Digital marketing is a myriad of small things working together. Yes. One thing can make a difference like great SEO or PPC or content but how do you divide this traffic.
One of my digital marketing heroes is Avinash Kaushik. Avinash is the guru when it comes to website analytics. He knows how it works. It’s well worth signing up to his newsletter for all manner of information and hints. He’s also full of common snse and humanity.
Owned, Earned & Paid
I learned this term from a post by Avinish years ago. Digital Marketing channels now made a whole lot more sense.
Look at your traffic using these three categories and you start to prioritise. Yes they all fit together. Digital marketing is about making many factors a few percent better.
Paid Digital Marketing
This is the most obvious one. Yes. It is Google Ads and social ads. It’s also digital PR and affiliate marketing.
It’s the easiest in some ways to see the return. Ads and affiliate networks will report exactly on your conversion, your cost and your traffic.
Digital PR is a mite more tricky to establish the return. You can look at two things. First your referral traffic, are you getting more from a site where a story was published?
The second is a judgment call and means paying special attention to your brand term searches.
Do you have Google Search Console installed on your site? You should for all manner of reasons we won’t go into here. The reason for using it for PR is you can see traffic coming to your site using your brand terms.
An increase in brand term searches would indicate success in your PR. Are there more searches? Great! What are they doing on your website? Are they buying or signing up?
There’s all manner of other stats you can look at in analytics to see the quality of the traffic and if it is taking action.
Owned Digital Marketing
Your website. Your email list. You own a website. You put content on and together with your email list you create the hub that in most businesses makes the purchase.
You own the content. Are people reading that content? Are they taking action? If not, well then you are into the art of conversion.
Technically, do you own the email list? Well, you own the consent (making sure to follow GDPR guidelines AND making sure that list is double opt in.
You may be using an email platform. Have you backed up the data and kept it secure, again making sure to follow GDPR guidelines? Why? Because if the e-platform is too expensive or not helping you with open rates and purchases, then it’s time to move.
Earned Digital Marketing
I crack on a lot about creative content. You see you use content in each channel. The most important, the refinement, the reporting, the tweaking and energy comes in maintaining creative content in all its forms. Why?
Well, other sites will link to your website and send you part or fully qualified traffic, that is traffic with intent. A big plus.
Shared
You also earn traffic when your social or organic traffic start sharing. A sign of confidence in your brand, free advertising (although it’s not is it) and the joy of brining engaged traffic (it stays on your website and takes action) which Google likes to see. Google may give you a little bump up the rankings. A way of outpacing competitors.
So, an easy way to see your traffic is earned, owned and paid. Which is working best for you? Which is lagging behind and how are you going to change that?
Give me a shout if you wish to know anything!
About Conversion Detectives
Conversion Detectives is a full service digital growth agency in Hertfordshire near St Albans.
We find the best quality traffic for your website and convert more of that traffic into sales or sales leads.
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