So how do you know if your website and internet marketing dollars are giving you a positive return on investment?

We find that while many business owners believe their website, social media, blogging and newsletters help build their business,  most have no idea how many people visit their site each month, where they came from or what they looked at. Additionally, according to the 2015 Social Media Marketing Report, 35% of businesses that are using Facebook for marketing have no idea if they are getting a positive ROI.   FYI:  • According to the latest State of Inbound Marketing Report, businesses that have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive Return On Investment (ROI). • In April of this year, Manta surveyed 540 Small Business Owners – 41% said they enjoyed a positive ROI on their Facebook marketing efforts. So how do you know if your website and internet marketing dollars are giving you a positive return on investment?  In order to make solid decisions on where to spend your marketing dollars, you need to have facts and figures in front of you.  There are several excellent sources of information we can use to track the effectiveness of websites, social media, newsletters, blogging and other forms of Internet marketing.  The first is Google Analytics.  Google analytics can be installed on any website.  A small tracking code is added and every time someone goes to any page of your site, the information is logged.  You can know what country they were from, what pages they went to, how long they stayed, whether they were on a phone or a tablet or a PC, and you can even follow their flow through the site (see example at right).  This is excellent information because it helps you know which pages are successful and where people drop off.  And the best thing about Google Analytics: once installed, it can be set to automatically email you reports every week with this data. As an example, let’s say you post a link to a new product on your Facebook page, you would be able to know how many people came from that post to your site and looked at the product.  You can compare that with how many purchased the product and figure an ROI.  Or, say you have an advertising campaign on TV or in a magazine or Google Adwords that directs visitors to a landing page.  You can track the effectiveness of those campaigns by looking at whether the number of visitors increased and whether the visitors followed through or not.  The second is Google Webmaster Tools.  This set of tools gives you search query information.  What keywords did they type in to find your site?  How many searches for that keyword were there?  You can use this information to focus the information on your website to your visitors and improve your conversion rate. Third, Fourth, Fifth, etc. All of the social media networks have Insights to help you monitor the effectiveness of your efforts, and all of the newsletter services track valuable information as well. We recommend you look at all of this information on a regular basis and use that information to find and fix any pain points and focus your efforts (and marketing budget) on the areas that are working.  If you don’t have time to study all these different sources, CyberSpyder can do that for you.  As an added service, you can receive a monthly report that actually ties all your Internet marketing statistics into one report.  This report is provided at no charge if you are one of our marketing clients, or you can subscribe to it as an added feature if you are not.