Integrating search and analytics
To maximize success and make sure you are making money on your search marketing efforts you have to have a reliable tracking tool. To this very point many people agree with me, however the amount of people actually studying their data aren’t the same. This fact is still fascinating… many clients I meet and have met over the years have a great tracking tool and in many cases a very expensive one (even more so when you don’t use it). I am pretty sure after many years of asking the same question; that this isn’t a case of only laziness… it is a question of knowledge. Often it is the marketing department that get pinged by the sales people and agree to buy and install.. but then the actual knowledge transfer isn’t made. Also I have found that most people in the marketing department are interested in the data but just don’t know how to use it.
Input to the client side: Integrating search and analytics means your internal teams have to meet. It is critical that the in house teams of marketing and analytics act together to buy, install and set up the conversion funnels to measure success. If you buy or invest time in a tool - make sure it is set up correctly and you are clear on what you want to measure. A tip: Try setting up an ongoing analysis for trends so that you can evaluate more sources of data in one spreadsheet.
Input to the sales side: It is about time that all basic installation processes is part of the overall package. Some have this some don’t. Specific training of course needs to be added as every client is different.
To maximize the ability of your search efforts make sure you integrate with the analytics team of your company and define and measure the result together from start. Spend time to make sure it has a correct set up and make sure you get training to use all the capacity of the tracking tool. Invest more money on training and understanding than the actual tool is a rule I normally apply.
