“Consistently nourish your YouTube Channel with quality videos.”

“Write one ‘can’t miss’ search engine optimized blog post per week.”

“Publish ‘x’ number of tweets every day.”

“Review your latest Web analytics reports every month… and don’t even think of  letting your company’s profiles on Google Plus, Pinterest and LinkedIn fall by the wayside.”

STOP! THINK! How many hours have you retained from your agency, or how many hours is your in-house team able to devote to implementing your online marketing strategy and accomplishing these tasks? You wouldn’t have an architect draw plans for a house without first assessing your financial resources. In this case, the resources that you must consider are time and skill.

A competent digital marketing agency or consultant will identify the tactics that will yield the most impact on your digital goals, based on the hours at your disposable. In the case of in-house teams, they must also weigh the skill set that your human resources bring to the campaign.

That is why The Online Strategy House always launches projects with new clients by embarking on Discovery Sessions. Amongst other objectives, our Discovery Sessions enable us to understand our clients’ “bandwidth reality” so that we can develop their strategies based on their assets. This is not the time for clients to be boastful or to have strong egos. If your agency asks you how much time your staff will have to devote to the implementation of your online marketing plan, then be frank and realistic. If you hire us, or another agency, on a retainer basis, then both parties must be mindful of the number hours available per month for your account.

As a client, ask the hard questions if need be: what areas should be the priority? You may extrapolate this question to a more granular level. For example, when optimizing YouTube videos for enhanced search visibility, what is most important if there isn’t enough time to get everything done at once? Should your staff first optimize the titles, descriptions and tags? Or should they invest their time in transcribing your videos so that they can upload the closed captioning?

Likewise, before you’re seduced by the latest online marketing “shiny toy”, have your agency explain the impact that it will potentially have in achieving the goals set out by strategy. This is especially applicable to social media, where it seems that a new platform is launched every month.

As my father says, “tempus irreparabile fugit” (Latin for “time irretrievably flees”). So use your company’s or agency’s time wisely. Focus on what matters, and on what is realistic.

Optimally, several people will contribute blog posts to an organization’s domain. At the same time, those companies often have partnerships with others in their vertical, aside of taking time to participate in or sponsor industry events. When a team learns the relevant principles of on-site search engine optimization, from that point forward they see their day-to-day activities as opportunities for SEO. Those SEO principles then become ingrained in their modus operandi. For example:

• Next time a manager contributes a blog to the company site, she will know that this is a chance to write a post according to the content strategy delineated in the organization’s online marketing plan. She will also be cognizant of the importance of incorporating the keyphrases that the online strategy has specified as relevant to that post.
• The event coordinator will be aware that, by sponsoring a conference, there’s a prime opportunity to ask the organizer for a link to his employer’s site. Once adopted as a routine, this practice will help the company amass a good number of on-topic, high quality inbound links — the sort that will help build their online visibility.

When a group understands that individual, small commitments to search engine optimization amount to a large victory for all involved, they get excited about search engine optimization. The Online Strategy House makes a point of presenting SEO and online marketing workshops that are fun, and that engage even those who are not tech-oriented.

Employees are thrilled when analytics show that their blog posts received visits because they followed SEO best practices. They see they have made a tangible difference. And then, the enthusiasm is contagious.

However, to take full advantage of the insights that Google Analytics can provide, it’s necessary to go beyond adding a few lines of Javascript code to a site’s pages. Failure to consider this may actually cause your organization to lose revenue and, in extreme instances, you may even lose your job.

A few weeks ago The Online Strategy House was approached by a Canadian not-for-profit organization to perform some advanced work on their Google Analytics account. During a call about this project, we also discovered another crucial element: their budget comes from donations by a few stakeholders, and those funds fluctuate every year according to the reported ROI. In their particular case, the ROI is measured by the number of downloads of educational materials from their site: more downloads signal that the donations are paying off, positively effecting their chances of receiving a larger budget in the next fiscal year.

Further investigation revealed a significant problem: executives haven’t been able to properly report on those downloads — because those goals are not properly tracked on their Google Analytics accounts. It’s painful to imagine the financial impact that this has had on our client’s budget. Since their Google Analytics account has been active for quite some time, how much more could they have received in donations had their reporting been accurate?

A second scenario where inaccurate reports may cost money (and potentially jobs) is when Google Analytics reports aren’t filtering out the correct internal IP address.

Although many organizations know that they should filter out internal traffic from their analytics reports, there is often a disconnect in communications between the Analytics and IT teams. Imagine this scenario: a company adopts a new network system and internal IP addresses are changed as a result. Analytics staff (or consultants) aren’t alerted. Naturally, now that internal traffic is registered by their analytics reports (whereas it was not previously), there is a steep decline in conversions: for example, visits increase by x% month-over-month, but conversions fall drastically.

That would be a very precarious situation for an Online Marketing Director to find himself (or herself) in. We can imagine that he or she will be called into a meeting at the end of the month to explain the steep decline in conversions in spite of the increase in traffic. Some digging up could eventually unearth the real reason behind the spike in visits, but the headaches, palpitations and potential embarassment could all be avoided by making it a practice to occasionally review the internal IP addresses in the company’s offices (including team member’s home offices), and to make sure that Web analytics reports are filtering out that traffic. Otherwise, metrics will be inflated.

It takes more than adding a few lines of Javascript code for organizations to fully leverage Google Analytics. Inaccurate reports can be a marketing team’s worst nightmare, but their accuracy can also be an organization’s best friend.

We have years of experience in this field, serving organizations of all scales — from large chains to small businesses. If you need help with your reports or would like us to audit your current set-up, get in contact with The Online Strategy House. We’ll make you fall in love with Google analytics.