Tracking Your Marketing Results wortechnologies.com Marketing Information

If you have an online business, then you are familiar with the importance of marketing. But just as important as actually marketing, is tracking your marketing. When you're spending money, you want to know that your efforts are really working. That brings us to the question--how do you know if your marketing efforts are working?

Small business owners track visitors to their websites, visitors to their blogs and so on. However, just as important is tracking your marketing results. Below you will find 5 tips from successful small business owners that will help with your tracking your marketing.

Tracking Your Marketing Results
"Your web stats are a valuable tool to know how people are accessing your site and what they do when they get there," says the Digital Info Diva. "Whenever I make a change to one of my sites, I use the free tool StatCounter to monitor the result of the change. This includes keywords used to access the site, pages visited and how long they stay. For example, in one niche I wanted visitors to review my other products before leaving. Using StatCounter, I could review how effective the exit pop was in getting them to the site map and then to click on other products. By tracking their movements, I could see if the change was effective or if another change needed to be implemented."

Watching Site Stats
"It's easy to get caught up in watching what I call 'macro' statistics...your overall number of visitors, visits, conversions, etc. But it's equally important to look at 'micro' statistics -- the breakdown of those aggregate numbers that tell you where you are getting the best ROI," recommends Terri Zwierzynski, self-employment expert on IdeaMarketers.com. "Here's an example from my own experience; in 2007 I spent a lot of time (and money) on search engine optimization; over a 6-month time span I increased traffic 80%. Several months later, digging deeper into my Google Analytics data, I discovered that although a good chunk of my traffic was coming from search engines, traffic from referrals (other people's sites) was five times more likely to convert (subscribe)! So while my search engine traffic was more than double my referral traffic, referrals were providing twice as many conversions. What a revelation!"

Ask How They Heard About Me
"Every potential customer that calls I ask how they heard about me. I know exactly where and with whom I am personally marketing. So if their answer is different than where I am marketing, I dig a little bit deeper. Marketing can be costly, so if a venue is not producing monetary results within four to six months, I look for other options." - Sharman Lawson

Don't Forget Offline
"With all the hoopla about internet marketing, consider that internet marketing is just one strategy in your marketing toolbox," suggests Allan Katz "Small business owners can generate sales by using traditional media to lead people to your website, where you can gather leads. From my experience, I receive many more qualified leads to my website when they come from a traditional magazine article or lead generated by a referral. If you're a service business, you can also use online marketing tactics to keep customers coming back and to build loyalty."

What Is Not Working Is Also Important
"Almost all hosting accounts include some kind of log system. One of the most commonly used on a Cpanel system is Awstats. Most people check out number of visits, time on site and similar stats. There are other stats that are important as well. Under Miscellaneous you have an add to favorites (estimated) option. This will give a rough indication on how many added your site to their favorites. Under HTTP Error codes look for Error 404, Document Not Found, and click on it to review the exact urls people have tried to load but failed. You may find a goldmine here sometimes or just people landing on a page that no longer exists (Tip! Create pages on the location/name that get most errors. This would give you extra traffic). Under Connect to site from Links from an external page (other websites except search engines), click on the words "Full list" and review all the external pages that have sent you traffic. You'll see who your top traffic providers are! Finally, some advice. If you want to be able to track anything and everything, go for goggle analytics. It is one of the most complete packages online today, easy to setup and free." - Kenth Nasstrom

Keeping track of your marketing tactics will help your business grow and increase your profits. Watching both what is coming in and what is going out is a proven profitable business technique.

About the Author
Luanna is a Virtual Assistant and Staff Editor for IdeaMarketers. She helps small business owners save their precious time by taking care of the basic needs they have to keep their businesses up and running. Luanna Rodham may be contacted at http://www.ideamarketers.com/experts/marketing_online.cfm. Click here to view more articles by Luanna Rodham.