5 Google Analytics Features You Probably Don’t Use Enough (Or Haven’t Even Heard Of)

There’s no question that Google Analytics is an essential tool to understanding your digital audience. It allows you to dig deeper into the types of content they interact with, the platforms they engage on, and the path that leads to a conversion. Businesses large and small can take advantage of these benefits, giving them the data to adjust their marketing plan as needed and make the best use of their budget.

In 2014 over two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies utilized Google Analytics as part of their data collection and marketing strategies, a 6% increase from 2013. Across companies of all sizes, over half of businesses utilizing web analytics software rely solely on Google Analytics. Despite competition from Adobe, Webtrends, and many others, it’s hard for these data providers to stack up to all that Google Analytics offers (let alone for free at the basic level).

It’s hard to believe, but Google Analytics has already been around for 10 years! Despite the fact that we’ve had access to such valuable data for all these years, there are constantly new or updated features and reports hitting the platform.

While regular Google Analytics users are probably well-versed in the “Audience” and “Acquisition” reporting tools, there are so many other features that tend to go untouched or unnoticed. These are tools that could completely transform how you manage your digital presence moving forward. Even if you’re among the most avid of users, here are five Google Analytics features that you may not be as familiar with.

1. Weighted Sort

When analyzing how your web pages are performing, it’s easy to sort the table by bounce rate or by the number of pageviews. You simply have to click that attribute’s heading and you’re good to go. However, just sorting by one factor or another doesn’t give you the whole picture. Organizing the pages by bounce rate won’t necessarily put your pages in order by traffic volume, but sorting by pageviews won’t take bounce rates into account.

This is where the Weighted Sort option can help. This feature allows you to see which pages have both a high traffic volume and high bounce rate, identifying where a good majority of your missed conversion opportunities may lie. To do this is really simple. On any table, click the “Bounce Rate” column header to sort the rows. Then, click the dropdown next to “Sort Type” and choose “Weighted.” The first web page you see in the list is likely the first place you should start when evaluating both design and content elements of your site, as it has one of the highest bounce rates as well as pageviews.

Figuring out why users are leaving your site from this place is crucial. Are they unsure about next steps for contacting you or making a purchase? Are they turned off by the layout or design of your website? Or have they simply found all of the information they need at this time? Utilizing the Weighted Sort option is an important first step to making these discoveries.

2. Site Search

Practically every website nowadays has a search bar for users to narrow down what they are looking for and expedite the search process. Not only is having this feature available to visitors important, but acknowledging exactly what they’re looking for and why is equally valuable. The Site Search feature in Google Analytics can help you understand all of that. Through this tool, you can see which products or services are most important to your audience as well as whether or not your website is easy to navigate.

To start using Site Search, go to the Admin section of your account and click on “View Settings” under the website you would like to begin tracking.

Then scroll to the bottom of the page and turn the switch on. Once the setting is on, the two fields below will appear. You will need to enter your website’s search parameters into the text box in order to extract the search term(s) from the custom URL.

Then scroll to the bottom of the page and turn the switch on. Once the setting is on, the two fields below will appear. You will need to enter your website’s search parameters into the text box in order to extract the search term(s) from the custom URL.

Search parameters are the letters or words that precede a query in the URL. For example, a search for Google Analytics-themed blog posts in Kissmetrics’ search bar brings you to https://blog.kissmetrics.com/?s=google+analytics, so the search parameter would be the portion that is highlighted. All you have to do is enter those characters into the Query Parameter section, and everything but the specific search terms will be filtered out when you go to view the report.

Once the tool is turned on and tracking, you’ll find your data under the Site Search segment of the Behavior section. You can filter the data by unique search terms, time spent on the site after a search, and the number of pages viewed following the search.

This will help give you greater insight into the typical paths your visitors take once they’ve searched for a particular product or service, helping you better organize your website’s content and personalize future marketing efforts by understanding what a user is looking for.

3. Remarketing Lists

Remarketing is a valuable tactic in a marketer’s arsenal, allowing you to reach back out to potential customers that didn’t convert the first time around. Whether your initial marketing message was off, they didn’t gather enough information to make a decision, another company was recommended to them, or they weren’t in a buyer frame of mind yet, remarketing is your second chance at converting them into a customer. It’s a great way to make the most of the audience you have, without having to invest more into your marketing budget to attract an even wider pool of consumers.

The Remarketing Lists feature in Google Analytics works together with your AdWords account to help you build lists of prospects that you can target with future campaigns. That being said, you cannot utilize this feature without having an active AdWords account.

To get started, go to the Admin section of Analytics and click on “Remarketing” under the Property column.

Then click “Audiences” in the dropdown that appears to begin creating your own custom audiences. You can either let Google select your audience through a Smart List, or you can create your own based on new or returning users to your site, as well as those who visited a particular page, completed a goal, or made a purchase.

Once you’ve created one or more audiences, you can then add them to future ad campaigns in AdWords. Google Analytics does limit you to 2,000 remarketing audiences per account, but it’s highly unlikely that you’ll reach this threshold.

4. Funnel Visualization

Within the “Flow Visualization” section of Google Analytics, there are several reports that shed light on the specific path each user takes through your website to ultimately end up at their final destination. You can see where visitors may have abandoned their original path to pursue something else, went back to a previous page to get more information, and where they bounced from your site (and most importantly, if a conversion was recorded).

The Funnel Visualization report focuses on how your Goals perform overall, measuring conversion rate over time. This feedback allows you to further analyze the Goals that you’ve set for your company in Google Analytics, and determine whether they meet the mark or should be reevaluated. To find this tool, go to the Conversions dropdown and click on “Goals.”

You can view each Goal’s conversion rate over the course of a day, week, or month, allowing you to zoom in on the impact of a particular campaign or see how your efforts have worked throughout the month. Looking at the sample graph above, you can see that the goal of “Request Consultation” peaked towards the end of the 7-day period on September 27th.

You should compare this to your marketing efforts on that specific day to dig into why you saw this spike. Did you promote a new blog post or product offering on social media? Did you send out an email to your subscriber list? What was it about that day that stood apart from the rest of the week? Since the 27th fell on a Sunday this year, maybe that was the best time for consumers or business owners to take the time and fill out your contact form. The Funnel Visualization report is a great way to get your marketing team talking to see what strategies have the greatest impact on that particular goal.

This feature also helps you see which Goals are working well and which ones may need to be reconsidered. From this point, it’s helpful to make a pit stop at the Goal Flow report to dig deeper into why certain goals are more effective than others. You can choose items from six categories: Acquisition, Advertising, Behavior, Custom Variables, Social, and Users. This helps you laser in on user behavior broken down by traffic type, actions completed on your site, social network, or even custom factors that you identify.

In this example, you can see that the majority of the “Request Consultation” goal completions can be attributed to organic traffic, and email had almost no impact. This is a clear indication that your website content and SEO strategies are proving to be effective, while you may want to take a look at how you’re approaching email marketing. Starting off with the Funnel Visualization report to get an initial look at your Goals and then digging deeper with Goal Flow will allow you to ensure that your priorities are in line to convert visitors into customers.

5. Trackbacks

It’s so easy to get caught up in the search and website elements of Google Analytics that you might forget that there’s an extremely valuable section dedicated to social media and its impact on SEO. The Social segment can be found within the Acquisition dropdown, allowing you to see how your social media presence drives web traffic and ultimately conversions. The Trackbacks feature takes a look at everyone who has linked to your site’s content, whether it’s a blog post, piece of downloadable content, or even one of your services pages.

What’s most helpful here is that you can see how many sessions on your website resulted from that particular link or how many times the same URL has linked to you, separating more passive users from those that are truly engaged with your content and message. For example, if you see that an industry publication has linked to one of your ebooks multiple times, that could indicate the potential for a future partnership. Maybe they would be interested in having you contribute a guest post to their blog, or they have a tool or piece of content that would be useful to you.

Regardless of the industry you operate in, partnerships are vital to making a name for your business and standing out as a thought leader. Whether it’s an opportunity to share content, services, or to co-sponsor an industry-related event, link building continues to prove its importance in both SEO and business in general. Don’t miss out on these individuals or companies who are taking note of what you have to offer; they could lead to valuable business propositions.

Keep Up With What’s New

Google Analytics is constantly adding new features and enhancing old ones, making it difficult for even the most experienced of users to keep up. It’s important that you take some time to look around your account every so often and see what’s new. You’ll likely stumble upon a feature that you never knew existed, perhaps even some of the examples above. From simply sorting current data in new ways to setting custom goals and analyzing sources of web traffic, there’s a seemingly endless number of ways to put Google Analytics to work for your business. And don’t worry, you don’t have to do it all to gain the insight you’re looking for. If you’re able to zoom in on a specific target market or goal that is top priority, you can cater your approach accordingly.

Are there some new or lesser-known Google Analytics features that you’ve recently discovered? We’d love to hear about them in the comments!

About the Author: Kim Speier is an inbound marketing specialist at Mainstreethost, a digital marketing agency in Buffalo, New York. She frequently writes about social media, content marketing, user experience, and web design for the Mainstreethost blog. Connect with Kim on Twitter at @krspeier.

The Future’s So Bright…

For U.S. small business owners, things are really looking up. Small business owners’ hiring plans and actual hiring are hitting new highs, and so are their plans to boost employee wages and salaries. Here’s a closer look at what small business owners around the country reported in the Fall 2015 PNC Economic Outlook Survey.

• One-fourth of small business owners surveyed say they expect to hire new employees in the next six months. That’s the largest number planning to hire since 2012.
• In addition, 26 percent say they have hired employees in the last six months — a significant increase over the 18 percent in the spring.
• Over 40 percent say they will raise wages and salaries in the next six months — the highest percentage since 2007, before the Great Recession.
• More than 90 percent say they will at least break even this year, while 70 percent say they will make a profit. Just 6 percent project taking a loss.

What’s behind small business owners’ optimistic views? Largely, it’s due to declining energy prices, as well as lower prices for other essentials. Just half of small business owners in the survey say they expect their suppliers to raise prices this in the coming year, down from 62 percent last year. And only 28 percent plan to raise their prices in the coming year, a decrease from 38 percent last year.

No wonder that 87 percent of entrepreneurs in the survey are optimistic about their own businesses prospects for the coming year. That’s up from 83 percent this spring. In addition, more than three-fourths (76 percent) are optimistic about their local economies–the highest number since 2007. Almost 60 percent believe housing prices in their local market will rise in the next six months. Finally, more than two-thirds (67 percent) feel optimistic about the overall U.S. economy. That’s not too shabby.

As they plan for a positive year of growth, small business owners aren’t planning to take out loans or lines of credit to attain their goals. Just 18 percent say they will pursue loans or credit lines in the next six months. This, even though 23 percent say access to credit has become easier to obtain than it was three months ago, and just 12 percent say gaining access to credit is harder.

While not tapping into outside financing sources, small business owners surveyed do plan to reinvest in their own businesses. Thirty-six percent plan to invest in business operations, 29 percent will put money into their cash reserves, 27 percent will distribute money to owners, and 25 percent will pay off debts and liabilities. One rising cost they are worried about is health care: Nearly half (49 percent) expect the cost of employee health insurance to increase in the next six months.

Small business owners do have a few concerns, however. For one thing, although they’re interested in hiring, they say it’s becoming more difficult to find qualified workers. More than one-third (34 percent) say it has become harder to hire qualified employees than it was a year ago. One in 10 (11 percent) who aren’t currently hiring say it’s because they can’t find skilled workers.

Really, though, that’s just one cloud on an overall sunny horizon. Do you share these entrepreneurs’ positive outlook? I hope so!

The post The Future’s So Bright… appeared first on AllBusiness.com

The post The Future’s So Bright… appeared first on AllBusiness.com.

How to Put Eyes on Your Content on Day One

The day has finally arrived!

You’re ready to launch your site off into the endless expanse of the internet. You content is polished and beautiful, your site delivers an amazing user experience—after all, there’s no point in driving traffic to a site that no one will like!

You wait, ready to answer any comments, thank everyone who shares your content—and spend all day refreshing your site stats, as a tiny trickle of people come and go, with barely a word to say.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Sure, everyone starts at the bottom, but that doesn’t mean you must start at zero. There are ways to make sure your reach is as large as it can be from that first day—and the faster your start, generally, the faster your rise.

So how do we go about making sure your site has the absolute best debut it possibly can?

Assess Existing Assets

Starting Big

You probably recognize the name Neil Patel. If not, he cofounded Kissmetrics, and has since created several very successful blogs. He clearly works harder than most people, and he knows his trade, so chances are good he would have found success regardless of his base. That said, the name recognition, authority, and readership he gained from working here on Kissmetrics probably didn’t hurt, right?

Chances are your first article won’t generate 12,577 views the month you launch your site.

The bigger you want to build a skyscraper, the wider and deeper you have to design the base. Likewise, if you want to build a huge following quickly, the best thing to do is to start with as many people as possible looking at you.

Starting out, you probably don’t have a blog with hundreds of thousands of subscribers to pull from, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have anything at all.

Today, almost everyone is active on some sort of social media, and most of those who aren’t make up for it by having friends out there in the real world. It’s worth saying, don’t be obnoxious about it, but most of your friends and acquaintances well be happy to give you a boost if you ask them. Your primary goal out the gate is to get people signed up to your email list, because that will bring people back, and your secondary goal is to convince them to share your content, because that will bring new people in. Even a few dozen or hundred people will make a big difference in the short run. We’ll get into why in a minute, but for now let’s talk about how.

Where to Amass Followers

First off, if you aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of conversion, it would be a good idea to read up a bit. Your goal here is to create that wide base to build off of, so you get the most out of every post. Different networks offer different advantages, and you can certainly, if you don’t have time for setting up and growing all of them, mix and match to focus on those aspects you believe will be the most important to your specific situation.

Facebook Friends

Facebook is great for starting a site out, especially your first, because they let you invite people to join your business/fan page, where you’ll hopefully have a nice conversion button to take them to your site. User engagement with your posts is higher on some other platforms, but no one else lets you bug people in quite as direct and friendly a way as Facebook. Better yet, people are used to getting invited to random things, so they’re not going to hold it against you.

Likely you’ve already seen the big problem with this, though, which is the nature of your social network on Facebook. Simply put, your friends, family, and acquaintances are not likely to be your actual target market. That’s okay, because, hopefully, a few people in their networks are.

Don’t underestimate the value of joining Facebook groups in your target area, either. These are often very active, but overlooked and underutilized by major players, meaning you only have to compete with other little fish for attention. With any luck, you’ll make some new friends struggling with the same issues you are, and help each other grow into medium-sized fish.

Twitter Followers

Twitter is a fickle beast. Unless you’re very good or very lucky, you will probably see only a trickle of traffic from this site. Even tweets that do very well from a retweeting perspective tend to have low conversion.

Somewhat ironically, given that it’s such a large and impersonal site, what Twitter is best used for early on is building relationships. Follow and reach out to established authorities in your niche. Not only are you genuinely likely to have interests in common, but many are happy to offer advice and support, and a single share of your content from a known authority can open you up to dozens or hundreds of new connections.

To put it another way, your focus on Twitter isn’t bringing floods of people to your site, it’s about bringing a handful of the right people.

Google Plus

Google Plus is another oddball. It might be important for SEO rankings, you need a profile on it, but it’s so convoluted in some respects that it’s hard to grow yourself there. One particularly great thing about it is that anything you share on G+ is almost instantly indexed.

I don’t know entirely why Google Plus is such a mess. Part of it is no doubt the learning curve for G+; while most social media platforms have a clear and obvious thing they do, G+ is trying to be everything to everyone. They want to handle the comments on your blog, they want to merge with your YouTube channel, and so on, so it’s not clear entirely what you’re there for at first glance.

Most of the people who use it fall into one of two categories:

Power Users: These people really get a lot done with G+. They’ve taken the time to figure out how to take advantage of its strengths, and they’re reaching other experts. This, oddly, makes G+ a great place for interacting with other people who are serious about what they’re doing.

Jeff Bullas’ Google+ profile has almost thirty thousand followers and is closing in on four million views.

Autoposters: These people set their blogs to autopost to their G+ page and have never, ever, been back. This is almost everyone who could be described as a beginner, novice, or casual blogger.

In other words, most people either get a lot from it, or nothing at all. If you’d like to jump into getting the maximum from Google’s own take on the social network, start with the basics, and work out from there.

Pinterest and Instagram

This is a wildcard. If you are operating in a visually engaging niche, Pinterest and Instagram are both incredibly powerful. If you happen to be able to create small montages of eye-catching images, Instagram is possibly the easiest social media network to gain a big following on.

Pinterest doesn’t amass followers as quickly, but has been show to have a high conversion rate compared to most other social media platforms. In other words, if you can get people to look at your stuff on Pinterest, there’s a relatively high chance they’ll follow it to your site.

On the other hand, if your niche doesn’t lend itself to pretty pictures, these sites will be of somewhat diminished value to you. It’s also important to note that while both Instagram and Pinterest rely primarily on visual content, they are not created equal. Pinterest is a great place to share infographics and other more complex posts, while the structure and culture of Instagram reward collages and photographs more strongly. Including infographics in your articles is a great way to expand the reach of your content on that platform.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has been making big, and very overdue changes lately with how they deliver content. It now functions as something of a hybrid of Facebook’s News Feed and Tumblr, where you have a feed delivering content generated or shared by people you follow, as well as items LinkedIn thinks you might like – or was paid to show you.

One aspect which has not yet been overhauled, but is hopefully on the list, is the groups feature of LinkedIn, which is reminiscent of the forums that have existed on the internet since nearly the beginning. Like-minded people can gather together, create topic threads, and discuss those topics, to their hearts’ content. It should be an extraordinary tool for outreach to your target market, but in its current iteration is just a kind of okay one. By posting often, and linking to good content (yours and others’) you can usually bring in a pretty steady trickle of new people, with a relatively high conversion rate to subscribers, since they’re already interested in what you’re talking about.

The good news is that LinkedIn is the absolute easiest network to grow your network on. Everybody is there to, digitally speaking, exchange business cards.

The first step to creating a big following is to contact people you actually know. LinkedIn will then help you out by importing your contact lists and so on. You want to get about one hundred followers, so you look like a real person rather than a bot. Of course, one hundred people is way too small a number to really expand the reach of your content, so you’ll want to acquire more followers.

What should you do next? Well . . . This is sort of bad form, so don’t tell anyone I told you to do this, but what you should do is use the “People you may know . . .” feature to send out invitations to connect to as many people as you can. Target peers in your field in and your target audience—you want shares from the former and clicks from the latter.

Once you have five hundred friends on LinkedIn, your count simply shows as 500+ and you never have to send out a request again to grow your network, because you’ll get a steady stream of requests indefinitely.

Is this abusing the system a bit? Absolutely. Is it the best way to get something valuable out of LinkedIn? As far as I’ve been able to tell.

Other Websites

One of your biggest assets isn’t social media at all. Do you have any friends with blogs or websites? Acquaintances? Cousins of friends of friends?

Ask them to link to your new site, even just a mention. This will help you rise through the SEO page rankings by growing your domain authority.

If they have a more popular site, this can really translate to a huge bump.

Guest Posts

Even better than a link, reach out to people and ask for a chance to guest post. Many sites will be happy to extend at least the opportunity, and if you do it far enough in advance, they’ll be happy schedule the articles for your site launch or soon after. This is a three-fold win for you. It raises your domain authority, and it sends people your way, which is great. The big thing it does, though, is give you an opportunity to interact with the users of the other site, answer their questions and create rapport.

In fact, commenting on other blogs and websites is another great way to gain followers!

Many of the people you interact with (assuming the interactions are positive) will check out your own site. Even if they don’t, though, they’ve got one more reason to remember your name. If you’re showing up on a number of sites, they’ll see you again and again, and they’ll start thinking of you as someone whose advice is sought. An authority. Someone to pay attention to and follow.

Just remember to write insightful comments. Generic comments like “hey great post” won’t help. Since a lot of commenting systems allow readers to rank (thumbs up/down) comments, it becomes even more crucial to write something that will get the attention of readers. If you have nothing to say, don’t write anything.

Here, a commenter makes an insightful comment on a post from Both Sides of the Table. Reading his comment, it’s clear that he read the post, understood the content, and was able to make a useful insight.

There is some debate over whether the value of guest posts is deteriorating, but they certainly remain invaluable to sites in their early stages.

Don’t be afraid to ask

How do you get guest posting opportunities? You ask. Ask on Twitter or through email. However works, but do ask. Most sites, even relatively low traffic ones, get many, many, requests for guest blogging opportunities, but if they know you’re a real person, and you can show them you’ll do a good job, then at least a few of them will likely acquiesce.

This isn’t about taking the internet by storm, it’s about opening a door. As your name recognition increases, you’ll get more opportunities—that’s a long term concern though, and we’re talking about putting eyes on the page on day one. What you’re doing by guest blogging is diverting a tiny portion of as many larger sites’ traffic as you’re able to towards your own site. Many small streams make a river.

It should probably go without saying (but won’t) that your social profiles should be polished. You want to be wearing the digital equivalent of a nice suit, so that you look professional. Perfect formatting and grammar are necessary. The picture you choose is also important – people will judge you by this. Choose a professional photo – something you’d put on a resume.

Why Leveraging These Platforms Matters

I did promise to tell you why all this matter. Well, in all honesty it’s not critical that this all happens on day one. That’s just what this article is about, and there’s no reason you can’t have it all ready to go, so why wouldn’t you?

Blog growth tends to be happen slowly, if the blog’s doing well. You have ten in month one, twenty in month two, forty in month three, and so on. Give or take, of course, there isn’t some industry-standard growth curve. That said, you’ll have some average rate of conversion of visitors, and the more visitors you convert, the more visitors there will be to convert, so things gain steam. In other words, if you’re going to grow at all, in two or three years it won’t really matter whether you started with one subscriber or one hundred, because you’ll have thousands. However, there’s a big difference between a three month growth curve starting with one, ten, and one hundred followers.

Let’s look at a very simplified growth rate of 10% per month for twelve months.

Starting with ten followers, you’ll end the first month with thirteen, and the year with thirty-three. Starting with three hundred thirty. The math on this isn’t exactly hard. At this arbitrary growth rate every subscriber you have at the start is an extra tenth of a follower each month.

Does it really work this way? Of course not! This example is simple, and reality doesn’t have time for simple. Your growth will probably follow something close to this pattern at first, after that, things get complicated. At some point you’ll hit plateaus or viral spikes, and there will be good months and bad.

The point is, the more people you start with, the faster you’re going to grow if you’re doing everything else right. And that’s why we care about starting strong.

Followers are just the start, though, because, “. . . if you’re doing everything else right,” is a very big if.

Test All Tech

You’re going to have some technical difficulties. It’s going to happen. Still, it’s better if you don’t shoot yourself in the foot at the start of the race.

Technical difficulties can break a launch, and often do

Make sure everything is working. I can’t give you a real checklist for this, because it’s a big, complex topic, and since there are so many ways to build, host, and run a site, anything specific I wrote would be 90% irrelevant to everyone who read this. That said, there are some basic items which should be in the forefront of your mind.

Make sure your site works for all major browsers

Even Internet Explorer. There are very few things more frustrating when designing a site than making something very cool and discovering that it works in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and . . . not Internet Explorer, because if one browser is messing up, it’s always Internet Explorer. IE is still the browser of choice for about 10% of the internet (which is millions of people). So, if you don’t support it, that’s ten percent of your potential market, poof, gone. Maybe that’s worth it to you, maybe it’s not, but be aware.

Ensure Everything Works Properly on Mobile

More and more people are visiting sites from mobile devices, so it’s very important to make sure your site renders properly on these devices. If they have to pinch and zoom or try to adjust your site so that it is readable, it will leave a bad impression and most visitors will likely leave and never come back again. Even worse, it hurts your SEO with Google. Use Google’s mobile friendly test to make sure your site works properly.

Get Open Graph Working Correctly

You know when people share an article on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook and there’s a catchy image that appears? That’s no accident. Their Open Graph is working properly.

Make sure key features work

Like I said, I can’t really give you a definitive guide, but there are some critical growth opportunities that you’ll lose if you don’t have the following features working: comments, follow, share, and subscribe.

Fully Integrate Your Social Media Platforms

Speaking of following and sharing, since you have gone to the trouble of growing your potential readership through social media from the outset, it would probably be a good idea to make sure your site can properly leverage these media. This is another good reason to grow your following in advance, as you’ll have to set up the various accounts to connect them to your site anyway.

Make sure all the buttons work. Seriously.

So speaks the voice of painful personal experience! Make sure every single button you have on the site actually does what it’s supposed to be doing. Don’t just assume it will.

Make it Easy For Users To Give You Their Email Address

Remember, the prize bit of user engagement (aside from actual sales) is the email subscription. You don’t want users to leave without giving you their email. Look at Kissmetrics. What’s the first thing you see in the top left, right where your eyes look when you start reading the page? A box for your email and name . . . and this is a site which is all about the science of conversion. What does that tell you about how important email subscriptions are?

Easy signup process

So make sure they can give you their email address! Any funnels you have for convincing people to give them to you are well constructed, but also don’t put up any barriers; if the user wants to skip your pitch and just commit, don’t force them to click through a million reasons why they should do exactly what they were already planning to do.

And make it clear what they’ll be getting when they sign up. An email every time a new post goes live on your blog? Will this be everyday, a few times a day, once a month, etc? Make it very clear before they signup. And, of course, tell them that you’ll never spam them (assuming you won’t).

Ensure all content is optimized to share easily

This is another tricky one, because “optimized to share” is different for different platforms, and, also, changes for each platform from time-to-time. While individual platforms change what sizes and types of content look best only rarely, with all the platforms out there, it’s a pretty constant trickle.

What you want to consider are the sizes of the images, the length and content of your excerpts, and the length and content of your titles. There are other aspects to consider, but basically you should put some real though into making people want to click on whatever stub you’re showing them.

Keeping track of those details is a huge headache, but luckily there are sites dedicated to doing just that.

Observe Some Simple Best Practices

There are a few more miscellaneous things you can do to really maximize your return on investment right at the start, simply by avoiding missteps.

Don’t include content which will anger people unless that’s what you’re going for.

Making people angry is actually a great way to make money, judging by the number of big sites which seem to specialize in it. That said, don’t do it accidentally. What a mess that is. Just think before you post.

Don’t get too fancy

Bells, whistles, buttons, video intros, etc. There is always a new next big thing, and it’s okay to indulge now and then, but you should, especially right at the start, be focusing on strong fundamentals. You look better sinking one from the free throw line than barely missing ten from the half court.

Don’t mislead

Honesty, honesty, honesty. If people don’t trust your brand, you are sunk. You’ll be shopping for office space on the lower deck of the Titanic. So don’t be sketchy. Even if it pays off immediately, it will hurt you in the long haul.

Don’t Spam

People are trusting you with their time, their contact info, and their attention. Don’t abuse it, simple as that. Treat their time as your own. If you’re good about it almost all the time, most people will forgive you when you slip up.

Project Professionalism

This is sort of an extension of everything above. Perception is important. If you want to look like a business authority, maybe use an “about me” photo featuring yourself in a type of suit that doesn’t begin with any of the following words: swim, jump, gimp, or birthday.

An exception would be the word “space”. If you’re an astronaut, play that up.

Have a Post Bank Saved Up Prior to Launch

Start Your Organic Rise

Okay, let’s touch on the organic search results, because you should start building your domain authority right at the start. We’ve already mentioned how to position yourself to squeeze out lackluster competitors, but there are a few more things to consider.

Ensure your content is at or above the quality of top competitors in your niche.
I won’t go into this too deep, because everyone who’s even sort of an expert in internet marketing and SEO has already written an entire post on it, but the best way to rise in your niche rankings is to find searches where the top result is mediocre or worst, and answer the same question better.

Write several articles on topics related to your niche.

You want to have several articles, perhaps half a dozen, populating your site right at the word go. This way, anyone who arrives has few things to read or share—and, better yet, link back to. But take your time with writing. To write something truly insightful and useful is a lot of work. Quality over quantity.

Establish (and Keep) a Schedule.

One of the biggest predictors of whether or not a site will grow is whether or not someone keeps creating new content on a schedule. Now, this probably isn’t a perfect correlation, because the people who are busy creating content are also the people who are going to be working hard at all the other aspects of making a site fly.

Advertising

How much depends on your budget, but let’s be honest here, advertising is still an amazing way to bring people in, and expand your reach. Services like Outbrain are specialized for content.

Always Be Learning

Creating great content that gets shared and has great SEO is tough. It requires a lot of learning and practice. Don’t expect to know it all from the start. Begin with reading Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Read it and live it.

It’s also worth reading up on Bing’s guide to building quality content and even Wikipedia’s guide to writing.

Additionally, spend time learning why other sites rank well and are well-respected. What do the New York Times, The Atlantic, and even Pitchfork have that gets them the respect, authority, and traffic? Know what makes good content and what makes bad content.

Conclusion

This is all a lot of work, I know. Running a site is a lot of work.

Momentum takes awhile to accrue—that’s both the pleasure and the pain of it, but, generally speaking, if you follow these guidelines, you’ll have tilted the ground in your favor. All you have to do now is push as hard as you can, as long as you can, to take advantage of the friendly terrain. There’s no road to easy success, because, if the road is easy, you’re going to get lapped by all the people giving it their all.

What advice do you have to help people put eyes on their content from day one?

About the Author: Anja Skrba has been blogging for over five years. You can find her at FirstSiteGuide.com whereshe shares tips on blogging basics and trends.

4 Ways to Ensure a Long Life for Your New Business

New small businesses, though largely responsible for employing a hefty amount of the American population, have a reputation for fizzling out about two years after starting up.

It’s relatively easy to start and get in the swing of things with all the excitement and hype that goes along with a new venture, but once the dust settles, it’s important for an entrepreneur to take a few precautions in order to succeed for longer than two years.

Here are four things to keep in mind to ensure a long, healthy life for your business:

1. You don’t need a crazy office.

As previously mentioned, it’s easy to get caught up in the hype of a new business.  You’ll want your business to look as successful as you plan on being. But don’t spend in areas you don’t need to. You don’t absolutely need that mini fridge in your office; a file cabinet on the other hand–yes, a bit more necessary.

Lots of very successful businesses started out in a garage or the living room of a house. Your business doesn’t need to look the part in its early stages to be successful later down the road.

2. Have a positive ROI.

It is so crucial to make sure your return on investment is positive. If you’re blindly spending money on marketing endeavors, partnerships, new hires, new products, and services, it’s nearly impossible to track which of those methods are working for you. If you’re just throwing money at different methods and hoping for a positive outcome, it’s hard to know where to “double down” and when to abandon initiatives unless you are tracking and understanding where the revenue is coming from.

Really knowing ROI on each initiative and digging deeper to understand those key metrics is critically important to making sure you are making solid decisions in the growth and success of the business. Do your research and be meticulous.

3. Customers are your marketing secret weapon.

It’s a given that customers are the key to a successful business, but it is often forgotten that they are your best source of referrals. If you are outstandingly good with your customers, they will not only come back, but they’ll feel the need to tell all their friends (and, hopefully, Yelp) about you as well. Happy customers can be your best marketing tool.

4. Treat your employees well.

Your employees are the face of your business and they are who interact with the customers. You want your employees happy to keep your customers happy–plus, a happier employee will always produce better work.

Focus on company culture as you focus on your customers. Celebrate birthdays and holidays, reward hard work, and trust your employees with enough responsibility so that they feel like an integral part of the company.

The post 4 Ways to Ensure a Long Life for Your New Business appeared first on AllBusiness.com

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How to Use Your Retirement Account to Start or Buy a Business: A Guide to ROBS Financing

With bank loans hard to come by, a lot of people are turning to a more personal source for business capital: their retirement accounts.

How does this work? What’s the cost? Is it worth it to risk your nest egg? Here’s what you need to know about funding your business with your retirement account.

Funneling Retirement Funds Into a Business: Two Options

There are two ways to use retirement money for your business. If you have at least $50,000 saved up in your retirement account and need that much or more for your business, the best option is “Rollovers as Business Startups” (ROBS).  For smaller amounts, consider taking a loan from your retirement plan.

Rollovers as Business Startups (ROBS): This option allows you to transfer funds from your personal retirement account to your business without paying early withdrawal penalties or income taxes. Here’s how it works:

1. You must hold money in a qualified retirement account, such as a 401(k), 403(b), 457(b), or traditional IRA.
2. Begin a new C Corporation; if buying an existing business, change its ownership structure to a C Corporation if it’s not already a C Corp.
3. Have the new business create a company-sponsored retirement plan, such as a 401(k) or profit sharing plan; the plan must be open to all eligible employees.
4. Transfer funds from your personal retirement account into the company-sponsored retirement account.
5. The company-sponsored retirement account then purchases stock in your business. You use the money from the sale to fund your startup, buy the business, or recapitalize an existing business.

A ROBS transaction is not a loan, so it’s a good option for funding your business without incurring debt or having to pay interest. However, the fees make it a viable option only if you are planning to roll over at least $50,000.

If the five steps seem complicated, that’s because a ROBS can be complicated! In order to avoid early withdrawal penalties and income taxes, you can’t run afoul of legal or tax codes. It’s best to get help from a financial company that specializes in ROBS. For more information, check out this complete guide to ROBS financing.

Retirement Plan Loan: The second, simpler option is to take a loan from your 401(k) account or other retirement plan (not possible with IRAs). Many employers will allow employees to take loans from their retirement plans, but may place restrictions on what they can do with the money. For example, they may specify that the money can be used to pay for your kid’s college or for a home, but not to start a business.

If your employer allows plan loans for starting a business, this may be a good option for you. Like a ROBS, a retirement plan loan allows you to avoid income tax and early withdrawal penalties. Unlike a ROBS, however, you can only borrow up to half of your retirement account balance or $50,000, whichever is less.

The money must typically be repaid within five years, and interest is charged on the loan. However, you pay the interest and principal back into your own retirement account, not to a third party.

What’s the Cost?

ROBS: Since a ROBS is not a loan, you do not incur debt or pay interest. A ROBS does carry an initial fee and ongoing fees, however. The initial setup cost is about $5,000, and the ongoing fees are around $1,500/month. Because of the fees, it really only makes sense to do a ROBS if you plan to rollover $50,000 or more.

Retirement Plan Loan: When you take out a 401(k) loan or other plan loan, your plan administrator will charge an interest rate. The interest doesn’t go to the plan administrator; Over the next five years or whatever the loan term may be, you pay back the principal plus interest into your own retirement account.

At this point, you may be wondering if a plan loan costs anything. The answer is yes. The effective cost of a plan loan can be viewed in terms of the potential loss in retirement savings.

This loss can come from different directions. Because you need to repay the loan, you may compensate by decreasing the amount you contribute each month to your retirement account. You may not pay yourself back the same amount you would have earned if you left the money untouched (i.e., you pay yourself back at 6% interest, but you may have been able to earn 10 % interest if you had kept the money invested in your retirement plan.).

Finally, whereas regular contributions are made with pre-tax dollars, taking a plan loan essentially means you get taxed twice. The loan repayments are made with after-tax dollars, and you get taxed again when you withdraw money from your retirement account upon reaching retirement age.

Some plan administrators charge a setup fee that ranges from approximately $50-175, as well quarterly loan fees of $25-50. Unlike interest payments, the fees go to the plan administrator, not back to you.

Is It Worth the Risk?

Whether you choose a ROBS or a plan loan, you run the risk of your business failing and wiping out your hard-earned retirement funds. So ultimately, the question of whether it’s worth it is one that only you can answer after weighing the pros and cons.

ROBS
Pros:

• No taxes or early withdrawal penalties.
• No limit on how much you can roll over.
• No debt on interest payments.
• Your business profits grow in a tax-advantaged company retirement account.
• You have more control over the growth of your retirement money because you run your business on a day-to-day basis.
• Can be used to fund a startup or other situations where you can’t qualify for other types of funding.

Cons:

• If your business fails, you will lose the money you rolled over.
• You must administer a retirement plan for your employees.
• Because of the complexity of the transaction, you run a higher risk of being audited by the IRS. Fortunately, the top ROBS providers are very competent and can help minimize the risk of audits.

Retirement Plan Loan
Pros:

• No taxes or early withdrawal penalties unless you don’t pay back the loan.
• You pay yourself back instead of owing money to a bank.
• Plan loans often carry lower interest rates than standard bank loans.
• You can usually use the loan to start, buy, or recapitalize a business (some plans have restrictions on how the money can be used).

Cons:

• Small amount of capital: you can take out a loan that’s half of your retirement account balance or $50K, whichever is less.
• Not offered by all employers, and some employers may place restrictions on how you can use the funds.
• Interest is charged, and you have to watch out for loan fees such as origination fees and administration fees.
• You may end up saving less for retirement than if you had kept the money invested in your plan.
• If your business fails, you may have difficulty repaying the loan; if you can’t pay it back, the loan is considered a distribution and taxed as income, plus a 10% penalty is charged if you’re under 59½.
• If you don’t make a payment for 90 days, you face the same financial penalties.
• If you quit or are let go from your job, you must repay the entire loan within 60 days or face the same financial penalties.

The biggest risk with either financing option is the possibility of losing your savings and not having enough money to retire. You have to be realistic about this risk and have a plan B in case in your business doesn’t work out as planned. If you have a backup, using your retirement funds to start or buy a business may be a great choice.

The post How to Use Your Retirement Account to Start or Buy a Business: A Guide to ROBS Financing appeared first on AllBusiness.com

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How to Get More Customers in Your Sales Funnel with Engaging Lead Generation

In business and in marketing – it’s all about the leads. But today, with so many choices, options and research available, getting the average visitor to take action is a lot more challenging than it used to be.

The core concept of the sales funnel itself hasn’t changed much: you’ll always get more interested prospects at the top than at the bottom. But how you engage with those prospects at every step of the funnel has changed dramatically. Let’s take a closer look at how you can not only entice more users to take the first step, but also brainstorm new and innovative ideas to keep them interested as they make their way through to becoming loyal brand advocates.

The Big Top-of-Funnel Mistake that Nearly Everyone is Making

By far the biggest problem I see marketers and companies of every size and scope making with regards to filling the top of their funnel is this:

Mentioning your product.

“But Sherice!” I can hear you saying, “They need to be aware of the product before they can take action!”

I understand your concern – but let’s look at this from the customer’s perspective. Say I’m looking to invest in a system that provides scalable, cloud-based hosting for my website. Much to the impulsive marketer’s dismay, at this point in the funnel, I don’t want to download a white paper about “How XYZ Company Delivers Scalable Cloud Hosting Solutions”, yet that’s exactly the kind of thing that’s thrown at me from every website.

Educate at the Top of the Funnel First

Take a step back and look at ways to educate, rather than persuade the customer. At this point in the funnel, they’re not looking seriously at solutions. They’re involved in the discovery process – learning what’s out there and what options they have available. You need to prove you’re even worth listening to by illustrating your expertise in a way that’s helpful and knowledgeable, not pushy.

This means filling the top of the funnel with bite-sized, visually scan-able tidbits of content in the medium and format your users prefer. And don’t just wait for the prospect to be the first to act – make sure that your content is hosted anywhere they might go as part of their research and discovery track, whether that’s video, infographics, podcasts or slide shows. They shouldn’t have to go to your site in order to learn more.

Here again, the information you send them shouldn’t be talking about your company directly at all, but rather acting as a guide to help them solve whatever issue or question they have. Going back to my previous example about cloud-based hosting, I may want to know about things like:

• Which apps/services are supported?
• What type of platform is best for my needs?
• What are SaaS, IaaS and PaaS?
• How close is the server to my location?
• What options do I have for databases and storage?
• How much of the server can I control or access myself?

And so on. Even at this “Awareness/Interest stage of the funnel, it’s best to educate and guide rather than push for a sale. Once the interest is piqued, the question then becomes, how can you carry over more of your prospects to the next level of the funnel?

In short, how do you tie this education and guidance to your brand without pushing the consumer away?

Going from Prospect to Purchase

This is the point at which many marketers jump ravenously on the sale, but too often, the pressure is too much, too soon. Remember, they’re considering your offer among many likely competitors so how you differentiate yourself (in a way that’s meaningful to the consumer) is what’s going to warrant them giving you even more serious consideration.

This is where you put your email marketing muscle into action – reach out and learn what your prospect’s biggest concerns are. What do they specifically have questions about? Then set your content and marketing teams about forging relevant, personalized drip campaigns that answer those questions in such a way as to position your product heads and shoulders above the rest.

Common techniques that work best at this time are things like feature lists, comparison charts and pricing breakdowns. Once the consumer sees exactly what they’ll get, what it costs and what it includes, it’s time for the sales team to make their move and reach out to the customer to start planting those “loyalty seeds”.

Things like a free, one-on-one demonstration of the product, a fully featured trial account and tutorials can go a long way in showing the customer that you’ve got their best interests at heart. If you’ve got new features lined up for release, invite them to be one of the first to see how these new updates will benefit their business and how to use them effectively!

Follow Up After the Sale

After the sale may feel like the time to celebrate – but resting on your laurels at this point just makes it easier for competitors to swoop in and convince your newly hard-earned customer that your product or service isn’t the best choice for them. This is why every customer should be looked at more as an ally rather than another notch on your sales belt.

Always be looking for ways where you can create the kind of experience that the customer just can’t help but talk about. It sounds cliché to talk about delivering a phenomenal customer experience, but doing so at every stage of the process – from the website to the technical support to the newsletter and every outreach avenue and touch-point in between is what creates unbreakable loyalty.

Here, things like reward/referral programs, loyalty exclusives, how-to newsletters, social media coupons and other incentives can solidify that loyalty. Don’t just throw sale after sale notification at them – make them an integral part of your brand, and your brand a part of their lifestyle. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling shoes or scalable hosting.

Always be looking for ways to add value – not what you think is valuable, but what the customer finds valuable. Every marketing initiative at each stage in the funnel should continually ask “what can we do to make this even better?”

By asking the right kinds of questions at the right points throughout the sale funnel process, you’ll not only win over more prospects, but you’ll be creating an iron-clad foundation of loyalty and communication that people (even your competition!) can’t help but admire and try to duplicate. Always look for ways to refine your funnel at any point where you find “leaks”. Seek out disconnects where the message doesn’t match the intent or where the content isn’t meeting the reader’s needs. An engaging sales funnel isn’t made of stone: it’s a fluid, ever-changing and adapting product that demonstrates precisely how you put customers first.

Have you created some unique, engaging or compelling content for your sales funnel that customers just can’t stop talking about? Tell us more about it in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

Are You Playing Games With Your Customers? You Should Be

Who didn’t love a scavenger hunt at summer camp? Now online scavenger hunts are a terrific way to engage your customers through “gamification,” a marketing tool that incentivizes your customers to take action on your behalf.

While gamification has been around for several years, businesses are still trying to determine the best way to use it to boost brand awareness and help foster a strong connection with their customers.

Gamification can enrich a person’s experience with a business by creating incentives for interaction. While there are endless ways to implement gamification in your marketing strategy—loyalty programs, special offerings, social media contests—one of the best ways to spark engagement using gamification is the modern, mobile app scavenger hunt.

Scavenger hunts are a way to engage existing and potential customers because they invite people to interact with their families, friends, and your company for more than a few minutes. While social media is a great tool for promoting your brand, scrolling, clicking, sharing, and liking only go so far. Posts and photos on social media sites may grab your attention for a few minutes, but they do not necessarily stick with you.

In a scavenger hunt, contestants commit to an activity that will be enjoyable and stimulating, and provide them with a chance to win great prizes. You’re promoting your own company and services, not by just placing clever, aesthetically-pleasing ads in a newspaper or online for people to see, but by designing a competition for people to partake in and directly engage with you. Participants are committing to your hunt for the afternoon, and possibly with your organization in the future.

Tips for Running a Successful Scavenger Hunt

Hunt The City D.C. Scavenger Hunt participants and winners of the Best Team Costume Contest, Sam Stitt and Morgan McGovern. Photo Credit: Lisa Ferguson Schmidt

Have fun: This goes without saying, but your hunt better be enjoyable for all participants!

Know your target audience: Is the hunt designed for children, teens, adults, or families? The tasks in the hunt should be challenging but doable for the segment you are trying to attract. Not sure who you want to target? Go for the millennials who love staying on top of new trends, using their IPhones in everything they do, and are always looking for different kinds of entertainment.

Set goals: Your business should have specific goals in mind for what you want the hunt to accomplish. Whether it be sales, building loyalty, developing brand awareness, or raising money for a cause, the mission should be clear. With the right goals in mind, the scavenger hunt will be easier to design.

Offer prizes: Hopefully participants are genuinely interested in having a fun day scavenging around, but there still needs to be an incentive for glory at the end! A grand prize and smaller prizes throughout the hunt will enliven the competition.

Engage in social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest—these social media platforms have become an integral part of business marketing strategies. A scavenger hunt should have a social media component that engages users online before, during, and after the event. Advertise before the hunt, insert clues for tasks on social media sites throughout the hunt, and talk about the hunt’s success when it’s over so that participants will be inspired to “play again.”

This past summer, Global Vision Communications planned a scavenger hunt— HuntTheCity DC—that took participants all around our nation’s capital to complete as many of the 55 tasks as they could within a three hour time limit. Points were awarded through an app on a smartphone for tasks such as photo challenges, GPS check-ins and challenge questions. A sidebar on the scavenger hunt app allowed participants to see the other hunters’ points, establishing another incentive for hunters to pick up the pace and rack their brains even harder on the next challenge question.

Sponsors for the event included Coca-Cola, Uber, the Citi Open Tennis Tournament, and CQ/Roll Call. All the sponsors appreciated having a captive audience directly engaged with their brands for an afternoon.

So the next time you’re thinking of a fun way to engage customers, think scavenger hunt!

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