How to create Google Analytics Conversion Goals

Saw this video on youtube this morning.

Its a scant 7 minutes long so please take the time to watch.

It describes how easy it is to setup CONVERSION GOALS on Google Analytics. For you dealers on the "eCert" program, this is very important. Its part of the process to measure your eBusiness marketing results.

The video is done by WebShare Design. They have many other GA videos on their website and youtube so do yourself a favor and check them out. www.websharedesign.com

RETHINK EVERYTHING

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Need help responding?

I just saw a great little article from Pivnet that talks about a company called RESPONSELOGIX.

In a nutshell, they will assist you with answering the initial lead within 10 minutes of receipt, providing price quotes if a consumer asks.

The article went on to say that four Toyota dealers in Northern California that started to use the service saw an increase in closing ratios as well as an increase in the lead verification answer rate (yes / no % anyone??)not to mention higher relevancy scores on the Mystery Shop report.

Check them out. Maybe the can assist you. Link Read more!

Walk In Influences

Interesting data coming out of JD Powers.

The "internet" is responsible for driving 54% of your walk in traffic. That is a true walk in. They havent contacted you any other way.

54% ! All the more reason your online presence must be engaging and provide reasons why they should come to the store.

Dont confuse this with the people who actually reach out to you first online. Thats a different monster.

So, 54% picked your store due to the internet. Heres the full break down:

Internet - 54%
Classified Magazine - 15%
Newspaper - 13%
Television - 8%
Radio - 4%
Direct Mail - 3%
Phone Book - 3%
Outdoor Ads - 0%

Phone Book? Whats a phone book?

Yet we continue to spend our media dollars mostly on traditional media. Looks like alternative media is no longer alternative. Im going to start the term switch.

Alternative is the new traditional. Read more!

Secret Sauce Part 2 - Metadata .15m

Meta wha??? Relax. I'll explain...

Each video-sharing site let's you create "tags," which are words that describe your video. These tags, along with the title and description of the video, are the basis for how your video is located by end users on video-sharing sites like Search engine optimization and search engine marketing used to be the realm of text only, but with search engines like Google and Ask adding video to their search results, optimizing the metadata around your videos is increasingly important. This means creating rich and relevant video titles, descriptions and tags.

There are only a few specifics that you need to know about tags.

First, max out the tags, title and description for every site. The more metadata describing your video, the more likely someone is to find your video. It's surprising to see so many uploaders let so much opportunity go to waste by adding few or non-descriptive tags.

Second, your tags, and particularly the category you choose, should be relevant to your video.

We have seen video creators go from little viewership to becoming regularly featured producers simply through a better choice of category.

If you are hosting a video on your own site, the same rules apply. But in such a case, be sure to create a relevant file name for your video.

It is also advisable to have just one video per page with a simple text title and description place near the video itself. Many videos are watched on social networking sites such as facebook and myspace.

This means that while you may post your video to YouTube or MetaCafe, many of the views are a result of people embedding that video into another site. The implication is that your video should be hosted on both your website and the video sharing sites for maximum exposure.

One more hint on tags - the TubeMogul "Load and Track" tool shows you how your tags will look on each site as you are uploading videos, and soon will show you the most popular tags and video search terms to help you select appropriate metadata.
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Bad Times For Print

The owners of the Philadelphia inquirer and the Philadelphia daily news will be filling for bankruptcy next week after talks to restructure their debt fell apart.

While I am not against print advertising I do think this is yet another reason why a serious look at your current marketing mix is needed.

Even if these papers vanish, people will still get their news.

I wonder how.....

RETHINK EVERYTHING.

(published via iPhone)

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Secret Sauce Part 2 - Content and Production .5C

We know now that 50% of creating a great viral video is about content and production.

The goal in this stage is to create something remarkable, literally, something that causes people to remark - and in doing so to effectively convey your message.

We've noticed that certain categories tend to garner the interest of large audiences. Regardless of your message, utilizing a proven content category to package your message is a good way to spread your message wide and far.

The remarkable comes in many shapes and sizes:

Humor - everyone loves a laugh, but many of us like to make others laugh as well; this is what makes comedic videos so viral.

Avant-gard videos - videos that push the boundaries of what is acceptable can be incredibly viral - especially since this content never makes it to network TV. But be careful not to damage your brand and to obey by the terms and conditions of the respective video-sharing sites.

Talent - true talent is rare and fascinating. If you can showcase true talent people will forward your video.

Celebrities - we are fascinated with celebrities, and any videos featuring a celebrity are very viral, in part because there are hundreds of websites that follow celebrities and will embed these videos. Beyond being viral, celebrities endorsements have a powerful influence on decision making.

Kitsch - don't kill the messenger, but a remarkable number of the most popular videos we are tracking also contain one or more of the following qualities:
Special effects - the Ray Ban sunglass catching video is a great example. In general, any video that generates debate generates viewers

Animal/pet tricks - man is drawn to animals just as he is to fire…it's hard to explain, but it seems to have to do with primitive wiring in the brain

Cute kids - one of the draws of online video is that real people capture real moments, and nothing is as straightforward as a child just being herself

Repetitive, catchy music - certainly not a new concept, but with infinite channels come many more opportunities to put up the experimental jingle

Physical injury - thank goodness it's not me!

Pranks - thank goodness it's not me!

Spoofs - ride the coattails of the tried and true

The trick, as with any marketing effort, is to both be remarkable AND communicate your message.

Use the right package to make your video a hit, but don't create a vehicle without passengers. Make sure the content is doing what it supposed to do.

In the online video community, discussions around production are typically in reference to video quality - as it relates to camera, sound, compression, and editing.

Some believe that higher production quality is an important component in gaining popularity for ones online videos, while others believe that the popularity of the medium is authenticity, and that lower quality video has a genuine nature that gets lost with higher quality. Given the plethora of widely seen videos over the internet, this concept of quality hasn't seemed to correlate with audience size or popularity.

One thing is for certain: high quality human components of production, such as shooting and editing, make any video more watchable. Paying attention to lighting, framing the shot, and crisp editing is not only more pleasant, it's often required to make the picture viewable in a small window and on sites with file size restrictions.

Bottom line: choose production components that fit with your message, content, and intended audience.

Just some ideas to get the ball rolling.

RETHINK EVERYTHING
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Im FIRST on the Google

Wanted to give you guys an example of the VSEO I am talking about.

On 2/9/2009 around 10 am I pushed the Toyota Tundra Heat commercial up to 3 or 4 videos sites (YouTube, metacafe etc) with proper SEO on it.

As of 6 am 2/10/2009 I am the first result and 2 of the top 4 results on google with a search of "tundra heat commercial"

Took me a total of 5 minutes to tag it and upload it. Less than 24 hours later I'm the number one result and half of the top four results.

Cost me NOTHING but 5 minutes of my time.

Imagine if you did the same for "tundra insert city name here" or "civic insert city name here" for some competition annihilation or "2009 Camry Bluetooth operation" or "why us" or "customer testimonials". It goes on and on.

We just spoke about the 9 BILLION people in the US who watched videos on YouTube in December 2008. Its a pretty safe bet some of those 9 BILLION videos were automotive related. Start building those video libraries.

You get the idea.

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Secret Sauce Part 1

Everyday, people ask me whats the secret to having a successful eBusiness operation.

There is no magic bullet. No single line I can tell you that will make your department account for 60% of your store sales and gross. I don't carry around Internet dust that I can just shake over the store in some freaky show of eBusiness Voodoo... You want to know the answer?

Hard Work.

With that said I want to focus on your VSEO in the upcoming weeks. VSEO, or Video Search Engine Optimization, can be considered the "next big thing" in online marketing. Don't take my word for it... check out what Comscore has said...

"9 BILLION videos were watched in December of 2008."

I should add that this was on YouTube alone.

And only in the United States!!!!

Last time I checked (July 2008) there was only about 305 million people in the US. With only 220 million Internet users. That's a penetration rate of around 72%

So, how do you get a piece of this sweet video goodness? VSEO....

Now that we know the "why", lets look at the first step to success, the formula:

.5C+ .15M + .20T + .15P = success

Thanks to Tubemogul.com for this.

Let me break it down for ya.

C=Content and Production, M=metadata, T=thumbnail, P=promotion

In other words in order to position your videos online to have the greatest impact and exposure, Tubemogul suggests spending 50% time on the actual video production and creation, 15% of time on creating metadata, 20% of time on choosing the correct thumbnail, and the remaining 15% of your efforts on promotion and marketing of the video once it is online. And I agree with their suggestion.

Hopefully one day I will figure out what this all means... Seriously, confused by all those terms? I will touch on each term in future posts.

For now, just let it sink in. Put your hand on the screen, touch the words. Close your eyes and take a few deep, slow breaths.

Stay tuned.

Comments?

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Want to know what people are saying about you?

Everyone reading this is managing their online reputation right?

If you aren't and want to know how, call me or your DM.

For those that are, here is a nice, FREE, service from Google to assist you with managing your rep. Its called Google Alerts.

Google Alerts will email or text you any time your name is mentioned on the web and is indexed by "da google" and provide a link to the page.

Here's how to set it up. Vist this link and fill out the 4 required items. That's it. Set up as many as you like.

Almost to easy huh. Wait, its not "almost" to easy, it IS too easy.

But knowing what people are saying and where they are saying it is one thing (actually two things but who's counting).. what you do with this information is another. But that's a topic for another post or better yet, a dealer visit....

RETHINK EVERYTHING Read more!

Google THIS...

"toyota corolla torrance"

This is BIG people... really big. With a little work (lifting those weights people) you can do the same....

Site indexing by search engines can take up to 6 months to fully propagate and having UNSURPASSED SEO is a must but theres more...

With the recent YOUTUBE passing of Yahoo as the 2nd highest search engine its even more important now to understand and utilize VSEO.

You MUST start keeping a library of video clips and pushing them to the web.. to EVERY SITE that will let you.. there are services that can assist you with this such as TubeMogul and Traffic Geyser to name a couple. They will basically take your footage and push to multiple video hosting sites such as:

AOL Video
Blip.TV
Crackle.com
Daily Motion.com
Google video
MetaCafe.com
Myspace
Revver
Stupid Videos
Veoh
Yahoo video
YouTube

But it takes more than just pushing the videos up to the web. MUCH MORE.

Here are a few pointers to get you started:

1. File Names - Give the video file a catchy and relevant name that is related to your keyword or phrase. Once you have uploaded your video site map there is added opportunity for these keywords and phrases to be found and indexed by the search engines.
2. Meta Data - Add meta data to your video files. Again, use relevant meta data, like you would when you are carrying out other Search engine optimisation campaigns.
3. Transcripts - Transcripts of the video will add credible content to the page and give the spiders relevant information to crawl. The transcript should make reference to keywords, relevant content and your brand.
4. Outbound Linking - If you add video content to other sites such as You Tube, make sure that you avail of their ability to link back to your own site.
5. Video Length - Add shorter videos to keep your audience interested. If your video is quite lengthy, consider breaking it down into smaller chunks. This will also give more quality video content to optimise.
6. Branding – Have your branding displayed in your video to enhance your brand awareness.
7. Inbound Linking – link your videos to important keywords throughout your site to enhance their value.
8. Rating – allow users / visitors to rate your video

Oh and one more thing... VSEO only takes about 5 days to propagate... not 6 months like traditional SEO...

YOU CAN BE ON THE FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE, IF NOT THE FIRST RESULT, WITHIN 24 HOURS PEOPLE!!!!

RETHINK EVERYTHING
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Backlinking

Progressive Internet Managers should know about backlinking and its importance in your SEO campaign.

For those that don't, here is a brief review.

Backlinking is the term used to describe websites with links back to your website. Easy enough. The important item here is that this assists with your SEO as the search engines use this to increase your relevancy. Think of it as a vote for your website.

More important than just having many linkbacks is the quality of the sites they are linking from. A link from Toyota.com to your site is a higher quality linkback than one from your childs myspace account. Its still valuable, just not as valuable.

Want to check how many sites linkback to you? Read on....

To check linkbacks to your site, follow the following:

Google - in the search bar type in "link:http://www.yoursite.com" Where "yoursite" is your URL. As a point of reference Toyota .com has 3100 listed as of this writing.

Yahoo - in the search bar type in "linkdomain:www.yourdomain.com" where "yourdomain" is your URL. Please note - do not use "http" for Yahoo. Yahoo shows over 766,000 linkbacks.

Yahoo gives us deeper linkbacks than Google.

To start increasing linkbacks and improving SEO, make sure your signature on forums and boards includes links to your site. Get your URL out there. Read more!