Why You Need Google Analytics for Your Business

Why You Need Google Analytics for Your Business

Do you know who is visiting your business website and when? What about how your customers find your site and engage with your web pages?

If you don’t have Google Analytics, you probably don’t know! But you definitely should.

As one of the most popular tools available for tracking and analyzing website traffic and performance, Google Analytics is the key that unlocks a whole new world of integral information for your business.

Google Analytics Definition

Google Analytics offers a holistic understanding of your website visitors across devices and platforms. It provides you with essential consumer insights to improve your marketing ROI. You should also know that Google Analytics is free to use.

4 Reasons Google Analytics Is a Game-Changer for Your Business

With Google Analytics, you’ll be equipped with a more complete understanding of how your audiences engage with your business. You will also have the necessary information to improve consumer experience while driving results and revenue.

Here are the top four reasons why you need Google Analytics for your business — and why it’s a game-changing tool for your marketing decisions.

1. Understand Your Site Traffic

One of the key benefits of Google Analytics is that it allows you to see and analyze your website traffic and understand how your visitors interact with your site. Customer-centric metrics include page sessions, page views, conversions, bounce rate analytics, session duration, and more — and they’re all available in a one-stop-shop dashboard that gives you an insightful scorecard for your site.

With Google Analytics, you can even see where your audience lives, how long they engage with specific pages on your site, and what type of content they prefer.

You’ll also have visibility into the referral sources for your site — including channels like organic search, paid search, email, and social media — so you know how people found your site (and how effectively your marketing campaigns are driving traffic!).

2. Maximize Your Data

You can collect a robust set of metrics about your website traffic, and Google Analytics can also help you quickly and efficiently analyze those different data sets and easily share them with your teams and stakeholders.

You can effectively use that data to your advantage to generate reports about user behavior, conversion, e-commerce purchases, demographics, traffic acquisition, and more.

3. Optimize Performance

Once you have a greater understanding of your site traffic and have maximized that data through reporting, you will have more information about improving your site and boosting performance.

But it doesn’t stop there. Because Google Analytics is designed to integrate with other Google solutions and partner products, you have a built-in way to optimize your marketing performance.

You can connect to Google Ads, Search Ads 360, Display & Video 360, Google Cloud, and Google Search Console — or you can integrate Analytics with any partner systems you’re using for point of sale, CRM, or other first-party data sources.

4. Improve Your ROI

Optimizing your site’s performance and understanding the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns puts you on the path to improved ROI. With Google Analytics, you’ll also be able to track conversions — from e-commerce sales to completed contact forms, new email subscriber signups, and more.

In addition, Google Analytics boasts machine learning capabilities that help you discover new insights — and predict future customer actions. Getting this additional value from your data can also make a positive impact on the ROI for your business.

Learn More About Google Analytics

Whether you’re just learning about Google Analytics or already know your way around the interface, the Google Analytics Academy is worth considering. The academy offers online courses, including Google Analytics for Beginners, Advanced Google Analytics, Introduction to Data Studio, Google Tag Manager Fundamentals, and more.

If you want to take it a step further, consider getting a Google data analytics certification. This professional certification from Google gives you access to in-demand skills and teaches you about R programming, SQL, Python, Tableau, and more.

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Know you need to activate Google Analytics but don’t know where to start? At Denver Post Media, we set up Google Analytics and all the necessary reporting dashboards and use that data to help businesses transform their marketing campaigns across channels to garner outstanding results.  

8 Ways to Create a Successful Organic Social Media Strategy

8 Ways to Create a Successful Organic Social Media Strategy

Social media is pervasive in our personal and professional lives. As a result, most companies and brands need an impactful social media presence to maximize success.

But, for many brands, gaining traction when posting to social media can be difficult. Perhaps you’ve noticed that previous organic posts have only garnered a handful of likes or comments, or it has been challenging to create engaged followers.

 

If you’ve experienced this, you’re not alone. But, with some strategic planning and execution, it is possible to build a successful organic social media strategy.

We’re sharing eight of our best tips for organic social media. But first, let’s review why it’s so important.

Benefits of Organic Social Media

There are many reasons why having an organic social media presence is essential — no matter the size of your company. Here are just a few to consider:

  • It is an opportunity to share your brand and engage with current and new customers.
  • It provides a place to build and amplify your brand’s personality, goals, and values.
  • It offers a resource to support customers with questions or concerns.
  • It cultivates a community around your brand.

An Important Distinction Between Organic Social Media and Paid Social Media

Before we get into how you can build a successful organic social media strategy, it’s important to note that organic social media differs from paid social media.

  • Organic Social Media relies only on the free reach afforded by a social media platform’s algorithm.
  • Paid Social Media is a monetary investment to a social media platform in exchange for amplifying the reach of content and showing it to specific or new audiences.

While paid social media often generates faster results, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a crucial place for organic social media to build brand presence and an engaged following effectively over time.

8 Ways to Create a Successful Organic Social Media Strategy

Here’s an overview of eight simple ways to immediately implement an organic social media strategy and set your brand or company up for long-term success.

1. Identify Your Social Media Platforms

Perhaps your brand only has a LinkedIn presence, but you’re wondering if you should be on TikTok or Instagram instead. Before you can effectively build your organic social media strategy, it’s helpful to evaluate if your platform mix is currently the best fit for your brand.

To identify your brand’s best platform(s), look at where your current and target audiences spend their time. Many social media demographics reports can help with this, in addition to resources like the Pew Research Center.

You could even conduct an email survey with your existing customers to see how they prefer to consume content on social media.

2. Consistently Produce Relevant Content

You’ve probably heard the expression “content is king,” and there is a lot of truth to this statement. Successful social media content is generally informative, shareable, inspiring, and entertaining. But it’s also essential that the content is relevant to its intended audience.

That said, content is wildly variable from brand to brand. What is right for one company may not work for another. But there are a few standard best practices to keep in mind.

  • Original: Focusing on content that offers a distinct take on a subject or is unique to your brand can be highly effective.
  • Relatable: Adding a human touch to your brand through relatable content and storytelling generally performs well.
  • Visually Appealing: From snackable videos to powerful images and professional infographics, the social media landscape thrives on content that includes a visual component — not just text.

3. Create a Content Calendar

If you’re wondering how to create a social media plan, a content calendar is your best tool. Not only does it help organize and strategize your upcoming organic social media posts, but it also ensures you can align content with any specific holidays, seasonal activations, product launches, and more.

It also provides a holistic view of what content is coming up, so you can see gaps or inconsistencies while sharing the schedule with team members across departments.

4. Follow the 80/20 Rule

When you think about the social media content you most enjoy consuming, it’s probably from brands and companies that aren’t constantly discussing their products and services.

That’s where the 80-20 rule comes in.

Think about having roughly 80% of your organic social media content be in the educational, inspiring, and entertaining category. People will remember and appreciate brands that impacted them with funny, memorable, or helpful content.

Then, dedicate about 20% to talk about more promotional content directly related to your products and services.

5. Engage with Your Audience

Responding to comments on your organic social media posts — and even commenting on other relevant pages and posts — is a surefire way to increase your engagement rate — and your community’s affinity for your brand.

When you have more engagement on your posts, it also helps the social media algorithm prioritize your content’s reach.

6. Join Online Groups and Communities

Some social media platforms, including Facebook and LinkedIn, have interest groups and category-specific communities. These can be a great way to learn more about your target audiences and organically integrate your brand into the dialogue, share relevant posts, and establish credibility while increasing engagement for your brand.

7. Involve Team Members

Employees can be among the best advocates for your brand — especially if you are just starting to build an organic social media strategy. Because social media algorithms generally show those posts with more traction and engagement to more people, it’s helpful to encourage team members to engage with your content.

Executives can also play a role here, as they likely have significant social influence in their own circles and can act as thought leaders when sharing company content on their profiles.

8. Track Your Performance

It’s important to evaluate your organic social media performance monthly to know what’s resonating with your audiences and what could be better.

Over time, this data will show patterns about the topics with the greatest interest and impact, what types of posts create the most engagement, and more. These insights will help guide your content decisions in the future.

How to Level Up Your Organic Social Media

Continuing to build an organic social media presence can be an invaluable part of your brand strategy while positively impacting key performance indicators like acquisition and retention.

But organic social media certainly requires an investment of time and work as well as content expertise.

At Denver Post Media, we understand this implicitly. We know how small businesses can leverage social media — and it’s why we work with brands daily to achieve their content and marketing goals. If you’d like to explore how we can help you build or enhance your organic social media, learn more here.

6 Ways to Improve Your Website’s Google Ranking

6 Ways to Improve Your Website's Google Ranking

Google gets approximately 99,000 search queries every second, resulting in about 8.5 billion searches daily and roughly 2 trillion global searches annually! 

As such, Google commands 92% of the mobile search engine market share worldwide, along with 72% of the desktop market.

All those zeroes are also why it’s critical to have a website that can compete — the first five organic results on a search page get 67.60% of all clicks, and the next five account for only 3.73%. It’s all downhill from there.

To get web traffic, you need to be near the top — and that starts with search engine optimization (SEO).

What is SEO?

The higher you rank in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) for your target keywords, the more people will visit your website or webpage. That’s where SEO comes in.

The goal of SEO is to increase the quantity of organic (non-paid) traffic your website content receives from search engines.

On-page SEO factors like content, tags, internal links, and even site architecture can help improve search visibility and increase traffic. Here are some ways to maximize your onsite SEO.

How to Rank Higher on Google in Six Steps

1. Be Relevant

Publishing high-quality, relevant, and authoritative content is a leading driver of search engine rankings — and there’s really no way around it. After all, Google’s main job is to show its users the best results.

Part of effectively creating that content means identifying keyword phrases your target audience might be searching for. These search terms will be integral to include in your content.

You can also check a webpage’s keyword ranking — its organic ranking position in search results for any given keyword — to see how it stacks up to others.

2. Write Strategically

While your content should flaunt expertise and relevance for your audiences, it also should prioritize SEO best practices. Threading the needle to achieve both of those objectives can be challenging.
Keep these things in mind:

  • Focus on readability: Content that is consumer-friendly, digestible, and easily scannable is essential so users can easily find information.
  • Try bulleted lists: Just like this list, bullets help readers more easily process content.
  • Don’t stuff keywords: Keyword stuffing is basically the overuse of keywords to improve website ranking quickly. But it will get you nowhere fast, so don’t try to outsmart the system.

3. Keep it Fresh

Yes, search engines want quality content with keywords used appropriately — they want you to update it regularly, too. It is a clear indicator of a site’s relevance. So, it’s crucial to audit your content regularly and update it where needed.

A blog is an excellent tool to keep a steady stream of fresh content — content that prioritizes your keywords — flowing into your site while helping to educate or inform your audience.

4. Optimize Images

While images, videos, and infographics may not be the first thing you think about when it comes to improving your site’s ranking, visual content can be an essential traffic driver when implemented correctly.

Images not only enhance text-based content, they send users directly to your site.

That’s because more than 36% of consumers use visual search when online shopping.
To ensure your images check the box, consider the following:

  • Image file size and format: Make sure to use image formats that are web-friendly and not too large to prevent slow site loading.
  • Customize file names and use alt tags: Always update file names and describe your images and videos with alternative text descriptions; it’s another way search engines can locate your page.
  • Mobile optimized: Just like your site, your images should appear correctly on mobile and be optimized to adjust to smaller screens.
  • Uniqueness: Not only do you want to ensure you can legally use your images, but it’s also beneficial to limit the use of stock photos that have frequently been implemented elsewhere.

5. Ensure You Have a Solid Foundation

Website architecture and page experience are not only important to your intended audiences, but they can also affect search engine rankings.

Google defines page experience as “a set of signals that measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page beyond its pure information value — both on mobile and desktop devices.”

You want users to easily find products, services, and other information efficiently and effectively. Consider an easy-to-follow navigation menu, strategic internal links, and prioritizing your most important pages when evaluating your site architecture.

6. Don’t Sleep on Backlinks

A backlink is a link on another website that points to your content — and it’s surprisingly effective in helping your search ranking. That’s because search engines use several off-page signals to determine whether your site can be trusted — one of the leading signals is backlinks.

Backlinks legitimize your site to search engines. There are some vital link-building strategies you can try, including:

  • Link-worthy content: Creating valuable content will naturally attract links. This could be anything from infographics to free quizzes, downloadable assets, and other interactive pages.
  • Guest blogging: Getting the word out about your content and writing for other sites is a great way to extend your reach and get some backlinks in the mix.
  • Broken link auditing: Going on the hunt for links that no longer work on other sites and suggesting links to your pages as replacements can be a lot of work, but it will pay dividends.
  • Adding links: By adding your own set of relevant external links to your content, you’re also improving authority and credibility.

Multiple other on-page SEO factors can help improve your website’s ranking. But, if you want to know how to rank on Google in 30 days, there are no foolproof hacks.

SEO is a long game, and results don’t often appear immediately. You’re also never finished with SEO; it’s a continuous process that requires constant attention and improvement.

For all those reasons and more, SEO may seem overwhelming. At Denver Post Media, we’re in the business of helping brands and companies achieve their marketing and advertising goals — including SEO and website ranking.

Content Marketing 101: Everything You Need to Know

Content Marketing 101:
Everything You Need to Know

Steve Jobs said it first in 1996: Content is king. And countless marketers, strategists, and industry leaders have chanted this three-word mantra ever since.

While the digital landscape has significantly changed since the ’90s, one thing that remains the same is the importance of content.

In fact, great content is more critical than ever today — especially in a digital marketing strategy.

What is Content Marketing?

“Traditional marketing and advertising is telling the world you’re a rock star. Content Marketing is showing the world that you are one.” -Robert Rose, CEO and Chief Strategy Officer, The Content Advisory.

While there are many ways to explain content marketing, at its core, it’s about sharing your brand or company’s story in a way that feels more authentic and useful to the consumer.

The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) defines it as a “strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

It’s not about pitching products or services. Rather, content marketing “provides relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve issues in their work (B2B content marketing) or personal lives (B2C content marketing).”

Why is Content Marketing Important?

“These days, people want to learn before they buy, be educated instead of pitched.” -Brian Clark, Entrepreneur.

According to an eCommerce Foundation study, 88% of customers are researching a company through online content before they ever reach out.

But that’s only one of the reasons content marketing is so crucial to a company’s success.

Given that successful content offers a meaningful and compelling way for brands to engage with their target audiences, the benefits of content marketing are extensive.

When it’s done well, content marketing can help you accomplish many objectives and goals for your business, including:

  • Increased brand awareness, retention, and loyalty
  • Lead generation
  • Connection with an audience that avoids ads
  • Higher traffic, sales, and intended consumer action
  • Thought leadership to build credibility and influence
  • Introduction of corporate social responsibility goals
  • Amplification of other marketing tactics, including SEO, PR, and social media

How Does Content Marketing Work?

Content is anything that adds value to the reader’s life. -Avinash Kaushik, Chief Strategy Officer, Croud.

Because every single brand and company has a different story — and a unique value proposition or product to sell — content varies greatly.

Content marketing encompasses two major components: content creation and the distribution of that content.

Content Creation

Creating content is about getting your intended prospects and existing customers to pay attention by producing interesting information they care about — or that serves a purpose for them.

While blogs and articles might be the first thing you think about when it comes to “content,” content marketing can be much more. Here’s a quick (and still non-exhaustive) list of tactics:

  • Blog posts and articles
  • White papers
  • Case studies
  • Video
  • Product demos and how-to guides
  • Podcasts
  • Email and newsletters
  • Infographics
  • eBooks
  • Webinars and interviews
  • Quizzes
  • ROI calculators
  • Testimonials and reviews
  • Loyalty and rewards programs

Content Distribution

The distribution part of a content marketing strategy can include a range of marketing channels. It’s essentially any and all the places your target audience may be spending time or searching for content. This could include:

  • Website
  • Email
  • Direct mail
  • Social media
  • Paid digital marketing
  • Events

Who is My Target Audience?

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” -Dr. George Berkeley

You can have the best content in the world, but if it’s not distributed to the right target audiences for your brand — and in the channels where they’re searching and paying attention — it doesn’t matter.

No one sees it, and it doesn’t make a sound.

So, to create the most effective content, you need to identify who you want to reach. You may need different assets and content types for various types of customers.

Your brand might have an ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer personas representing your best-fit consumers.

If you don’t, you’ll want to consider demographics like age, gender, education, profession, income, family status, and geolocation. You may even layer in psychographics like values, personality traits, lifestyle preferences, hobbies, and more.

Creating and Implementing a Content Marketing Strategy

“Here’s everything you need to know about creating killer content in 3 simple words: Clear. Concise. Compelling.” -Demian Farmworth, Blogger.

The beauty of quality content marketing is that it works everywhere — and it should be fully and seamlessly integrated at every stage in your digital marketing funnel: awareness, consideration, conversion, and retention.

There are five essential steps to define your content marketing strategy:

  1. Know your business objectives and define your content goals.
  2. Identify your audience — and who you want to reach.
  3. Create the best-fit content marketing assets for that intended audience.
    (Remember: Content that is relevant, valuable, and authentic is vital!)
  4. Choose your marketing channels and publishing frequency to distribute your content.
    (Remember: It’s essential to reach your audiences where they are!)
  5. Analyze the impact and results and adjust accordingly.

Content Marketing “Cons” to Consider

“Traditional marketing talks at people. Content marketing talks with them.” -Doug Kessler, Co-founder, Velocity.

While we’ve talked about why content marketing is so important and beneficial, but what about the challenges?

  • It’s time-consuming.

Perhaps the biggest drawback is it can be time-consuming to ideate and brainstorm the quality content that will drive results, and then publish and analyze the results.

  • The results aren’t always immediate.

Often, content marketing can be more of a long game. It requires some testing and trial and error to discover what works best for your target audiences.

  • The results aren’t always measurable.

Speaking of results, they’re not always measurable either! While metrics like web traffic and online conversions can be quantified, it’s harder to quickly determine the impact of content marketing on brand awareness, loyalty, and even reputation.

  • It may require investment in outside resources.

Often, companies may need to outsource content like video, graphics, and more because they don’t have the expertise (or the time!) to produce it in-house.

How Can I Find a Content Marketing Agency Near Me?

If your company needs some support in content marketing strategy and execution, consider working with an agency specializing in content marketing.

The great thing about engaging with a content marketing agency is that they don’t necessarily have to be in your ZIP code to be an effective partner. Agencies work with brands worldwide to enhance their digital marketing strategies.

At Denver Post Media, we do it for our clients every day of the week.

Another great resource is the Content Marketing Institute, where you can connect with communities and find additional direction.

2023 New Year’s Resolutions for Marketers

2023 New Year’s Resolutions for Marketers

Want to Hit The Ground Running in 2023?
Start Here

Here at Denver Post Media, we care about your company’s success and with the new year beginning, there are a few vital steps you can take to ensure your advertising campaigns run as efficiently as possible in 2023.

1 – Website and Campaign Checkup

  • Evaluate the user experience on your website. Ensure your SSL certificate is up to date and your website is mobile friendly. This will lead to increased conversion rates and stronger brand affinity overall.
  • If you are using UTM codes for your digital marketing campaigns, check on your UTM codes and make sure they are labeled correctly for proper attribution. This is particularly important if UTM codes contain time-sensitive terms like a month, season or year.
  • If there are any pixels/tracking tags on your website, ensure they are still placed so that tracking is not interrupted.

2 – Creatives Audit

  • The new year is a perfect time to consider refreshing your creatives across the board. What learnings can we take from 2022 to inform our creative direction in 2023? What worked? What should be avoided? What new ideas can we bring to the table? Take the first quarter of 2023 to A/B test some new concepts. This should be an area for constant improvement throughout the course of the year. A key takeaway we often have in this process is that “more” is not always better. Keep your messaging clear, concise and enticing and let your website do the work from there.

3 – Target Audience Check-In

  • Is there a new demographic that you’ve noticed has been visiting your website more often lately, or engaging with your business content? Is there a new audience in general that could represent untapped potential for you in 2023? There is more data available than ever to understand the demographics and behaviors for audiences that are most likely to engage with your brand. Let’s do some target audience tweaking and let the data lead us to your most efficient targeting strategy.

4 – Explore Your Campaign Options

  • What suggestions has your strategy team (internal and/or external) given you throughout the duration of your campaigns, especially going into the new year? Think about these suggestions – now is the perfect time to implement them!
  • This could be as simple as budget reallocation or leveraging key takeaways from insights on geography, device type, day of the week and audience reports. Now could be the right time to add in a new brand awareness campaign to enhance an existing, conversion-focused approach (or vice versa). The important thing is to be sure you are understanding campaign results and overall trajectory against the initial goals of that campaign. Are things trending in the right direction? What can we do to work smarter?

5 – GA 4

  • In early 2022, Google announced the newest version of Google Analytics, titled GA4. On July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics (UA), which is the current version of Google Analytics, will no longer be available, which is why now is the best time to begin the process of switching your Google Analytics set up to GA4.
  • Here you will find a document with a step-by-step guide on switching from UA to GA4.
  • If you have any questions, concerns, or just want some guidance on beginning this process, please reach out to your Denver Post Media representative and we will be happy to assist you with this transition.

The digital experts at Denver Post Media are here to help you along the way with any of these resolutions and more. Whether a quick consultation, complementary analytics assistance or request for a smarter digital marketing plan in 2023, let us know how we can be of assistance!

Please contact a member of our digital team today to learn more.

Sean Stead
Digital Director
sstead@denverpostmedia.com

Dakota Nelson
Digital Account Specialist
dnelson@denverpostmedia.com

Claire Rubino
Digital Account Specialist
crubino@denverpostmedia.com

From everyone at Denver Post Media, Happy New Year!