ERICA EHM Q&AWITH - The MOMpreneur

Let’s say you decide to take an ad out in The
Momprenuer Magazine. The URL you would use to
track visitors going to your site from that ad would be:
www.yoururl.com/mom (mom being the sub-directory
with the redirect page that you want people to see when
they go to your site).
This does two things.
One, it allows you to see how many people visited your
site for the first time based on the ad you ran, which is your
number of unique visitors (extremely important data to
have).
Two, it gives you control over where visitors are sent
on your site when they use this URL. If you have caught
someone’s attention with a specific message in your ad,
this gives you the opportunity to continue the message and
increase your chances of convincing your visitor to take
action.
Using this tool in conjunction with Google Analytics
will give you even more insight. For example, if 100 people
type in www.yoururl.com/mom and only two go farther than
your landing page (the main page they were directed to from
the URL), then you know you need to adjust some factors on
that page.
If they do go farther but drop off somewhere else, then
you can find out where and quickly make the needed
changes to that portion of the website.
Do you see how powerful this is? It means now you can
track your advertising dollars and be able to fine-tune
where you spend your money and where to focus your time
and efforts on your site.
Once you learn which strategies are the most
successful and which are simply costing you money – you’ll
be able to make smart decisions based on facts. You don’t
necessarily have to completely quit using a particular
method, but these techniques and tools give you the ability
to make informed decisions.
A step by step action plan to get
you going immediately
Learning about new techniques and ideas is only
useful if you have a plan that you can walk away with and
get started.
Step 1: Find a tool that allows you to create and
track your marketing efforts offline. Install it yourself or
have someone else install it and track all your offline
marketing efforts. The one we’ve used and like is
www.affiliateprofitlinker.com.
Step 2: Set up pages on your website that directly
relate to your ad and redirect them to those pages. Again
this will help them stay in line with what interested them in
the first place. Sending them to a page that doesn’t relate to
what they went to your site for could frustrate them and you
could lose them altogether.
Step 3: Set up website analytics of some kind. The ones
usually provided by hosting companies are almost
always useless. We suggest something like Google Analytics
as it’s free and a lot more straightforward.
Step 4: Offer something free that relates to your
visitor’s interest and in exchange ask for their email
address. This allows you to be able to build a relationship
beyond your website and help further your bottom line.
Whatever you offer must be a real gem – people don’t just
give away their email address for another newsletter.
Step 5: Analyze all of your data and make the
necessary changes to your marketing strategy and website
to maximize your ROI on advertising.
You can always get more information or help with
any of the steps, but please don’t let not knowing how to
implement something prevent you from achieving great
results.
Nowadays, it’s not even a question whether or not to
have a website, it’s how can I turn it into the most
effective business tool possible and put money in my
pocket?
We hope that this has opened the door to the
possibilities of combining offline and online methods to
improve your return on investment, save you time and
improve your results.
Wishing you success! MP
Angela King is co-owner of Lavia Marketing & Web Design,
which specializes in online conversion and tracking
and helps small businesses make the most from
their website and online marketing efforts.
www.laviadesign.com/analyze
The Mompreneur • September 2007
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