Jul/091
Consumer Trust in Advertising
Recently, Nielson released some very interesting insight regarding what types of advertising consumers trust the most.
Before I show you the numbers.. Let’s dive into the importance one might weigh on these findings.
When deploying any type of advertising, you choose the medium that you feel best suits your audience. So although these numbers give us a solid idea of how consumers as a whole trust specific mediums, let’s not forget that your only concern will be, does your audience trust the medium(s) you choose… Following me?
For example, if you’re marketing to the 25-40 demographic using online mediums, the fact that your 87-year old neighbor doesn’t trust online ads is completely irrelevant.
Okay, enough of the fluff… Here’s some numbers.
Recommendations from people known - 90%
Consumer opinions posted online - 70%
Brand websites - 70%
Editorial content (e.g. newspaper article) - 69%
Brand sponsorships - 64%
TV - 62%
Newspaper - 61%
Magazines - 59%
Billboards/Outdoor advertising - 55%
Radio - 55%
Email marketing - 54%
Ads before movies - 52%
Search engine result ads - 41%
Online video ads - 37%
Online banner ads - 33%
Text ads on mobile phones - 24%
In conclusion, although these numbers paint an excellent picture of the overall acceptance of many different types of advertising, I wouldn’t recommend going out and dumping your online banner ads for more newspaper ads… Definitely not!
Try and get a feel for what your prospects and audience want to see. That’s when you’ll truly start to benefit from you ad spending.
May/090
SEO 10 Step Run-Down - Step 8 - Stats
After the initial grind work of researching keywords, tested them with PPC for conversions, analyzing your competitors, optimizing your site, building your links and using social media to promote your cool tools, it’s time to reflect.
Hopefully at this point, you’ve watched your website crawl up the rankings and finally hit the sweet spot - you’re on the first page of Google or better yet - you’re above the fold on Google! Time to kick back and watch the money pour in from whatever goods or services you’re providing.
Unfortunately, that’s not true… Now’s when the work REALLY begins. Now don’t get me wrong, you’ve gone through a lot to get here and you’ve definitely put in your hours - you do deserve to take a bit of time off from dealing with your site before you head into the final three stages . This couple weeks will give you time to collect some baseline data for what we’re going to discuss here …
Improving Site Efficiency and Overall Health
At this point, your website is probably performing for you, generating sales leads, perhaps even help increase revenue. This is where so many businesses drop the ball… They get comfortable.
Now is the perfect time to analyze visitor data, and see exactly what’s happening with your visitors. Where are they coming from? How long are they staying, and which pages are they visiting. These answers will help you further improve your website, thus making it even more profitable.
We suggest Google Analytics. It provides in-depth information and statistics regarding your website’s visitor activity.
The stats are collected and seen by Google and provided to you in a fairly simple-to-read format complete with the ability to customize a lot of the data and set targets so you can track specifically who is landing on specific pages (such as you’re “thank you” page). The data in which Google Analytics is extremely favorable.
For example: If the average visitor to your site only stays for 30 seconds and visits 1.5 pages… what do you think that means?
I would take that to mean that your website isn’t providing the visitor with the most relevant information at their fingertips. Adjusting content to make it more favorable to the visitor will not only help you keep them on your website longer, they will browse more pages… Ultimately this leads to more sales.
I could go on all day about website stats and what they should mean to you, but who’s got that kind of time.
If you’re one of those types who’s never looked at their stats, or perhaps doesn’t have access to them… It’s time to start. Seriously.