Do It Again: What Works Best to Connect You with Customers

practical marketing
education series.
© 2014 YP Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. YP, the YP logo and all other YP marks contained herein are trademarks
of YP Intellectual Property and/or YP Holdings LLC affiliated companies. All other marks contained herein are the property of
their respective owners.
Lesson 5:
Do It Again. Know What Works Best Connecting You to
Your Customers
Adsolutions.yp.com/PracticalMarketing
#practicalmarketing

© 2014 YP Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. YP, the YP logo and all other YP marks contained herein are trademarks of YP Intellectual Property and/or YP Holdings LLC affiliated companies.
All other marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
practical marketing | meet your presenters.
Tina Stock | Executive Director, Marketing
An entrepreneurial marketing executive with over 10 years
experience in product marketing, social media marketing, content
marketing, communications strategy, display advertising and search
engine marketing. Tina blogs about marketing at tinastock.com, and
you can follow her on Twitter @tinadstock.
Who is YP?
• North America’s largest local search, media and
advertising company.
• Our mission is to help local businesses and communities
grow.
• We generate 40 billion annual impressions on the YP Local
Ad network and have 3,000 marketing consultants helping
over 600,000 businesses get, and keep, customers.

practical marketing | meet your presenters.
Jake Walker | Senior Analytics Strategist @ Piston
Analytics professional with experience across multiple platforms,
brands, and business models. He has a skill set that allows for the
transformation of complex data issues into easy to understand
actionable insights.
Piston
• Full service digital agency located in San Diego California
• Clients include Cars.com, Ray-ban, Oakley, and Chicos
• Piston is a Google Certified Partner across multiple
Google platforms

small businesses need practical marketing.
Part 2: Get
customers to
know you and
hear your
message
The Practical Marketing series consists of five lessons:
Part 5: Do it again. Know what
works best connecting you to your
customers
* Measure what matters
* Use practical tools
* Don’t waste your money ... or
time

practical marketing means measuring your results.
Measuring can be complicated
• % small biz who don’t measure results
• Don’t let a lack of understanding stand in your way of success
Why does measuring matter?
• Spend more on what works
• Understanding why one thing works better than another
• Learning more about your target audience
• Understanding how visitors interact with your website
• Gaining perspective about your place within the market

all measuring starts with knowing your goals.
What are your marketing goals (learned in webinar 1)?
• Brand awareness?
• Customer retention?
• Building a customer base?
• Combination?
Having clear goals is the key to a successful marketing
campaign, online or offline

measuring the easily measured.
Not everything you do is easily measured
• Measuring the easily measured = 80/20 rule.
You can work more, and sometimes you
SHOULD work more, but often the extra work
just is not worth the effort.
• Understand your goals and make sure the most
important items are tracked
Not everything you do needs to be
measured
• Unless you are willing to do it different
– don’t bother to measure it.
• Don’t just measure to measure.
Make sure its actionable

measure by asking.
When people make a contact, ask them
how they heard about you
• Small Business Advantage – engaging directly
with customers
• Most people don’t mind answering
• This same concept needs to applied to your
online business
• All campaigns, sources and mediums should tracked
and labeled in a way that is easy to differentiate. Most
analytics platforms will do this for you without a lot of
leg work on your end
Keep track, not by memory
• Tracks as much as possible
• Track online and offline
• Consistently test data integrity to ensure
accurate results

measure with call tracking numbers.
What they do:
• Unique phone numbers can be
secured and used to track response
• Lots of small businesses use print
ads or direct mail. Call tracking
numbers help you know which print
tactics are working
• Also works well not just for offline ad
campaigns but for online campaigns
What they cost:
• Varies depending the amount of phone
numbers needed, could even be free
What you get:
• The ability to track calls from mobile or desktop
site within your analytics and media platforms

measure with ad reports.
If you pay – you should get a report
• Consistent and competent reporting is the key to a successful
online campaign
• Understanding what your reports are telling you will drive
online and offline business decisions
Common metrics
* Visits
* Visitors
* Page views
* Bounce rate, exit
rate,
completion rate
Quick ROI calculations
* Revenue/Cost
* ROAS
(Revenue/Cost)*100

measuring online with various tools.
What tools should you be using?
There are several tools available for business owners to
utilize. Some tools are free, others can cost a little to a lot
depending on needs. Based on your goals and your
business type, you may need several tools to effectively
manage you marketing strategies.
Examples of free tools:
• Google Analytics
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Linktrack

the right approach
getting started steps for
successful analytics.
© 2014 YP Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. YP, the YP logo and all other YP marks contained herein are trademarks
of YP Intellectual Property and/or YP Holdings LLC affiliated companies. All other marks contained herein are the property of
their respective owners.

measuring online with google analytics.
What it does:
• Allows for the tracking of basic web site metrics
• Gives website owners the ability to track on site interactions
• Allows for the tracking of custom digital campaigns to keep
track of visitor referral sources
What it costs:
• Your time commitment to make
changes based on insight learned
• Free – no $$ required - for the
standard version
What you get:
• Enterprise level analytics
for tracking all aspects of
your online business

what do you learn when measuring with google analytics?
You find out if what you’re doing is working:
• Measuring site traffic lets you know if your website is functional
• If your media campaigns are getting the right people to your site
• If once on your site, visitors are finding what they need quickly,
easily, and on YOUR terms

what do you learn when measuring with google analytics?
You learn where not to waste resources:
• Making sure money is spent in the right areas
• Ensuring time & money spent on web design is providing a return
• Time is being spent on the projects in the right places

search engine results page (SERP) landscape.
Start with the basics
• Visits, Pageviews,
Unique Visitors
– Site Level
– Page Level
• Clicks on “Calls to Action”
– Checkout buttons
– Downloads
– Request Forms
– Contact us
Social Media Links
Click to Call
– Mobile
– Desktop

step 1 – understanding your site.
The key starting point to any successful implementation
of analytics is knowing your site
Understand how you want to funnel
your visitors to conversion
• How many steps?
• What does a conversion mean to you?
• Is there more than one way for a visitor to
convert?
Keep it simple
• Complexity makes life difficult for you and your
visitors
• The more complex your site, the more
complex your analytics needs to be

step 2 – understanding your audience.
• Successful implementation and
utilization of analytics is not solely
based on data
• Knowing your customer goes a
long way in understanding what
the analytics is telling you
• Utilize what you know about your
customer to ensure all the
important areas of your site are
being tracked
– When in doubt, track it anyway

step 3 – picking the right tools.
The tools needed to properly track web
traffic will not be the same for every
business
A good place to start is with a traditional
analytics platform
• Google Analytics is a very comprehensive platform
that offers a free version
• Google also offers an online help forum with lots of
useful information
Other tools to consider
• Google webmaster tools (for SEO)
• Social media analytics
• Mobile analytics (can be setup
within Google Analytics as well)

step 4 – implementation.
Implementation of analytics on your site
can be very simple or very complicated
depending on what you need to track
Google Analytics makes it easy to get basic
pageview and click tracking on your site
• Google continues to simplify and increase cross
platform functionality
Ensure you have tracking in place
for all the most important areas
• Conversion pages
• Downloads
• On site interactions

step 4 – implementation – a simple “how to”.
Help and Support:
https://support.google.com/analytics/?hl=en#topic=3424286
How to Set Up:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1086338?hl=en&ref_topic=172
6910
Where do you place your code?
• Paste your snippet (unaltered, in it’s entirety) into every web page you
want to track. Paste it immediately before the closing </head> tag.

step 5 – understanding the results.
You have measurable traffic…now what?
• Visits, pageviews, new visitors…these are all metrics you want to
see increasing
• Rising traffic means successful marketing campaigns and more
opportunity for conversion
Not all traffic is built the same
• You have more traffic, but that’s only half the battle, “conversion” is
the name of the game
• Check and see if click thorough rates, conversion rates, visits to
pages where conversions can take place are on the rise
• Having more traffic that simply leaves right after arrival is wasted
opportunity

practical marketing check list “to-do”.
You and Your Customer
• Write your story
• Describe your ideal customer
• Document your marketing goals
Get customers to know
you for the right things
• Have a website that can be found
on search engines and converts
visitors to customers
• Claim and enhance all your
business listings. Respond to
reviews if needed
Consider blogging.
Blog posts can
become emails and
facebook posts

Zero in on customers
who matter
• Look at a competitor’s search ads
• Analyze a display campaign
• Sign-up for an email newsletter
Turn customers into fans
• Gather testimonials – put them
somewhere public
• Get a personal facebook
page and follow one of your
favorite businesses
Consider getting a
facebook page for your
business
(based on your marketing goals)

Know what connected you
to your customers
• Start a monthly marketing tally sheet
• Get at least 1 call tracking number for
your marketing activities
• Gather a list of all your reports at least
once per month
• Schedule a quarterly review of your
marketing activities
Advanced: if you have a
website, add Google
analytics and log in at least
one time per month

measure what matters q&a.
Understand
your goals and
always keep
those in mind
Know
your
audienc
e
Monitor site activities
regularly
* Understand your site metrics
and baseline stats

summary.
Part 5:
Do It Again.
Know What Works Best
Connecting You to Your Customers
• Visit adsolutions.yp.com/practicalmarketing for
your “Do it now” worksheets on measuring what
matters (TC)
• Share your thoughts socially #practicalmarketing
• Learn More! Sign up for our FREE monthly
Practical Marketing newsletter at…
http://adsolutions.yp.com/small-business-marketing-center
• More advanced learning available at…
http://www.onlinemarketinginstitute.org/YP

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