy? Well, no one is alone. Even a firm like Microsoft makes mistakes. It started with the acquisition of aQuantive, an online advertising firm. Microsoft thought on acquisition of this firm, it would be a significant tool to boost their online advertising effort. Well, it just turned out to be a huge mistake. On “investigating” it turned out to be a fauty digital media strategy.

So  apart from developing a sound digital media strategy which includes company goals, visions, risks, product offering technological processes, there are some pitfalls to be avoided as well.

No Proper advertising solutions--Relying only on social network as an advertising solution is not good enough. In spite of having fan pages, the limited exposure won’t deliver the kind of results your company needs to be successful. The digital media should also include additional paid advertising solutions. This just broad bases the target market and stronger chance of creating brand awareness on social channels.

No Proper Planning—A digital media needs to be planned effectively. It is not enough just to scratch the surface and expect the strategy to deliver huge results. Demographics, social graphics have to be understood, you need to know your target audience, best time to reach them, strategy to engage them and most importantly, how to achieve your goals with your digital strategy.

No Proper Focus--A clear cut goal on what your company is promoting and how to reach its sales goals must exist. A simple strategy should also address What is your brand about? Any primary goals? What is the advertising story? 

Importance of mobile advertising opportunities:-  Including content marketing within your strategy is equally important to drive traffic and revenue. Therefore including mobile advertising opportunities in a digital plan is important. In fact it is predicted, that digital advertising would surpass traditional media very soon. 

I am not saying that the above should make your digital plan a kick @$$ one, but atleast avoiding certain pitfalls is definitely a start to a path of an awesome digital plan.