Analytics - You MUST install it

I keep finding clients who haven't heard of Google Analytics (or any form of analytics) who who do know what it is and still haven't implemented it.

All I can say is that it is vital. It will tell you who has visited the site. How they got to your site - which keywords did visitors use or what referring site like a trade directory. What they did when they got to your site.

The depth of the information you can find out will probably amaze you.

Some of my clients had absolutely no idea about how visitors were reaching their site and couldn't believe the difference between the keywords and phrases that were resulting in traffic compared to what they had optimised the site for.

Gareth

Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

All Around My Hat - How to make use of company activity in developing website content

Lots of clients I work with struggle with the idea of creating content for their websites (and general marketing) from their day to day activity.

Either they can't think of anything they have done that's worthy of a story or they see something like a customer win in one dimension.

So I encourage a bit of fun, role play and get people to act out putting on a different hat to represent a different perspective on what they have been up to. The easiest suggestion to make is a "customer hat". What would a client think about what you have done. Perhaps you can be a bit more focused - what would the recipient of your product think as opposed to the person who signed the invoice? What would your mother think or the Prime-Minister?

Play around with the concept because what the process does is to unlock people's creativity and get them to see that what they do seen from another perspective has the potential to be interesting, stimulating, valuable etc. etc.

This means that anything you do can be converted into multiple stories suitable for use as a blog, an article, a Twitter snippet, a sales conversation, a testimonial , a new product benefit....the list goes on.

Buy some hats and get thinking!

Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

Gareth on eMarketing

Gareth Edwards, Arrowsmith MD, can be seen talking about the benefits of eMarketing in a couple of places on the internet.

As part of Gareth's work for the National B2B Centre he was filmed in an interview with Guru Online specialist business advice website (registration required).

A cut down version of that interview is available on the B2B Centre website and it provides a useful introduction into what eMarketing is all about.


Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing

Social Networking

Currently experimenting with various social networking tools in conjunction with my pals at the National B2B Centre.

We have set up a B2B Centre group on Linkedin, which now numbers 50+ B2b Centre members as well as the B2B team. I am interested to see what number constitutes a critical mass when group members don't need our intervention to keep the discussion threads going.

Also have a personal Twitter account and contribute to the B2B Centre one. There has been traffic to the Centre's website and it's been fun to see Stephen Fry's (yes really) posts from around the world.

The Ecademy profile is long standing - excellent for generating inbound links and making some good contacts.

Plaxo is the most effective one for Google ranked inbound links.

Facebook is interesting because some of our relatives use it and we have connected up a little better as a result.

MySpace is very good for finding bands - especially new prog rock


Lots of people don't see the value in social networking activity. I see it as firstly interesting, secondly fun and thirdly increasingly important to maintain a profile (brand) out there in the world.

Gareth


Gareth Edwards
Arrowsmith Marketing