Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Marketing (Part II)

Looking at Reach and Engagement

In my last post, I talked about how to get your team involved in evaluating your 2009 marketing efforts. In part two of this series of preparing your marketing plans for 2010, I cover how to evaluate “reach” and “engagement.”

“Reach” is the new word for “awareness.” Others call it your “sphere of influence” or “thought leadership.” Basically, you want to measure the tactics you used to make people aware of your company / products / services – and these tactics aren’t limited to social media.  Why?  Because social media, your Website, and offline tactics such as speaking gigs or print ads often influence each other. Some things to consider when measuring “reach” include:

Social media – The number of followers you have on Twitter, fans on Facebook, or connections on LinkedIn.

Website – The increase…

Which Is Harder? Google Analytics or Rubik’s Cube?

Understanding the Cost of “Free”

Let’s face it: It is great that Google offers a free analytics tool that tracks all your traffic and allows you to slice-it and dice-it by a variety of different dimensions. You can have a tremendous amount of insight into how your website is performing, where your traffic is coming from, which content is most effective, what users are doing when they get to your site and more.

However, on the downside, in the “Information Rights and Publicity” section of Google’s Terms of Service, they have the right to use the data internally as they see fit. (Insert “crickets chirping in the woods” soundtrack.)  On top of that, you need to be able to really understand all the data you’re presented with, and have the time to analyze and understand it properly.

So,…