google analytics tutorials by ian lurie

You’ve heard of Google Analytics, but chances are you are not using it as effectively as you could be.

My boss Ian has started a video tutorial series on Google Analytics. He (and I) use this tool every day, so he can tell you what parts you should be paying the most attention to.

Google Analytics Tutorial 1: Setting Up

Google Analytics Tutorial 2: Essential Stats

Google Analytics Tutorial 3: Digging Deeper

Why these are great- Ian tells you in simple language how to use Analytics to make decisions and take action. Go watch.

If you have a specific analytics subject you want Ian to cover in a future video, leave a comment after one of the videos.

talk with jeremiah owyang of podtech and ian lurie of portent interactive

Just got off a call with Jeremiah of Podtech and Ian of Portent (my CEO).

Here are two questions that arose:

1. Old measurements aren’t working as well as they used to. This is not new information. What is new for me is seeing how Jeremiah (who deals with social media and larger companies) sees the future as compared to how Ian sees the future of measurement.

At Portent we are advising small and medium size companies about their overall internet marketing strategy, so we say “out of all the options available, we recommend putting resources here,” and then we carry that out. So for us measurement is how we decide which of the many things we do that we should do more of.

Example: should we put more hours this month into email marketing or SEO? To decide, we look at verifiable ROI from each source, but we also look at the larger picture of how email and SEO influence the company overall.

For Jeremiah, he is asking a variety of people how they plan to measure. His most recent conclusion:

“So what will me measure?
We each define and measure it in different ways, and it really leads me to suspect that the future of measurement (and Eric agrees) that will likely be a flexible type of measurement that depends on the environment, client and industry.” -Jeremiah

2. How do you communicate the value of social marketing? This discussion is just beginning. Jeremiah has been involved in this for years, at Hitachi and now at Podtech. At Portent we are including more of this as one of the many ways we market for our clients. Yes, if you are a client of mine, we will discuss blogging at some point. Should that be separately mentioned? We will also look at PPC, SEO, how you respond to blog posts about you on blogs, email marketing, usability, how you follow up with customers, and other things… so when does social marketing get its own line?

Good conversation.. thank you, Jeremiah.

conversation marketing, available for free online

Ian put his book Conversation Marketing online for anyone to browse today. He writes about it here, where he says he put his internet marketing book out for three reasons:

1. Get more input.
2. He wants the book to grow. Possibly a wiki format in the future.
3. Great propaganda.

I would add to this list in a few ways:

4. Establish authority- hinted at in the three reasons above, this sharing of information helps establish Ian as the authority on internet marketing that he is. While some of our competitors may write articles, they don’t put their books online for free. Ian is saying, here is how I think, now interact with me about it. Godin did a similar thing with the Ideavirus book, with one crucial difference:

5. Search engine food- Godin made his book freely available in PDF, which is not as good for search engines as plain text. Right now, Ian’s book is online as it is written. Over the next months he will be rewriting parts for SEO. His site conversationmarketing.com currently has 250 pages of content. It had 197 before. And those 50 additional pages of content can be very keyword rich.

What this means to you:
Release information, unless that is what you are really selling. Portent is selling internet marketing expertise in seeing the big picture and doing all the parts so they fit together well. We are not selling a book.

You are not selling manuals. Or books. Or CDs. Use those items to get more people to come to buy what you really are selling.

authenticity, time, and keeping your edge

Jory muses about Rocky and how he got less authentic with each additional movie. That we could relate to the Rocky of the first film, the guy fighting for love, but that the other movies became less and less relevant to the audience.

Cory Doctorow wrote a book and talks about why he gives his book away online. His take is that he should be doing what he does best, writing, and that he is getting more readers overall by giving away his book. Most people who download the book would not have bought it anyways, and some people who would not have heard about the book decide to buy it because they downloaded it and liked it.

Leesa Barnes wrote about the Top 10 women in podcasting, who they are, what they are doing.

Right now, these podcasting women are pretty authentic, delivering good value. There has not been time for line extensions ad naseum where they forget why they are podcasting. Cory has almost one million downloads of his book because he focused on delivering value and being authentic.

Seth talks about the possible demise of sites like Digg because they become so valuable to marketers that we can’t keep our hands off, and figure out ways to game to system.

Internet marketing has been around for a while. Portent has been around for the whole time, since 1995. How can we or any internet marketing agency make sure we keep our edge and remain authentic?

First, we focus on measurable results. Whenever we can we measure, and whenever it makes sense we ask for compensation based on revenue. This keeps everyone paying attention to making clients more profitable. A common metric we use is ROI. Say a client is at 2:1 ROI right now, that a dollar spent on internet marketing is producing $2 of revenue. Get to 3:1 ROI, and we are measurably better.

We also keep our edge through the buzzword of the decade, thought leadership. CEO Ian keeps a blog as do I.

Lastly, we count on referrals, case studies, and search engine rankings in getting new clients. We have only posted 5 case studies, and we need to write more. Clients can look at what we have done and our results, and ask themselves, are these guys for real?

The most measurable and present of these three is search engine rankings. We claim we can get clients high rankings; search for phrases like ‘internet marketing agency’ and we prove that we can for the terms important to us.

Pay attention to what you do best and measure results. That’s how you stay authentic and keep your edge.