Multiple Platforms To Leverage

Businesses are faced with more social media platform options that ever before and it is imperative that they are analyzing which one could serve as a brand enhancement. This starts with a proper understanding of each of the channels and accurate customer metrics. Having this understanding of the platform’s competitive differentiator and how it can be best utilized to position a product or enhance a brand is very important with staying relevant in today’s fast evolving marketing environment. Organization’s marketing departments are moving from a silo of advertising and non-interactive communication toward becoming a natural part of the sales cycle and an extension of customer service. 

I do not believe an organization should only choose one social media channel, but I do believe each channel should have a specific purpose and implementable plan. Yes, there are particular instances when one strong platform will work for an organization, but as a rule of thumb it is going to be far more effective to have multiple channels. 

Here are the primary two reasons I feel multiple channels are important:

                                        1. Increased visibility and exposure to target audiences                                                            

Over 80% of all Americans have active social media accounts. With these staggering numbers of people to potentially reach out to on these platforms, social media has become a major area of potential increase in both revenue and visibility that is possible. Connecting with popular pages on different social media platforms, that are relevant to your industry, can also provide a big boost to your visibility.

The more online visibility your company has, the more likely people within your target market will look to you for necessary products or services. In its simplest sense, online visibility refers to how easy it is for consumers to find your company and its products in relevant online locations. 

                                         2. Each social media platform has a competitive differentiator                                                 

To get this part right, you really do need to know your audience by analyzing metrics pertinent to the specific medium.  Is your product or service very visual?  Perhaps Pinterest would be best.  Do you have constant updates or like to engage in ongoing discussions about your field?  Twitter may be best.  If you are B2B, then LinkedIn is a good place for you.

To be effective, an organization’s social media strategy needs to be a part of brand at large, and it rarely works as a standalone campaign. One way social media advertising has changed the landscape of online presence is that the subscriber base on any given channel doesn’t even have to necessarily be actively searching out a related product or service. Facebook is changing the game with targeted advertising based on demographic and psychographic information while in contrast Google AdWord’s claim to fame is the massive volumes surrounding keywords. Social Media platforms can be a huge factor in generating traffic. Traffic, while not the only attribute that will help you see your profits increase, is very important for turning curious visitors into paying customers. Social media plays a vital role in generating curiosity because they are usually visual platforms. This is why brands can be very effective in increasing exposure because products are often times very visually appealing and can generate that initial click. Brand reputation is important to any company, no matter what industry it serves. Being visible is not the only thing needed to achieve this; you will also need a reputable product as well. However, making your company more findable and visible is still of the utmost importance in building your brand reputation. 

As it relates to click through rate social media advertisements have been posting impressive numbers. Desktop ads have been shown to have an 8.1x higher click rate than traditional web ads while mobile ads scored even higher with a 9.1x higher click rate than normal web advertising. With these kind of numbers to back up their effectiveness, social media advertising has proven itself to be a useful marketing tool that can help you reach users beyond your current followers on social media platforms. Everyone wants to measure the volume of leads generated to get to the bottom line return on investment of social media efforts, but don’t forget about the value of the conversion rate. While the volume may not be there yet, the propensity to convert may be gold for an ecommerce focused business. 

In my opinion, one of social media’s greatest value to a business can be found in customer acquisition. 

Here are two examples of how this can happen in a fictitious company:

• A user clicks on a link in one of your tweets and goes to your site and converts into a new customer.
• A user clicks on a paid advertisement on Google and doesn’t convert. Then later clicks on a link in one of your tweets and goes to your site and converts to a new customer.

Depending on your business model and typical advertising expense, in the first example, the cost to generate that customer could be less than a standard customer who comes through paid advertising. In the second example, the cost will be higher than the standard customer who comes only through paid advertising, but even if it’s slightly higher for those who responded to more than one channel for lead generation, the incremental cost of social media will likely be less than trying to replace the unconverted lead with a new one.

References: 

Bendror, Y. Which Social Media Channels Should I Use For My Business. Retrieved from: https://www.aabacosmallbusiness.com/advisor/social-media-channels-business-223554094.html

Newman, D. (January, 2016) Social Media Is No Longer A Marketing Channel, It's A Customer Experience Channel. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2016/01/12/social-media-is-no-longer-a-marketing-channel-its-a-customer-experience-channel/#7766a6d44967

Newman, D. (November, 2015) The Top 10 Marketing Trends That Will Define 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/11/03/the-top-10-marketing-trends-that-will-define-2016/#3016c9e57d58

Kelly, N. (November, 2010) 8 Social Media Metrics You Should Be Measuring. Retrieved from: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/8-social-media-metrics-you-should-be-measuring/

Ganguly, S. (March, 2015) Why Social Media Advertising Is Set To Explode In The Next 3 Years. Retrieved from: http://marketingland.com/social-media-advertising-set-explode-next-3-years-121691

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. Typically integrated marketing and communication professionals will agree that bounce rate is the metric that will tell you how the site is performing as it relates to user experience. Unfortunately we can’t always tell why bounce rate may be high because there are so many different reasons. Sometimes the reasons can even be good because high bounce rate isn’t always the result of having poor content. In fact, it may be just the opposite: if your content was exactly what visitors were looking for, they may not feel the need to continue on to another page on your site.  

In order to more closely view what visitors are “bouncing” from we can look at things like breadcrumbs which uses horizontally arranged links that show visitors where they are located in your navigational structure. Websites never want people bouncing off their site because they feel they can more easily find the content on another site. From a search engine optimization standpoint there are many steps that can be taken to cut down on bounce rate. An obvious one would be to have a good understanding of keywords and good audience insight to understand where traffic is being generated from. Improvements to title tags and meta description tags, the text that shows up in search engine results, will improve your bounce rate by making sure people who aren’t interested in your site never click through to it, and those that do click on search engine results find what they expect to find. 

It is important to remember that a bounce rate may just be the result of good content. A study published by Blue Corona marketing agency interviewed web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik who defines a bounce as, “I came; I puked, and I left.” The natural implication is that high bounce rates are bad – that the content on your site didn’t match what the visitor was looking for so they left without viewing another page. 

Most people can relate to this experience like getting sent an email from a friend with link that urges you to check it out. If this link contains something you aren’t interested in you will immediately close the browser and move on with your day. If everyone that received the email did that same thing, it would technically be a 100% bounce rate.

Because most of the information we will be looking at over the course of the semester will be in the web analytics tool, it is important to see what Google defines bounce as. 

There are a few ways that Google calculates a “bounce” on your site:

• Your viewer closes the tab your site is on or they close the browser completely.

• The viewer clicks the back button in the browser.

• The viewer clicks an external link from your site.

• Your viewer takes a long time to do anything on the page they’re on and their session essential times-out.

Bounce rate can be a very important metric for organizations to react to when trying to improve conversion rates or a large number of other key performance indicators within a web property. 

References: 

Rampton, J. (August, 2015) The 10 Most Important Things You Should Pay Attention to in Analytics. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2015/08/24/the-10-most-important-things-you-should-pay-attention-to-in-analytics/#727e5b3b78ff

Blue Corona ( October, 2016) WHAT IS BOUNCE RATE AND IS IT IMPORTANT. Retrieved from: https://www.bluecorona.com/faq/what-is-bounce-rate-and-is-it-important/

Ariel, R. (December, 2014) What Is Bounce Rate, Is It Important, and How Do You Lower It. Retrieved from: https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/resources/what-is-bounce-rate-is-it-important-and-how-do-you-lower-it

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate of a web page is measured by the number of potential visitors performing the desired action, whether the action is buying a product, filling out a form, or achieving some other goal of the web page. Very simply put, a conversion rate is measuring the ratio of conversions over a relevant denominator. This places a drastic importance on an organization spending the proper amount of time and resources on optimizing conversion rates. As conversion rate optimization becomes more popular, it’s important to learn the secrets, trends, techniques, and methods that are allowing businesses to massively improve their conversion rates. It is one of the most important growth techniques, because it allows a business to earn more revenue from existing customers, instead of paying more to acquire new customers. It is important to remember that conversion rate analysis needs to be used in conjunction with other analytics tools because the results are not always very telling. 

For example, an ecommerce site’s higher conversion rate doesn't always mean higher performance. Here are the statistics for two days of activity on an ecommerce site:

Day 1: 4% conversion rate. (5000 visits, 200 sales)

Day 2: 10% conversion rate. (1000 visits, 100 sales)

On day two, conversion was more than double the rate from day one. However, reading the actual numbers hidden behind the overall conversion rates, it's easy to see day one was a much better day for the business. This, of course, is operating under the assumption that all of the business’s OPEX remained stagnate over the two days. 

Conversion rates can also be skewed in that not every visitor has the potential to convert. Visitors could be doing a number of tasks such as checking an order status, sending links to friends etc. Another thing that is interesting about conversion rates is that conversion rate optimization is about simplicity. There is a lot of technical aspects to conversion rate optimization, but making your site more engaging will often times reduce conversion rates. This seems contrary to everything taught in advertising, public relations and any form of marketing, but many statistics have proven that a site that entertains its visitors will have a weaker conversion rate. 

Conversion Rate Optimization Is…

• A structured and systematic approach to improving the performance of your website

• Informed by insights—specifically, analytics and user feedback

• Defined by your website’s unique objectives and needs (KPIs)

• Taking the traffic you already have and making the most of it

Conversion Rate Optimization Is Not…

• Based on guesses, hunches, or what everyone else is doing

• Driven by the highest paid person’s opinion

• About getting as many users as possible, regardless of quality or engagement

Businesses of all sizes are beginning to look closely at their conversion rates as it is has a direct tie to sales or any focus of the site. This “simpler the better” methodology creates a very difficult task for marketers who are looking to do the next cool thing by innovating. 

References: 

Patel, N. (March, 2016) 6 Things You May Not Know About Conversion Rate Optimization. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2016/03/07/6-things-you-may-not-have-known-about-conversion-rate-optimization/#7b2202cf4f0e

Barker, D. (April, 2013) Why Conversion Rate is a Horrible Metric to Focus On. Retrieved from: http://www.smartinsights.com/goal-setting-evaluation/goals-kpis/why-conversion-rate-is-a-horrible-metric-to-focus-on/

Qualaroo. (October, 2016) What is Conversion Rate Optimization. Retrieved from: https://qualaroo.com/beginners-guide-to-cro/what-is-conversion-rate-optimization/