If you’re working with a marketing firm, chances are you receive monthly reporting about your site’s performance, along with a few statistics about your overall online presence. However, if you’re just letting your site generate results by itself with very little outside work or don’t know the questions to ask, you might be missing out on some key data points that could help your marketing and branding campaigns. Here are a few questions to ask either yourself or your marketing representative to understand how your campaign is truly performing and what you might be able to do better!
1) What am I doing for offline marketing?
Online marketing is certainly a huge piece of the pie when it comes to your presence and reputation, but it’s not the only thing. Take a step back and assess what you’re doing from an offline marketing standpoint, and determine what sort of traffic those sources are pulling for you and your business. This can be a billboard, a flyer, a full radio campaign, or anything in between. If you are working with a digital marketer, they may be able to help you check your website’s analytics to determine if you’re spending marketing dollars in the correct areas. If these offline sources are not generating traffic to your site or business, why are you spending money on them?
2) From what sources are my conversions coming?
Conversions are almost always at the top of any digital marketing report, as they should be. This is a direct way of knowing if your online marketing efforts are resulting in actual business. However, it’s not always that your conversions are coming from the sources you may think! If you’re running a PPC campaign, an organic campaign, and a retargeting campaign, how do you know which one is working? We wrote about keeping your marketing with one company, and this is a prime reason for that. Having all of your marketing efforts funneled will allow your rep to report on the specific paths one took to reach your site. Along with the knowledge of your offline marketing, this will allow you to budget better in the long run.
3) How is my practice/name listed across the internet?
When your digital marketer says NAP, they’re referring to your overall presence across the entire internet–not just your site. If you’re not concerned about how you’re listed past page one of Google, then you’re missing out on some very lucrative opportunities. From listings management to reputation monitoring, your overall goal is to keep your name and information consistent on all levels. Even simple discrepancies (like having PLLC on your name on certain listings, but not on others), can result in a disaster for your reputation. Don’t build a house made of expensive supplies on a cheap foundation–eventually it will completely crumble!
4) Am I ranking well on Google/Bing/Yahoo/etc.?
I cannot stress this enough – do not put all of your eggs into one basket with reporting! It’s very easy to fixate on conversions and then completely forget about your ranking, and it’s just as easy to fixate on your ranking and forget about conversions. The truth is, you have to fixate on both to truly understand how your campaign is performing. By looking at just conversions, you’re forgetting about a very important channel in the form of organic search, which could result in brand new business. By looking at just ranking, you’re forgetting about how people convert on your site via user experience. Having said that, always know where your ranking stands, especially with regards to your big service lines! If you see a slip in ranking, there could be a huge underlying issue that you’ll want to fix immediately.
5) What are my next steps?
This is 100% the most important question for any company to ask their digital marketer. Sure, we’re not magical and cannot read the future, but we certainly can develop a strong plan. By knowing what your next steps are with your marketing campaigns, you are able to compare your results to see what is and is not working. In addition, online marketing isn’t a “set it and forget it” process. Instead, you have to monitor it on a consistent basis to ensure proper adjustments. If you or your marketer are not aware of next steps, you should take a step back and do a strong evaluation of the plan ahead.
What can you do to understand more about your performance?
By joining forces with an agency like Practis, who is dedicated to providing you with proactive performance reporting, you’ll always know not only what your current results are, but what you need to look for moving forward.
Contact us today to learn more about our online marketing programs and what Practis can do for you!