The key to succeeding in business is being a true expert on your business. You need to know everything there is to know about it. While many creative entrepreneurs are experts at their craft, when it comes to marketing and selling online, they’re still in the dark. Below are 21 questions you should be able to answer about your online retail business.

1. How many orders do you receive each month?
2. Where do the orders come from (SEO, ads, PR, branding, etc.)?
3. What is your average order value?
4. What referring sites are making you the most money?
5. What keywords are making you the most money via SEO?
6. What keywords could make you money via Adwords?
7. What products are people trying to find on your website today, that you currently don’t offer?
8. How strong is your brand and what percentage of your sales and site traffic come from people going directly to your site or searching for your brand name?
9. What percentage of your visitors are return visitors and what percentage are new?
10. Are you doing a good job of attracting return visits?
11. Do you have a high bounce rate?
12. Do people like your website? Is it user-friendly? Attractive? Loaded with great content?
13. How does your site compare to other sites like it in terms of bouce rate, visits, page views, and return visitors?
14. What pages on your site get the most views?
15. What pages on your site get the least views and what should you do about them?
16. How many people are downloading your PDFs, clicking your Facebook “like” button , Twitter links, etc? Do you know where visitors who take these actions came from (search, banner ads, etc.)?
17. What percentage of people abandon their shopping cart on your site?
18. What portion of the checkout process are people abandoning on? Do they bail on view cart or right before entering payment?
19. How many visits does it take before customers buy?
20. How many days pass before a customer places an order? Do they buy the first day they visit or come back weeks later to spend money?
21. How much do you spend to earn $1.00?

So how’d you do? If you don’t know the answers to all of these, don’t worry. I just finished writing an ebook that can get you the answers to every single one of them! “Harnessing Google Analytics to Make More Money, Grow Your Brand and Be a Better Marketer (Even if Technology Scares The Pants Off of You)” was written for small business owners who need answers to these questions and don’t know how to use Google Analytics to get them.

The book was designed to help you market more effectively and make more money! It will help you:

• Grow your brand.
• Improve your SEO and Adwords campaigns.
• Make better ad buying decisions.
• Get new product ideas.
• Improve your shopping cart and overall content and site design.
• Measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
• Track everything that happens on your website.

Other benefits of the book:

• Breaks down the “techie speak” into easy-to-understand plain English.
• Helpful screen shots guide you along the way so you always know you’re looking at just the right thing and clicking in just the right place.
• Real world examples of how to apply what you’re seeing to make more money and grow your brand.
• The easy-to-digest, skimmable writing format you’ve come to know and love on Smaller Box. Each section of the book is broken out with headlines and bullet points, so making your way through the book is a breeze.
• Instant delivery via email. Read the book on your computer, ipad, or other mobile device and start taking control of Google Analytics today!

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER FOR ETSY, ARTFIRE, ETC.:
This book will be most effective for people who have their own websites. If you depend entirely on a service like Artfire or Etsy to sell online, many of the cool stuff this book can teach you to do won’t work for you. The reason is that in order to make Google Analytics work to it’s fullest potential, you need access to your website’s source code. If you sell on Artfire, Etsy, etc. you can’t access this so you won’t be able to implement some of Google Analytics’ most useful functionality. I have written many articles here about why you should have your own website; harnessing Google Analytics effectively is just one more reason. If you need others, check out my rants on reputation management, re-marketing, SEO, losing sales, secondary conversions, affiliate programs and my personal reasons for having my own website.

Did your last PR campaign fall flat? Are the ads you’re running today failing to snag you customers? Did the contest you just ran get almost no entries? When these disappointments come our way, it’s easy to blame mean reporters or fickle customers or the blog we just paid to advertise on. Oftentimes, the problem is a little closer to home. If your website’s not ready for prime time, all the marketing in the world won’t help. Below is a handy checklist of things you MUST do before you launch into any marketing efforts including advertising, contests, pitching the media, etc.

Product Photos:

• Are they clear, sharp, crisp, professional and attractive?
• Do the colors look murky or muddy?
• Do the colors closely match the colors of the item in real life?
• Can the customer see it from all angles they’d want to see it from (back, side, etc.)?
• Is there an action shot? (i.e. If it’s clothing, is an attractive model wearing it? If it’s home decor, is it shot in an attractive home setting? If it’s jewelry, is it being worn on an attractive model?) Action shots help your customer identify with the product and imagine owning it.
• Can the customer zoom in and see an enlarged version of the product photo?

Website Design:

• Is your web design professional and attractive? (Attractive websites engender trust and that encourages sales. Amateurish websites make customers worry you may not ship the products, or the products make be as amateurish as the web design. You don’t want customers thinking either of these things.)
• Does it use consistent fonts and branding?
• Does it have a consistent navigation bar that easily allows the customer to visit different product categories?
• Is your copy clear and readable and easy to follow? Are blocks of text broken out into headlines and bullets where appropriate? Can I skim any page of your site and within a few seconds understand what the page is trying to tell me?
• Is it easy for me to find information I need, such as return policies and shipping information?
• Are products merchandised in a variety of ways? (i.e. can I shop by product type, gift giving occasion, product color, price, etc.)

Information Presentation

• Is company contact information easy to find? Can a customer easily call or email if there is a problem.
• Is there a detailed sizing chart on your product pages? The more details the better. How long is it, how wide is it, how deep is it. If you’re selling clothing give us the size of the garment and the size wearer it’s best suited for. For example, this sizing chart tells you how long and wide the garment is, what bust size the garment fits best AND what clothing size the garment fits best. It describes how to find the right fit and how the garment should fit.
• Are shipping policies easy to find? Customers want to know where you ship (US, Canada, International, etc.), how you ship (Priority Mail, Fedex, etc.) and how much it costs. They also want to know how long it takes you to ship the item. Does order processing happen the same business day or do you require some lead time?
• What is your return policy? Is it easy to find? Are returns easy? How long do I have to make a return? Do you refund shipping? How do you deal with exchanges? How do you deal with defective products or shipping damage?
• Who owns this company? What are the company’s values? Is there an about page?
• What is your privacy policy? How is customer information secured?
• What payments do you accept?

Branding:

• Do you have a professional distinctive logo?
• Do you have a domain name that customers can remember?
• Have you created a unique brand/products that give customers reason to buy YOUR clothing/accessories/bags/etc. instead of the competition’s?

Press Readiness:

• Do you have a press page?
• Can we see what other media outlets have written about the company?
• Are there high resolution photos there that I can download?
• Do you have a press kit I can download?
• Are your product photos press-friendly? (This means free of watermarks and right click is not disabled. Worried about image theft? Fine, but is it worth losing out on those media placements?)

Checkout/Purchasing:

• Does checking out take too many steps?
• Is checkout difficult or slow? Can I even find the checkout button?
• Do you ask for unnecessary information?
• If I leave a necessary field blank during checkout, are the error messages easy to see and understand?
• Do I have to create an account?
• Could your mother figure out how to successfully place an order on your website without any guidance from you?
• Do I have to leave your site to make a payment?
• Are there a variety of payment options? (i.e. credit card, Paypal, Google Checkout, etc.)

Secondary Conversions:

• Can I easily find your Facebook page? Do you have a “like” button on every page
• of your site?
• Can I easily find you on Twitter?
• Can I easily find your other social media accounts such as Youtube, Flickr, your blog, etc.?
• Can I easily sign up for your newsletter?
• Have you given me a reason to become a Facebook fan, join your newsletter, etc.

Remember that the end goal when you market is to convert customers. You either want them to buy stuff or you want them on your mailing list, Facebook, etc. If your online store is not 100% ready for visitors, you are wasting your time money and energy by trying to attract visitors you can’t accommodate. It’s exciting to see your site traffic go up, but it serves no benefit if your site isn’t optimized to convert visitors. While you might be able to slide on a few items in the checklist above, generally this list is what you need to consider before you do anything else.

Even if you’re single and hating it, there could still be an upside for you when it comes to Valentine’s Day: CASH! Every year people spend big bucks on gifts for their sweeties. Some people even buy Valentine’s day treats for their parents, children or platonic friends. To make the most of your V-Day sales, you have to start preparing now. Here are a few things for your to do list:

1. Red Hot Ad Campaigns
It makes sense to spend a little more on advertising when you know people are in a shopping mood. If you’ve been thinking about running an ad on your favorite blog or giving Adwords a try, now is a good time to give that a go.

If you’re on a tight budget, I Shop Indie’s Valentine’s Day ad co-op is a great way to reap the benefits of over $600 worth of advertising for only $65.00. (Unilke most other ads, the co-op comes with email marketing and social media marketing!)

When you’re designing ads, think about promoting your products as Valentine’s Day items. Feature products that come in red or evoke a flirty or romantic mood. You might even want to have your ads link to a special landing page featuring Valentine’s Day themes items.

2. It’s All About Merchandising
Make tweaks to your website so that Valentine’s Day products are easy to find. Think about featuring V-Day themed items on your home page. Create gift guides with suggested products for guys, girls and even singles and kids.

3. Start Promoting
If you sell online, you’ll want to promote products early so customers have time to place orders and receive products by mail before February 14. Come up with a schedule to promote your Valentine’s Day products and offers via your newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc.

You may be able to boost sales by offering a special deal like a coupon code or a promotional price on a V-Day related product. Even an event like a contest is a great way to drum up traffic and interest and hopefully convert a few sales.

4. Get Some Press
Pitching your products for inclusion in gift guides and magazine articles is a great way to attract new customers and boost V-Day sales. Although it is too late to pitch monthly print press, there’s still time to contact weekly and daily print outlets. You also have time to pitch your products to online outlets like blogs.

If you want to make money from the search engines, either via a CPC campaign or search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll need to do some keyword research before you do anything else. Keyword research helps you determine what phrases you’ll want to target so people looking for what you sell can find your products. For today’s example, we’re going to pretend we sell organic grocery totes.

Step 1: Pick a Tool
There are several great tools out there for doing keyword research. Some of them you have to pay to use but some are free. Some of the top paid tools include Wordtracker and Wordstream (both have free trials available). If you want to go the budget route, Google’s Keyword Tool is free and also delivers lots of good information.

Step 2: Conduct a Search
Let’s say we’re going to work with Google’s Keyword Tool. I already know people come to my site searching for “reusable grocery bags” so I plug that phrase into the Keyword Tool (using the “word or phrase” box) just to start with. I get back a list of keywords, along with information about “competition” and “global monthly searches”. Competition gives me an idea of how many other advertisers are bidding on keywords I am interested in. Global Monthly Searches gives me an idea of how often people search Google for those phrases.

What I’m most interested in is words and phrases that meet the following criteria:
- low to moderate competition
- moderate to high search volume
- highly relevant to my product

I can sort the results by search volume and competition so I can get an idea of what’s low competition and what’s high search volume. I may find some phrases that meet 2 of those 3 criteria. I’ll just start taking notes on which words I find that I’m interested in and what kind of competition and search volume they have. (An excel spreadsheet is perfect for storing this information.)

Let’s say I decide I am interested in
- “Environmental Bags” (medium competition, some search volume, medium relevance)
- “organic tote bag” (medium competition, low to medium search volume, high relevance)
- “market bags” (medium competition, medium search volume, medium relevance)
- “bag reusable” (medium-high competition, high search volume, high relevance)
- “grocery tote bag” (medium-high competition, medium search volume, high relevance)
- “reusable bag” (high competition, very high search volume, high relevance)

(We might pick other words and have a longer list, I am just using these 6 phrases as an example.)

Step 3: Get Out of Your Head
You’ve so far come up with some good phrases, but there may be ways people search for your product that you aren’t thinking of. You’ll want to dig deeper. You can ask friends what words they’d use to search your product (jot those down). You can also see what keywords competitors are using. Here’s how we do that:

1. Make a list of competitor websites.
2. See how much web traffic the competitors get. Try bizshark, it will estimate how much traffic your competitors get. Take note of the competitors with high traffic.
3. Enter the competitors URLs into Google’s Keyword tool (using the “website” box next to the “word or phrase” box). Now I have a list of words my competitors have optimized for. Imagine I scoped out onebagatatime.com and see they have “bags eco” and “environmentally friendly bags.” Both phrases have a lot of search volume, but medium to high competition. I make note of this and add them to my list.

Step 4: Get SEO and PPC Working Together
Now that I have my list of words (I gave examples above, but in practice, I might make a list of over 100 words and phrases by the time I am finished), I want to see if I have some hope of ranking well in organic search for some of them. (Ranking well in organic search means my website comes up first, or on the first page of results, when people search for a phrase or word.) I can get an idea of what the organic rank competition is like by doing the following:

1. Search Google to see how many web pages are using my desired words or phrases in the title tags (For example I would Google the following to see how many use “reusable bag”: allintitle:reusable bag).
2. Make a note of the number of pages using my phrase in the title tag. (for example a search for allintitle:reusable bag returns 34,700 matches)
3. Search Google to see how many web pages are using my desired words or phrases in their URLs (For example I would Google the following to see how many use “reusable bag”: allinurl:reusable bag).
4. Make a note of the number of pages using my phrase in the URL. (for example a search for allinurl:reusable bag returns 13,400 matches)

I want to repeat this process until I’ve done a competitive SEO analysis on all the words and phrases I’m interested in. Once I’m done I should have a list of some words and phrases I think I can optimize for and actually rank for. I might also have some words or phrases that are going to be tough to rank for, but they have so much search volume and relevance that I’ll want to get them into my search marketing campaign any way.

Step 5: Create Optimized Pages
Now that I have my list of words and phrases that I want to target, I need to build some landing pages. I may plan to use these landing pages as part of my Adwords effort, but I also want them to eventually start drawing some organic traffic so I don’t always have to pay to get people who search those words to come to my site.

Starting with “reusable bag”, I create a landing page that is linked off of my main website. Maybe I call this page reusable-bag.html. I give it a title tag that says “Reusable Bag” and then in the page itself I write some copy that shows my product photos and a description of of the benefits of my reusable bags. I now have a nicely optimized page and I can bid on that phrase in Adwords using that page for landing. I should get a good quality score (which lowers my inital cost per click) and I should get some clicks and conversions since I’ve generated such a relevant landing page.

I’ll want to repeat this process for all the words and phrases I’ve chosen to target.

Tips:

• I recommend limiting each landing page to targeting just 1 or 2 keywords or phrases (3 or 4 tops if they are closely related). You want to keep each Ad Group extremely targeted, focused and specific. Having a lot of Ad Groups is okay. You’ll want to see how each one performs over time so you can spend extra money on top performers and nix the Ad Groups that aren’t working. You’ll want to experiment with different bid prices and monitor your click-through and conversion rates

• Create more than one version of your ads. You’ll want to test to see which ad copy is getting you clicks and conversions. Make sure your ad copy is compelling and gives searchers a very good idea of what to expect when they click. Highlight your value proposition. Some examples of good ad copy might be:

  Organic Reusable Grocery Totes
  A huge selection of eco-friendly bags
  FREE shipping on orders over $25.00

  This ad is good because it describes what I sell. It mentions our large selection as part of our value proposition. We further entice the click with a free shipping offer.

• As you’re working to optimize your Adwords ads and improve your SEO, please keep in mind that SEO has many components to it. There may be thousands of sites ranking for “reusable bags” but they may not all have a ton of inbound links. If you have a ton of inbound links, you may be able to jump ahead of them in the search results, even if their on-page optimization is just as good as yours.

  If you want to get an idea of whether you could outrank a competitor who is ranking well for a phrase you want to rank for, check them out with Yahoo’s Site Explorer. Enter your URL first (next to the Explore URL button) and make note of how many “inlinks” your site has. Then enter your competitor’s URL and make note of how many “inlinks” they have. If you have a lot more “inlinks” it’s likely that you can jump ahead of them on search results pages for a desired phrase, if you get your on-page optimization right. (That means using your phrase in your title tag, URL and page copy.)

  If your competitor has a lot more inlinks than you, you’re going to need to do some more link building if you want to try to outrank them.

• Although this article is about Adwords, there are other CPC options out there. Experiment with other searcn engines like Bing or comparison shopping engines like Amazon to see which delivers the best results.

Related Read: Five Steps to Effective Keyword Research

I am sort of amazed to hear there are people selling online who don’t track their conversions. You can’t have a marketing program that’s informed and effective if you don’t know what your conversion rate is, what your cost per acquisition is or where your conversions come from.

Why Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) Matters
You need a general handle on your CPA so you know what marketing efforts are sustainable and which ones are not. If I run an Adwords campaign and I am paying 10 cents/click and getting a 1% conversion rate on that campaign, I am paying $10.00 per conversion. If my average order value is $5.00 this isn’t sustainable, I’m losing money. If my average order value is $50.00 and my product cost is $20.00 I am making $30.00 on each conversion.

So when you run any kind of marketing campaign, you want to keep an eye on CPA so you know if you want to continue with that form of marketing. Now, to make things more complicated…

Conversions are Tricky to Track
Conversions aren’t always easy to track. Imagine you run a banner ad for $90, you get 500 clicks and 3 sales. You paid an average of $30.00 per conversion there, at least that’s how it seems. Now imagine 10 of the people that clicked got on your mailing list and another 20 of them shared your website on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. A few months later 2 of the people who got onto your mailing list make purchases and a few weeks after that someone finds your site via a Tweet and buys. Now you’ve got 6 conversions so that ad actually cost you $15 per conversion.

My point here is that marketing is a cumulative thing and conversions can be tough to nail down. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother though. Google Analytics has made it easy and FREE to track conversions. Even if the tracking might not be perfect, it’s better than nothing. So now that we understand the limitations of conversion tracking, here’s how you set it up:

Step 1: Set up Google Analytics
Before you do anything, you need to set up Google Analytics. If you haven’t done that, go here and create an account. Creating an account is super easy! You just fill out the fields as requested and at the end you’ll get some tracking code you can paste into the template of your website. (If you plan to use Google Adwords you can check the box that lets you track Adwords campaigns.)

Once you get that code, paste it into your website’s template below the </head> tag and you’ll be able to start tracking all the activity on your website.

Step 2: Set up Goals
Once you have set up (or logged into) Analytics. You’ll want to click “edit” under the “actions” column. This will take you to “Profile Settings” and this is where you can create goals. Under “goals” click “add goal” (you can just go with goal set 1).

(We are going to set up a goal of selling a product, but you can repeat this process for tracking people who sign up for your mailing list or create a wish list, or take any other action you’d like to track.)

On the goal screen, give the goal a name like “sale” and leave “active goal” set to “on.” Then leave goal position as is. In the final field, select “URL Destination.” This will cause more fields to appear.

For match type, go with exact match. Then in the goal URL field paste the URL that customers see when they complete an order (something like http://www.yoursite.com/thankyou.html). Leave case sensitive as is and leave goal value as is.

Step 3: Create a Goal Funnel
This isn’t required, but it’s useful. The goal funnel is the path a user must take to complete the conversion. You may want this information so you can see what your shopping cart abandonment rate is like, or see where in the process customers are abandoning. In the example I’m doing today, let’s say the person must visit the cart page, the check out page and then they land on the thank you page after payment is taken. That means there are 2 steps to complete this goal. Here’s how we add them:

On the goal set up screen click “Yes create a goal funnel” and some new fields will appear. In the “URL” field we’d want to enter the URL of our cart page so we’d enter something like /shoppingcart.html. In the “name” field we’d call this “add to cart”.

We click “add goal funnel step” and then enter /checkout.html as the URL for our payment page. We name this step “check out” and then we click “save goal.”

That’s it, we’re done. Now we can log into Google Analytics tomorrow and start seeing conversion data!

Note: Goals do not go backwards, so if you got 100 sales yesterday that won’t shop up in your conversion tracking on Google Analytics if you didn’t set up the goals until today. Also keep in mind that there is a 24 hour delay in updating Google Analytics data so you’re not getting real time information.

Lastly, there are more sophisticated ways to track conversions. I wrote software for my website that uses a combination of cookies and IP addresses to gather my visitors’ data. This helps me get more detailed information about my conversions. I can tell how many times a customer came to my site before buying and all the different things they did to get to my site. (For example, I can tell that a customer first found my site from a blog post, then googled my site name a month later and then made a purchase.)

I like having this information because it gives me a more complete picture of how we get sales. That said, having a solution like this isn’t something that comes out of the box with Google Analytics. You’d need to pay for a more advanced analytics program or hire a programmer that can write code to do this. This system isn’t perfect. It doesn’t account for people who have changing IP addresses, change devices or delete cookies. I don’t get 100% of the information I want, but I get a lot of information and it helps me get a more complete picture of how our marketing efforts are going.

For a lot of creative entrepreneurs trying to sell online, Adwords is the big scary monster in the closet. It seems complicated, risky, and expensive. This isn’t all entirely true. Adwords can be the best friend of the small ecommerce business owner, you just have to understand how it works. Today’s post is hopefully encouragement to get out there and learn more about Adwords.

Myth #1: Adwords is too complicated to learn
Okay, I’m going to level with you, Adwords ain’t easy! If it were, you’d all be using it. That said, it’s not rocket science either. Adwords is a really sophisticated tool and that makes it complicated to master, but not impossible. There are professionals who do nothing but Adwords marketing for clients, and if you really hate the idea of learning Adwords, this is an option. Just understand that it’s not your only option. There’s a huge wealth of free information about Adwords all over the internet and if you don’t have the money to invest in hiring a pro, you may want to invest your time instead. With some patience and reading, you can learn everything you need to know to get started with Adwords.

Myth #2: Adwords is too expensive
This is just dead wrong. Adwords costs whatever you want it to cost. When you create a campaign in Adwords you set the budget and you control your bids. There are two settings that allow you control what you pay:

1. Daily Budget
This is the max amount of money you are willing to spend in a day. You can set this to $5.00 or even $1.00. Once you set it, you will not go over this expenditure in a 24 hour period.

2. Cost Per Click (CPC)
This is the max amount of money you are willing to pay for a click. Adwords is a cost-per-click system which means you only pay when someone clicks your ads. (This is cool because when people don’t click they still see your brand name, so you are getting FREE branding!)

When you set up a new campaign you’ll be able to say how much you want to pay per click. You can say you want to pay 5 cents or 5 dollars, it’s totally up to you. Now here’s what you need to understand about Adwords and CPC:

• It’s auction based, so a higher bid gets a better placement and is more likely to get a click. For competitive terms like “jewelry”, clicks are going to be expensive.

• Competitive terms aren’t necessarily important. “Jewelry” is a really broad term so you may not even want to bid on it.  Bidding on more specific terms like “vintage silver jewelry” or “emerald pendant” is probably preferable. First because there’s less competition for those terms and second because they’re more specific and thus more likely to convert. A person looking for “jewelry” who clicks your ad might want fine jewelry and you may be selling novelty jewelry, that means no conversion for you.

• It’s not all about the bid. Google only makes money when people click. So if your ad is getting a 1% click-through rate with a bid of 20 cents and my ad is getting a .0001% click-through rate with a bid of $1.00 guess whose ad Google is going to display. This means you need to craft an ad that is going to get clicks and create a landing page that is relevant to your campaign. Google also uses landing pages to determine quality score, before you even start running your ad. (Quality score is Google’s estimate of how well your ad will perform, based in part on how relevant your landing page is to your ad.) A higher quality score will get you a lower CPC, at least initially. Ad performance over time will affect the rate you end up paying over time.

Myth #3 I can’t target the right people
Adwords is actually awesome for targeting the right people. You can target by gender, location, age and specific content. Which brings me to myth #4…

Myth #4: Adwords only works with text-based ads
Adwords actually allows you to run banner ads. Now this can get you into trouble so listen up! Adwords has a system called the Content Network. The content network allows you to display ads on any website on the internet that displays ads from Google’s network. My advice is to use this network ONLY to run ads on sites you have checked out. This means when you set up your content network ads with banners, you’ll want to choose your own placements and only your own placements. Google will make suggestions and you can check them out to see if they are good, but don’t let Google run wild and just pick placements for you. It will pick some real duds and eat up your budget with nothing to show for it.

Speaking of the content network, when you’re running a keyword based campaign (rather than placement targeted campaign), you want to turn off the Google Content network and only allow Adwords to display ads on Google search results. If you don’t do this your ads are going to appear on junk sites and you’re going to get some junk traffic.

Myth #5: No one clicks those ads
I have seen a few people say “I never click on those Adwords ads, so I see no reason to run them. No one will click.” If that were a true statement, Adwords wouldn’t exist. The CPC industry is worth billions of dollars. ‘Nuff said? Even if you are right about this, that’s okay, because it means no one will click and you’ll pay nothing.

A couple of final points to ponder:

1. If you’re going to invest in marketing, do you really want to put that time, money and energy into someone else’s business? No? Then you’re going to need your own website. If you’re directing people to your Etsy or Artfire shop you’re essentially marketing for Etsy or Artfire, their brand name is far more visible than your brand name. Your competitors shops are right there on the same site too! There’s every chance a customer could click your ad, click the Etsy logo and then go shop in another vendor’s store. Yuck! Also, these sites also don’t let you create landing pages, and that means your quality scores on Adwords are going to suck and you’re going to get stuck with a higher CPC.

2. This is pure conjecture, but in my experience Adwords may have a little to do with SEO. I personally have noticed that when I am running Adwords, I get a lot more organic traffic from search results that I am not paying for. I have talked to other marketers who have expressed this same sentiment. We don’t have proof that this is true, but it’s a theory based on my own observations and those of other marketers.

3. If you don’t track your conversions stop what you’re doing right now and set up conversion tracking! Your marketing plan shouldn’t just be a guessing game. You need to track your conversions so you can tell which Adwords campaigns are working and which ones are duds. Google Analytics has made conversion tracking super easy and totally free of charge. If you don’t know how to do it, sit tight, I will be posting a tutorial tomorrow.

To make your business a success, it’s important to keep your eyes and ears open. You want to pay attention to what’s going on around you, what customers are saying, what industry publications are saying and what your competition is up to. Studying the competition can be an incredibly valuable tool for growing your business. Here are a few things you can learn from them:

Marketing Ideas
The internet is full of great marketing ideas, and you can get some especially great tips from your competitors. Follow their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. Subscribe to their newsletters. If your competitors are running new promotions, you can be the first to know. See how they conduct contests. Notice the type of coupon codes they use. Are they doing discounts? Are they requiring a minimum spend to use a discount? Are they doing free shipping? Are they hosting a giveaway and if so how are they asking customers to enter to win? Are they doing a customer loyalty program? Are they promoting flat rate shipping? While I don’t recommend copying your competitors’ playbooks, you can generate ideas of your own, based on what they are up to.

You also want to see what they do most often, because that suggests it’s working for them. If you see them always doing free shipping offers, that means it’s probably driving sales. If you see them constantly doing giveaways for newsletter subscribers, that suggests that those giveaways are effective at growing their subscriber base.

Content
If you’ve spent more than 5 minutes reading about online marketing, you’ve run into the phrase “content is king.” What this means is that having great content is an important part of online marketing. It’s good for SEO and it’s good for generating interest from humans too. Having interesting content on your blog and social media accounts matters a great deal. It can help keep customers engaged and many online marketers are theorizing that your traction in social media may soon be more important than traditional SEO when it comes to online marketing success.

The trouble is, coming up with great content is difficult. We try to do it every day for our online retail website and it’s not always easy. One way to draw inspiration is by following the competition. What do they say on their blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. What kind of videos do they put on YouTube? What’s in their Flickr stream? You can use this information to get ideas for your own content. You not only want to see what competitors are doing, but you want to see what their customers respond to. Does another jewelry designer’s blog posts about recipes get a lot of comments? Does another screenprinter’s Tweets about news of the weird stir up a lot of replies and retweets? You want to get a feel for what customers like seeing, and let that guide your content generation.

Media List
Getting a relevant comprehensive media list can be challenging, but it’s an invaluable tool in your PR arsenal. One way to look for media outlets to contact is by checking out competitors’ press pages. See what magazines, papers and blogs featured them so you can get an idea of which ones might feature you.

Trends
Staying on top of trends is essential when you’re trying to sell products. You need to know if polka dots are in. You need to know of nautical themes are out. You’ll want to study a variety of sources for this information including magazines, design blogs and of course the competition. Some online shops even say what their best sellers are. This is kind of information can help you keep track of where trends are headed and help shape your design aesthetic in a way that’s profitable.

Product Ideas
Make sure to look beyond the designs, when you look at competitor product offerings, and notice what they are actually selling. Is another illustrator selling their prints on mousepads? Is another wallet designer doing business card cases? Is a company that normally prints on t-shirts now offering screenprinted scarves? You’ll want to notice these product offerings to come up with ways to enhance your own product line.

Website Usability
Having a user-friendly website can make or break sales. Websites come with all sorts of interesting design challenges. How can you convey that the product comes in different sizes? How do you communicate shipping policies in a way that customers will absorb? How can you best display product photos? Should the checkout process be 1 step or 2? There are no absolute answers to questions like this, but you can get ideas by studying other websites.

Earlier this year when I did my website usability makeover, I studied a ton of different websites to come up with the best new design. I also took note of website usability trends, like tabbed navigation. As certain user experiences become popular on the web (tabbed navigation is an example of this), users become more comfortable with them and used to using websites in new ways. You want to make sure your website can be used in a way that is comfortable for your visitors so they enjoy shopping on your site.

Further Reading: 5 Ways to Spy on the Competition

I noticed some chatter earlier this week about my posts on remarketing. I wish the conversation had been here on this blog, but I always have an interest in hearing what my readers say, even if it’s off on Twitter, message boards etc. The gist of what I heard is “I hate to be remarketed to, therefore my customers hate it.” I want to tell you right now why this thinking is wrongheaded. Your customers may very well hate being remarketed to, or they might really like it. You aren’t your customers so unless you test, you won’t know what they like. A successful marketer lives by one very important motto: Always Be Testing (ABT).

A successful marketer doesn’t make assumptions. She makes hypotheses and studies trends and industry standards, and then before she commits to a strategy, she does some testing to see what actually works.

First, why:
If I had a dime for every time a small business owner started a sentence like “My customers don’t like…” or “My customers love it when I…” I’d be off on an island with cabana boys bringing me daiquiris. My first response to those statements is always “how do you know?” Unless you’ve tested you don’t actually know jack. Testing is your best and most reliable way to find out who your customers are, what they want, what they don’t want, etc.

It’s never safe to assume your preferences are in line with your customers’ preferences. This goes for statements like:
“My customers don’t want me to remarket to them.”
“My customers only want it if it comes in black.”
“My target market is 18-25 year old women.”
“My customers don’t want to get more than one newsletter per month from me.”
“My customers come to my shop to look for jewelry so if I started selling art prints they wouldn’t like that.”
“My customers are only interested in steampunk fashion so they wouldn’t respond to a product line inspired by recycling.”
“My customers wouldn’t pay more than $20 for my products.”

These are all things you can actually test, so there’s no reason to assume these statements are true unless you actually have tested them.

How do you test?
This is actually a really broad subject and there are a ton of ways to test. The short answer though, is segmenting. Below I’m just going to talk about a couple of popular ways to segment and test some important parts of your marketing:

1. Your Email Marketing
Want to know what’s the best time to send an email or what frequency you should use? Try some different tests. Most email service providers allow you to segment your mailing list. Let’s say you have 900 subscribers and you want to test for frequency. Try segmenting your 900 subscribers into 3 groups of 300. Send newsletters to one group every week, one group every 2 weeks and one group just once in the month. Repeat your experiment a month later so you have a couple of mailings to compare.

Then pay attention to the open rate, click rate and conversion rate your newsletters get. You should notice a pattern and be able to tell which sending frequency is getting you the best results. Once you figure that out you can tweak day of week and time of day.

2. Your Pricing/Site Design/Product Offerings
One of the best testing tools out there is Google’s Website Optimizer. This FREE tool allows you to run more than one version of your website at a time. You can use this technology to test your site design, your pricing, your product offerings, just about any component of your website.

Let’s say you assume people only want to pay $20.00 or less for a necklace. What if the $20 price tag makes the necklace appear less exclusive and upscale and turns customers off? You can find out with Optimizer. You can create one version of your site showing the necklace priced at $20.00 and another version priced at $50.00. Optimizer will rotate the versions of your site evenly among site visitors and then you’ll be able to see which price leads to more sales.

Google’s got some very nice tutorials and videos that explain how to use Optimizer and introduce you to the concepts of A/B testing and multivariate testing. You may also find this tutorial handy.

One more thing about remarketing
To bring this post full circle, I want to point out that to prepare to write my posts on remarketing, I actually spoke to some business owners who do it. One smalll business owner told me that doing personalized follow ups with cart abandoners recovered a whopping 98% of her sales! She isn’t a huge corporation, she’s a one woman business just like many of my readers. A marketer from a larger company who sends automated remarketing messages told me his company recovers 20% of their business lost to cart abandonment. According to SeeWhy, the average remarketing campaign recovers 10-30% of abandoned carts! These stats are nothing to write off and can make a huge difference in a company’s revenue.

My reason for pointing this out isn’t to convince you that remarketing is going to work wonders for YOUR business. My point is that the assumption that all customers hate it is clearly a mistake and you won’t know how your customers will respond without running tests. Your customers may welcome the chance to give you feedback about pricing, shipping options, your site usability, or an array of other topics. They might be delighted to accept a discount on an item they really wanted but was a little out of their price range. The bottom line is you won’t know until you test it out.

Further reads:
Smashing’s Ultimate Guide to AB Testing
ABTests.com (really cool site that shows you actual AB test results, may even give you some ideas for AB tests of your own.)

So far this week we’ve talked about what remarketing is and how you can leverage email for remarketing campaigns. Today I want to delve into using banner ads as part of your remarketing efforts.

First, a little background on how this works:

• You place a snippet of code on the pages of your website that you want to track (i.e. shopping cart or product pages). This code is used to set cookies on your visitors’ computers.
• The cookies will be used to create a pool of internet users who’ve taken a certain action (added items to your cart and not made a purchase, viewed product pages — it can really be anything you want.)
• Programs like Google Adwords can then serve your ads to that pool of internet users as they hop around the internet. Your ads will appear to them as they read blogs, visit message boards, etc.

The theory is that this audience is more likely to make a purchase if they click your ads since they’ve already been to your site and know your products, brand and price points.

What you need to make use of this type of marketing:

• Access to your website’s source code
  Etsy users will not be able to market this way, so if you want to get into remarketing, you’re going to need your own website.

• Some degree of comfort with the technical side of online marketing.
  Truthfully, this is something you’re going to need if you want to sell online effectively. If you hate this stuff, you’ll probably want to hire an expert that’s experienced with online marketing.  Setting up a remarketing campaign means getting into your site’s source code and examining your site’s traffic reports to make smart decisions about how to set up your campaigns.

• A statistically significant amount of website traffic.
  If you only get a few hundred visitors each month, you won’t really have a large enough pool to re-market to. Sites that are successful with remarketing campaigns like this typically average over 1,000 visitors per day. The more the better. The reason for this is that the more people there are visiting your site, the more people there are to display remarketing ads to. Imagine you only got 1,000 visits/month, your remarketing program might only manage to display your ads to a few hundred of those people. Even if you got 1% click-through, which is pretty high, you’d only get a few clicks. That wouldn’t be a statistically large enough number to rack up conversions.

How to set up this type of remarketing:
There are a lot of programs out there that do remarketing, programs like FetchBank and Advertise.com are huge, but don’t really cater to smaller businesses. There are 2 programs that are suitable for smaller businesses that I want to tell you about today:

Google Adwords
Google Adwords is nice because it’s a self-service platform that ANYONE is allowed to use. I could write a tutorial on how to set this up but Search Engine Land already did a really nice job with this so I’ll just direct you to their well-written tutorial. Google’s reach is pretty significant so your site visitors are very likely to see your ads. Another perk is that pricing works just like any other Adwords campaign. That means you set the budget you want to set and the cost per click you’re willing to bid. (Keep in mind the cost per click is auction based so a higher bid is more likely to get your ads on display).

The biggest challenge with using Adwords is that it requires some tech savvy and it doesn’t offer much tech support. The tutorial I linked above should help, but if talk about user segmenting and lifetime visitor value makes you break out in a cold sweat, this tutorial may not be enough hand-holding. If that’s the case, work with a professional to get set up.

Adroll
I just set up my own Adroll account recently and don’t have enough data to say whether it’s something I’ll be sticking with, but I will say their user support is TOP NOTCH! Their user interface isn’t terribly difficult to understand and their support guys are extremely helpful and patient. If you want hand-holding, give Adroll a shot.

You will need at least 500 users in your user pool before you can begin using Adroll, so again, you’ll need a significant amount of traffic to make this work. That said, if your site traffic is where it needs to be and you want great tech support, this is the way to dip your toe in the remarketing pool. They even offer a free trial for new customers.

A few final points on remarketing with banner ads:

• Like I mentioned in my article about email remarketing, this stuff can get creepy. People who visit your site once may find it odd when they’re suddenly seeing ads for your site every place they turn. You may want to set up a frequency limit so the same person is not bombarded with your ads 1000 times/day.

• It’s a good idea to set up different user segments so you can target the site visitors that are most likely to come back and place an order.  What I mean by this: people who added to cart are more likely to return and buy than people who left after only viewing your home page. People who joined your mailing list may be more likely to convert than people who simply viewed product pages. People who viewed product pages are better targets than people who only viewed the home page. You can set up different segments to differentiate people who took certain actions and display specific ads for those people (or even exclude them from seeing your ads).

• Test different ad designs. You want to put the most clickable ads in front of people, so experiment with different ad designs and ad copy to see what gets you the best click-through and conversion rates. You may want to even put a promotion code on your ads to lure back customers who abandoned their shopping carts.

This week I’m going to be talking about a really exciting topic: remarketing. In a nutshell, remarketing means marketing to people who’ve already been to your website.

Why would I want to do this?
Sometimes it takes more than one visit to get someone to make a purchase. Think about how many times you’ve stumbled onto a wesbite with cool things, thought to yourself “this is nice but I don’t need it right now” and then forgotten all about the site a few weeks later. People probably do this with your online shop all the time! Remarketing lets you remind these people that you’re there, so that when they’re ready to buy, they return to make a purchase. It increases your brand visibility and can lead to a large increase in your conversion rate, since you’re advertising to people who already know your brand.

I already do this!
Maybe you’re thinking, “well people can sign up for my newsletter if they like my stuff and then I’ll send them email every month until they buy something” or “if they really liked my products, they’d become a fan on Facebook and I could remarket to them that way.” These are both examples of remarketing, but there are many other options, including some very sophisticated ones. Today’s remarketing technology allows you to remarket to those people who don’t “like” your Facebook page or join your newsletter.

So how exactly does remarketing work?
First of all, you have to understand that remarketing can mean a lot of things. It can be done with banner ads, it can be done with email, it can be done with social media. Below are a few examples to get you thinking about how remarketing works:

1. Email Remarketing
Imagine Sarah is looking for earrings to give her bridesmaids and thank you gifts. She visits handmadebridaljewels.com and adds several pairs of earrings to her basket. She begins to check out but as the payment page loads, she gets a call from her florist, who informs her that she’ll have to pick new flowers because the flowers she chose are not going to be available for her wedding. Now in a panic, Sarah forgets all about the earrings and goes off to look for new flowers. Meanwhile, handmadebridaljewels.com hasn’t sold the 4 pairs of earrings Sarah left in her basket.

The story could end here, but if handmadebridaljewels.com has an email remarketing program they could email Sarah after 24 hours pass and remind her that she has items in her basket. The email reminds Sarah that she wanted those earrings and she goes back to complete her order.

2. Banner Ad Remarketing
Imagine you sell dresses and a customer adds a few to her cart. She realizes shipping is going to be more than she bargained for and leaves without making a purchase. If you have a banner ad remarketing program, you can serve ads to this customer while they’re reading their favorite blogs or chatting on their favorite message boards. Imagine you have an ad with a coupon code on it with free shipping for orders over $99. After she sees this ad for free shipping, she clicks to return to your site and completes her order.

A final word about remarketing:
If you’re on Etsy only, hopefully the articles I’m writing this week will give you another nudge to consider getting your own website. Sites like Etsy make it impossible to develop a sophsticated remarketing program. You don’t have access to source code or shopping cart data, so you can’t mine customer email addresses or set tracking cookies. Having access to source code and customer data is essential for this kind of marketing.

Coming up this week:
* How to set up an email remarketing campaign and pitfalls to consider
* How to set up a smart remarketing campaign with banner ads

Stay tuned!