Google Site Speed Video Starring John Mueller & Martin Splitt

Google posted another #AskGoogleWebmasters video, this one on site speed and this one is different. It is (1) much longer than the average #AskGoogleWebmasters video and (2) it has both John Mueller and Martin Splitt from Google in the video.

Googleween

The 10 Best Reporting and Business Intelligence Tools for Marketers

Whether you're conducting a blog traffic audit or analyzing the success of your most recent social media campaign, it's undeniable that data is an integral part of any marketing role.

Fortunately, there are dozens of analytics tools for marketers with the ability to collect data from different sources, crunch it effectively, and deliver helpful campaign analysis.

Some tools, however, are better at delivering valuable reporting results than others.

Ultimately, reporting tools should do more than just calculate -- they should also make the marketer’s job easier, and more productive. Creating attractive and readable reports is key to ensuring that the results of your work are clear for your entire team.

Here, let's dive into some of the best data reporting tools, as well as some effective business intelligence (BI) platforms, to enable you to properly analyze your work.

Best Data Reporting Tools

Here are some tools with reporting features invaluable to today’s marketers.

1. Calendar

Calendar offers analytics of a slightly different sort -- productivity. Calendar has a number of features designed to analyze how your team’s time is spent. By tracking your moment-to-moment activities on a daily basis, you can identify key areas in which your schedule could be improved.

As important as it is to have your marketing analytics at your fingertips, knowing how you use your time is just as important for maximizing output. Calendar’s clear and simple reporting tools give you helpful reports on what your agenda looks like and what you can do to make it better.

(Disclosure: I’ve invested in Calendar)

2. DashThis

DashThis is an effective tool for keeping up with your marketing analytics at a glance. As its name suggests, DashThis is best used as a dashboard and provides clear and readable data on your marketing performance.

DashThis lets you to select a template and then automatically fills that template with your data, greatly streamlining the reporting process. It also exports data into PDF files, which can be easily shared between team members.

3. HubSpot

HubSpot’s marketing analytics software is useful for keeping all of your needs, including reporting, in one place. HubSpot lets you combine all of your marketing efforts into one report, or mix-and-match your different assets to create different reports for different clients and needs.

HubSpot’s marketing analytics dashboard is just as customizable, allowing you to add and remove different reports with ease. Best of all, you can get both a general overview and specific insights into your work’s performance, since you can easily move between different marketing reports within HubSpot.

4. Raven Tools

Raven Tools offers many of the tools expected from reporting software -- SEO analysis, social media engagement, funnel performance tracking -- as well as competitor comparison.

Whether it’s big-picture analyses like domain authority or small-scale comparisons of site functionality, Raven Tools lets you stay on top of how you’re faring in competitive spaces. Additionally, its drag-and-drop editor and report generator makes creating custom, professional-grade marketing reports easier.

5. Megalytic

Megalytic eases the process of combining marketing data from lots of different sources. Plenty of tools on this list allow for the integration of different types of data, but Megalytic is especially designed to import data from a range of marketing software.

It takes only a couple of moments to access data from Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, Adwords, and more on Megalytic, and it can even process and report data stored in CSV files. If you’re looking to produce a comprehensive report that pulls together loads of disparate data into one place, Megalytic is a smart choice.

6. Kilpfolio

As important as it is for reporting tools to effectively take in and analyze data, they need to be able to produce readable reports, as well. Klipfolio is great for making sure your reports can be read and accessed with ease across technologies.

Additionally, Kilpfolio allows you to share access to your reports through Slack, email, or custom links, and it also enables you to sync your dashboards in real time across multiple devices such as smartphones, web browsers, and even TV screens. Being able to easily pull up your analytics dashboard at any moment on any number of devices is crucial for being able to report on-the-go or from various locations.

7. Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a tracking and reporting software tool that was actually created primarily for product managers, not marketers. As a result, its interface isn’t quite as streamlined or marketing-driven as some of the other entries on this list, but it makes up for this with deep, powerful analytics tools that give you insight into how your work is faring.

Mixpanel is particularly attuned to identifying trends in engagement and count. It tracks how people engage with certain products over time and how different features influence user behavior.

If you’re especially interested in keeping track of how a certain site or product is performing, it can be a valuable tool for reporting on that kind of information. Mixpanel allows you to produce readable reports of uniquely high-level data analysis.

Best Business Intelligence Platforms

Ultimately, reporting is only half the battle. Marketers also need business intelligence tools for a top-down view of their operations.

Although BI is a broad category, these three tools are essential for marketers.

1. Intercom

Although Intercom is a messaging platform first and foremost, it also delivers a deep view of a company’s customer base. Through integrations with over 100 marketing tools, Intercom lets marketers track, segment, and identify similarities between their customers.

One of the best use cases for Intercom’s BI features is account-based marketing. Intercom displays performance figures for each stage of your sales and marketing funnel, helping you see where the best opportunities lie and how to tap into them. You can also break down metrics by individual representatives, teams, timeframes, and more.

2. G2

G2 is the go-to website for stacking up software tools against one another. G2 gives detailed charts for every category of marketing software, explaining the strengths and weaknesses of each available product.

Need an enterprise resource planning tool? G2 covers those. What about an e-commerce platform? G2 can help you pick the best option in that category, too. Certain services, including staffing and translation services, are also reviewed by G2.

3. Databox

Through integrations with HubSpot CRM, Google Analytics, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more, Databox compiles popular marketing services and social media into one interface. Although Databox comes with pre-configured report templates, users can also design custom reports.Think of Databox like a dashboard for your dashboards.

The reporting tool lets you view campaign KPIs, check progress, calculate investment returns, and receive notifications when metrics fall outside of specified ranges. Databox has a desktop version, of course, but it also displays data on mobile and via applications like Slack.

Statisticians and analysts may be more comfortable with reporting and BI than marketers, but these tools make it easy. Pick the right ones, and get data-driven campaign insights with ease.

The 20 Quantifiable Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Business

If you've been a marketer for a while, you most likely know the basic facts about social media marketing: It's cost-effective and it's a way to engage with your customers and potential customers. All that sounds great, but you might be wondering what the data actually says about social media use.

After all, when operating on a limited budget, you have to make sure every effort you're putting into marketing has a return that proves their worth.

Social media marketing is great for most businesses, and here are the statistics to prove it.

Customer engagement

1. If you're using YouTube to market to millennials, you're in luck: you may be reaching 91% of them. (Pew Research, 2019)

2. 90% of consumers are more likely to engage with posts that embrace the company’s personality. (Sprout Social, 2018)

3. 71% of consumers with a positive interaction with a brand on social media are likely to recommend the brand to family and friends. ( LyfeMarketing, 2018)

Marketing perspective

4. 89% of marketers believe social media is important to their overall social media strategy. (Buffer, 2019)

5. 65% of marketers have increased their social media marketing budget this year. (Buffer, 2019)

6. The top three ways marketers measure ROI of social media marketing are engagement, traffic, and leads. (Buffer, 2019)

7. 77% of marketers use social media analytics to measure campaign performance. (Sprout Social, 2018)

8. 73% of marketers have reported social media marketing as being effective for their business. (Buffer, 2019)

9. It is estimated that consumers will have spent over $500 billion in eCommerce by the end of 2019; which has implementations on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. ( eMarketer, 2019)

Product discovery

10. 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram. (Instagram, 2019)

11. 66% of companies use social media to release new products to consumers. (Duke University, 2019)

12. Over half (54%) of browsers use social media to search for new products. ( GlobalWebIndex, 2018)

Brand building

13. Over 200 million people visit at least one Instagram Business page every day. (Instagram, 2019

14. 74% of consumers share brand-related product videos on social media. (Sprout Social, 2018)

15. Engagement with consumers and providing customer service is a huge benefit. The top three reasons people engage with brands on social media are to ask a question, express an issue with a product, or praise a product. (Sprout Social, 2018)

16. Consumers say messaging businesses online through social media pages makes them feel more confident about a brand. (Facebook, 2019)

17. Social media is a great place to obtain new customers, as non-customers are three times more likely to increase traffic for brands. ( Adobe State of Digital, 2018)

Purchase driving

18. A report by Curalate found that 76% of consumers have purchased a product they've seen in a social media post. (Curalate, 2017)

19. A Statista report concluded that 52% of respondents in a survey were interested in purchasing a product found on Facebook. (Statista, 2017)

20. 44% of consumers purchase items seen on a brand's social media post. ( Curalate, 2017)

Investing in social media doesn't require a big budget, but cracking into the benefits of social marketing, especially moving towards the future, is imperative.

The online market is only growing, and the numbers show that if you’re not online, you're missing out on benefits in eCommerce, customer service, and a universal brand.

These are only a few stats about the benefits of social media, but if you need just a little more convincing, we've got you covered. For example, you can check out 45 more here.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in June 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Daily Search Forum Recap: October 30, 2019

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

When I talk with most marketers about how they generate leads and fill the top of their sales funnel, most say outbound marketing.

However, in 2019, a lot of innovative and successful businesses are actually embracing the art of inbound marketing. But, what's the difference between inbound and outbound? This post will walk you through it. 

First, we'll talk about the more traditional outbound marketing strategies.

What is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing is a traditional method of marketing seeking to obstruct potential customers. Outbound marketing includes activities such as trade shows, seminar series and cold calling. It is costly and the ROI is much lower than inbound marketing.

Outbound marketing included trade shows, seminar series, email blasts to purchased lists, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and advertising. I call these methods "outbound marketing" because marketers push his or her message out far and wide hoping that it resonates with that needle in the haystack. 

Download our free guide here to learn more about inbound marketing.

I think outbound marketing techniques are getting less and less effective over time for two reasons.  First, your average human today is inundated with over 2000 outbound marketing interruptions per day and is figuring out more and more creative ways to block them out, including caller ID, spam filtering, Tivo, and Sirius satellite radio.  Second, the cost of coordination around learning about something new or shopping for something new using the internet (search engines, blogs, and social media) is now much lower than going to a seminar at the Marriott or flying to a trade show in Las Vegas. 

Transforming Your Marketing from Outbound to Inbound

Rather than doing outbound marketing to the masses of people who are trying to block you out, I advocate doing inbound marketing where you help yourself "get found" by people already learning about and shopping in your industry.  In order to do this, you need to set your website up like a "hub" for your industry that attracts visitors naturally through search engines, blogging, and social media.  I believe most marketers today spend 90% of their efforts on outbound marketing and 10% on inbound marketing, and I advocate that those ratios flip.

Outbound vs. Inbound Marketing

Outbound marketing is when a marketer reaches out to people to see if they're interested in a product. For example, this could include door-to-door sales or cold calling where a sales rep or marketer approaches someone without knowing if he or she is even a qualified lead. Inbound marketing is a strategy where you create content or social media tactics that spread brand awareness so people learn about you, might go to your website for information, and then purchase or show interest in your product.

While some outbound strategies take lots of time and effort and may yield no leads, inbound strategies allow you to engage an audience of people that you can more easily qualify as a prospect of lead.

The best analogy I can come up with is that traditional marketers looking to garner interest from new potential customers are like lions hunting in the jungle for elephants.  The elephants used to be in the jungle in the '80s and '90s when they learned their trade, but they don't seem to be there anymore.  They have all migrated to the watering holes on the savannah (the internet).  So, rather than continuing to hunt in the jungle, I recommend setting up shop at the watering hole or turning your website into its own watering hole.

Editor's Note: A more detailed version of this article has been published here: "Inbound Marketing and the Next Phase of Marketing on the Web."  This post specifically was originally published in 2010 but was updated in October 2019 for comprehensiveness.  

 

Google: Don't Crawl Your Site To Build A Sitemap File

I never understood why people would use a crawler to build their XML sitemap file. I guess if you don't have access to read the database of your CMS you would do that but seems so inefficient. John Mueller of Google said that also on Reddit.