Everyone wants to feel important and popular, and the digital world is no different. Marketers work hard to create awareness, drive traffic to websites, engage with customers, and reach out new prospects willing to buy their products and services. This is the natural flow of business, and even though all companies may have these goals in mind, only some brands really stand out from the crowd.

Growing your website popularity helps you grow the overall business in so many ways, but first and foremost it builds trust. And in the SEO landscape, we know trust can be a strong strategy. Search engines analyze the popularity of a website based on the quantity and quality of other pages linking to them. Trustworthy sites usually link to other trusted sites, and that’s why Link Building became so important for marketers.

But having a huge number of inbound links doesn’t necessarily mean your website will rank better on search engines. In some cases, less is more. The key is to filter out from millions of active websites and blogs we have today, the ones relevant to your industry and business, which are also popular, trustful, and are an authority on a given subject.

After prospecting the right sites and blogs for your business, and creating engaging, relevant and valuable content to share with your audience, here comes your next, and probably the hardest, challenge in this process: effectively reaching out to these people. In other words, we’re not only reaching out to people for links, but we’re actually successfully securing inbound links.

What most marketers don’t realize is the huge existing gap between point A – the need for links, and point B – getting the link. And surprisingly or not, the key to success, most of the time, is hidden in this deep valley. The good news: you can have an effective link building campaign by bridging this gap wisely, following four simple and easy steps.

Step #1: Getting To Know Your Prospects

Yes, technology is changing faster than anything else, but keep in mind that websites and blogs are still made of people like you and me. So, before you even think of sending an email asking for a link, stop and spend some time getting to know the person behind the screen. The right place to start? Their site or blog.

By spending some time on the blog, you can easily find more information about who is writing, their history, what they like to write about, their style, how they engage with other people on social media, and most importantly, how they prefer to be contacted.

Step #2: The Art Of Networking in a Digital World

Networking has never been easy. And in the Digital World, it’s no different. You still need to start a conversation, share relevant ideas, listen to what other people have to say, write comments and connect with them when appropriate.

However, one thing is definitely true: the Internet and major social media channels can make networking much easier. Before you start a link building campaign, and after spending some time getting to know your prospects, you need to start networking.

It’s really important to subscribe to their blog, but most of all you need to actually read some of their latest posts. And if they have a social media presence, make sure you’re connected. You should consider at least Twitter and Facebook, but depending on your industry and business, other channels like Pinterest, Instagram, or even LinkedIn can be effective too. Be sure you have a consistent profile throughout all platforms, and whenever possible write a customized and personal message inviting them to connect with you.

Step #3: Engaging Effectively Before the Outreach

Just because you are connected with your prospects on Twitter, it doesn’t mean you are engaging with them. Like any other relationship it requires time, but once connected, you can start bridging the gap effectively. Here are some suggestions:

• Comments: Once again, the first place to start is the blog itself. After reading the most recent posts, share some on social media, but most of all, write a relevant comment, letting the author know who you are and what you think about the post. Believe it or not, most bloggers actually read these comments, and sometimes that’s where a new relationship is born.
• Social Media: Use your social media profiles to retweet, share or comment on a post relevant to your business. Start a conversation showing that you know who they are and why this relationship is valuable to you. Always think on how you could help them first. The link request should come naturally, and after some time you will get a better sense of when is the right time to do so.
• Blog Post: Another way to show you’re there to help is to write a blog post about their blog, or related topic, mentioning and recommending their blog as a good resource. You can even engage before, asking for more information, other useful blogs and other people you might want to talk with. After it’s done, share it on social media, and let the blogger know about your published post.

Step #4: Building Long-Term Relationships

You prospected, connected, and engaged. After a while you decided it was the right time to effectively ask for a link to your blog, website or a specific material you created. But don’t be surprised or even frustrated if even after all the efforts you don’t get your link back at first. Remember, your primary purpose is to build a trustful relationship. If the person is not comfortable with sharing your link just yet, take your time, and keep working on it.

Image: WeLoveDates

On the other hand, you may be successful and get the inbound link right the way. In this case, remember that your primary purpose is still to build a trustful relationship. Always say thank you, recognize the person’s help whenever possible, and most of all, keep an ongoing conversation towards a long-term relationship. You got your link now, but you might get much more than just links in the future. Keep this in mind.

The Prize of Doing it Right: Business Success

Link building is nothing new. There are a lot of ways of doing it, but only one way to do it right. When you build a strong relationship and work hard to create real partners, you get more than just links; you get the chance to get to know someone related to your business, who knows the industry and your target audience. It’s an opportunity to learn more, share information and maybe even work together in the future. No technology, no algorithm, and no search engine will ever doubt the power of a strong, real and long-term relationship.

Recent updates to Google’s search algorithm have made high-quality links more valuable than ever, and have reduced the significance of low-quality links. As a result, outreach and link building have become more important aspects of business’ web marketing strategies. Webmasters, SEOs, and interactive marketing folk are spending more time on building these links, and constantly searching for ways to hasten and simplify their techniques. In short, they’re “bridging the gap” between a site’s need for links and links from prospects.

The Google updates affected everybody simultaneously, causing high-quality sites to be bombarded with emails begging for links. These sites have no choice but to ignore most of these requests, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to thoughtfully respond to each one.

As a result, most webmasters and the like see a very low rate of positive responses, and end up spending hours upon hours of work for a link or two. In order to see results from your outreach efforts, the process must be broken down into smaller, digestible portions.

One Step at a Time

The process of link building is like building a house. You can’t put on the roof and start painting the walls without first laying the foundation. The foundation for outreach and link building efforts is prospecting. It might seem elementary, but finding the right people to reach out to, before you reach out, will save you lots of time and stress. In fact, the more time you spend on prospecting, the more time you will save in your later outreach efforts. You wouldn’t want to visit a foreign country without prior research (what language do they speak? what is the weather like? are they at war?); Likewise you wouldn’t want to start reaching out without knowing who you are reaching out to.

Image: Tomasz Przechlewski

Google gives merit to websites that have high-quality, relevant links. Targeting links from other sites in your industry, or related industries is the best bet to ensure that your efforts are rewarded. Take a note of which types of sites you would like to target and set up a spreadsheet to help manage the prospecting process. Designate columns for the name of the site, the URL, type of site, domain authority, site notes, contact name, contact email, date contacted, and contact notes.

Before we move on, since this is the Beginner’s Guide, let’s discuss domain authority. Domain authority is a number between 0 and 100 that measures the strength and sway that a website holds. Search engines will judge links based on where they are coming from: the higher the domain authority, the better the link. Because of the recent algorithmic updates from Google, you should only look for sites that have a domain authority of at least 30 or higher.

You can determine domain authority by looking into domain authority tools such as Web SEO Analytics’ Domain Battle, Moonsy’s Domain Authority Tool, Robin Gupta’s Bulk Domain Authority Checker, or Moz’s Open Site Explorer which costs money, but is an amazing product that is worth every cent.

What Do I Need to Do Before I Start Prospecting?

Before you begin prospecting, it is of the utmost importance that you do some keyword research to help you decide on potential prospects. Organic search traffic queries will tell you what keywords people are using to find your site, and a list of these keywords can be found in Google Analytics.

Google’s Keyword Tool is a great resource that can help you determine what keywords to use in your prospecting efforts, these keywords’ monthly search volumes, and the competition for each keyword (how many advertisers are bidding on each term). Google Trends is another free tool that will show you some related terms, their search volume over time, and which related terms are trending.

Once you know which keywords you will use, make a list of “linkable assets”, or what these prospects will be linking to. Is it an infographic, a guest blog post, or a backlink to a URL? The assets on this list will come into play when determining who to prospect. The linkable assets should all have something to do with the organic search traffic keywords that already direct people to your site.

After you know how people get to your site and what linkable assets you possess, you can easily determine who your target demographic is. What kind of people would be searching for your target keywords? What kind of audience would get the most from your guest blog post? What kind of websites would your site benefit the most from linking to? Remember, the more relevant the site is to your industry, the more value the search engines will give that link.

There are some shortcuts to make prospecting less time consuming (albeit a bit more expensive), but a list of keywords and separate list of linkable assets will be necessary even if you decide to use paid tools to help in your prospecting efforts.

Prospecting Tools: The Easy Way Out

BuzzStream, RavenTools, Ontolo and Link Prospector are all useful tools to help you in your prospecting efforts. Each tool does a lot of the legwork for you, saving you time to search for even more prospects. Time=Money; if you have the extra cash, these services are worth every penny.

Here are some helpful posts about these tools to get you started.

BuzzStream

Guest Blogging Link Building using BuzzStream
How To Effectively Perform Link Prospecting & Outreach via BuzzStream

Raven Tools

Broken link building with Raven’s Link Manager and local directories

Ontolo

Link Building Tool Review: Ontolo

Link Prospector

Prospecting with Power – Using Link Prospector with Screaming Frog for Brands
Link Prospector: A Link Prospecting Tool by Citation Labs

It’s All About Relationships

Websites do not run themselves, every website was started by a person or group of people. This is an incredibly important aspect to consider in your prospecting efforts, especially when you get to doing outreach.

Start off by searching for influential people in your industry. Chances are they work at companies that have websites, or they might run their own site. followerwonk, Wefollow, and Twellow are tools that allow you to find the most influential people in their industries on Twitter. Search for industry keywords, and find the most active tweeters with the most followers in that industry.

Follow or retweet some of these influential people’s posts to warm them up a bit before you ask for a link. If they recognize your name and see that you have been making an effort to engage with them, they will be more likely to respond positively to your link request.

Getting Down and Dirty with Advanced Search Operators

If you have the time (or if you don’t have the $), and want to get your hands dirty with prospecting, learning how to use advanced search queries can get you every possible link on the web, granted you invest the time. Advanced search queries are free, easy to use, produce immediate results, and are where the science of prospecting begins.

If you are looking for potential guest blogs about restaurants, start off with some inurl: or intitle: searches, such as:

inurl:blog restaurants
intitle:blog dining

These examples will return results about restaurants with “blog” in the URL, and blogs with “dining” in the title, respectively. If you are searching for guest blogging opportunities, both

inurl:blog (your industry)
inurl:blog (target keyword)

…are great starting points. You can take it whichever direction you’d like from there.

If your industry or keyword is more than one word, be sure to use an “exact phrase” search. Combining exact phrase searches with other operators will give you more specific results:

inurl:blog “restaurant reviews”
(keyword) “add a site”
(keyword) “submit a URL”

…will return results with blogs about restaurant reviews, and pages related to your target keyword where you can submit links.

If a certain domain is dominating the search results or if a specific, unwanted term keeps showing up, use the minus (-) symbol. For instance, if you wanted to find blogs about restaurants but did not want yelp reviews to show up, you could search

inurl:blog restaurant -yelp.com

…which will eliminate all yelp.com pages from the search results.

One of my favorite search operators is the tilde (~). If you want to find similar blogs about related terms, you could search:

~restaurant inurl:blog

…which will give you results that are about restaurants and related terms, such as dining, cafe, and gastropub.

The advanced search operator combinations are endless; the more creative you get, the more specifically-targeted results you can find. Combine as many as you would like to find the target prospects you are specifically searching for. If you are unfamiliar with advanced search operators, check out Bruce Clay’s Advanced Search Operator Guide, which is particularly helpful since it includes some common Yahoo and Bing operators, as well as some from Google.

Once you find a good prospect, don’t stop there. Find a links page on the prospect’s site, and take a look through your prospect’s links. Then go through the links’ links, and so on. Do a site search for a blogroll, resources, or similar terms. When you find a page with relevant links, each of those links have other relevant links. Do the same with your competitors’ websites. A lot of the work has been done for you if you look in the right places.

Image: Campfire Culinarian

Building Up Your Initial List

Instead of searching for prospects and evaluating potential prospects at the same time, split the responsibilities and take care of one at a time. Remember, break it down into digestible portions. “Search now, evaluate later” is much easier than “search, evaluate, search, evaluate, search, evaluate, search, evaluate.” Every time you find a prospect you like, put the information in the spreadsheet. If you’re unsure of a prospect’s worthiness, go ahead and add them to the spreadsheet for the time being, it will be easier to remove it at a later time than it would be to try and remember that site you saw that now seems like a good prospect.

SEO Quake is an amazing plugin that will allow you to scrape 100 prospects at a time into an excel sheet. Check out Jason Acidre’s Extreme Link Prospecting With SEOQuake post for a tutorial on how to get the most out of the product.

Evaluating Your Prospects

Now that you have a gigantic list of potential prospects, it is judgement day for the weaker websites. The first step in the evaluating process is getting rid of the prospects with low domain authority.

Sift through your excel file with all the prospects and their information. Any site with a domain authority below 20 should be slashed. Sites between 20 and 30 can be kept on the back burner for now, they might make a jump up to 30 in the near future, and can be used as a backup plan if you would like more links.

Think about which prospects would be most beneficial for each of your linkable assets. Categorize and group the prospects according to which linkable asset you will be pitching to each site. Once you have eliminated the weaker websites and determined how you will be asking for a link, sites with domain authority above 30 that are relevant to your own site, and whose content speaks to your target audience, should be marked and researched in order to craft thoughtful outreach emails.

The tools and techniques in this post are only a few of the thousands out there. The web is full of great links and replete with guides, tutorials, and tools to help you get them. What other types of tools and strategies do you use in your prospecting efforts?

This month, we’re trying out video for my Founder’s Corner post. We figured it’s such an important topic that we should use an equally compelling medium.

So what’s this month’s Founder’s Corner all about? The people. It’s the people that make a business what it is. Join me as I walk through important qualities we look for when hiring Thunder Cats, our interviewing process, and successes and challenges we’ve encountered along the way.

And what about”standing on the shoulders of giants”? It’s a very fitting theme for this post, since it speaks to gaining wisdom from other’s experiences. Hiring is consistently a hot topic at industry events and meetups, and as always, we love learning from our marketing peers.

I’d love to hear more about your thoughts and experiences, so please feel free to share in the comments.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Max Thomas with Thunder SEO. This month for the Founder’s Corner we’re going to try a video post. So thanks for joining, and today we’re going to talk about one of the most important things of Thunder and any company, which are the people.

So those are our few thoughts on the most important part of a company, which are the people, and what we’ve learned over the years. So thank you for joining this month’s Founder’s post, and we look forward to next month.

If you send reports to your clients, you’ve probably gotten the question: Do you have a report that shows the most important metrics for campaign progress?

Likewise, if you use Google Analytics, then you’ve probably faced the challenge of figuring out exactly what to show and how. Analytics offers a lot of ways to slice the data and show it graphically, like this:

The problem is that you want to show something succinct that can also be understood by everyone who sees it. Likewise, you want a way to create this report quickly and easily.

Luckily, Google offers some helpful tools to make both possible using Google Docs integration with Google Analytics API and Google Sites. We (Max and Phoebe) have joined forces to not only show you how to build the Google Doc to capture and organize your campaign data, but also how to create an awesome online report using Google Sites to save time and wow your clients. We’ve also included several templates that you can use yourself.

Let’s kick things off with defining the reporting metrics and building the Google Doc – This is Max’s part.

Step 1 – Set Up the Google Doc API Integration

This will enable you to pull the data directly from Google Analytics API using whatever data slices you’d like. To learn how to do this, see Shawn’s awesome post It’s Magic! Automating Your Reports With Google’s API. To demonstrate how to build the Google Doc and Google Site, we’ve created a very straightforward template Google Doc for reference that’s publicly accessible here. Please note that this Google Doc is not connected to Google’s API, you’ll need to do that yourself.

Once you set up a Google Doc with the API integration, you’ll know whether it’s connected because “Google Analytics” will appear in the top navigation like this:

Step 2 – Determine Report Metrics

Just like Google Analytics, the API enables seemingly endless metrics and slices of data. Since we’re talking about higher ups here, we’ve decided the following metrics are relevant for demonstrating campaign success overall and also at a high level:

Goal 1 – Conversions

1.1 Total – By Type

1.2 Total – By Source

1.3 Mobile vs Mon-Mobile

1.4 Growth of Social Leads

Goal 2 – Prospect Traffic

2.1 Non-Branded Search Traffic

2.2 All Traffic Sources

Goal 3 – Social Media

Visitors (or Fans/Followers)

Goal 4 – Mobile

Site Traffic

Goal 5 – Healthy Site

Crawled & Indexed Pages

Step 3 – Set Up Data Queries

Once the Google Analytics API is operational, you can then make specific data queries. We’ve already set up the template Google Doc with specific data queries for the report we’re building here. Since our template doc is not actually connected to Google’s API, some of the fields need to be updated with Google Account and Advanced Segment data (these are indicated in yellow and green).

Google Drive / API Reference offers tremendous amounts of information on the setup.

Here’s a run down of the different query fields we’re using:

query/value – These are listed numerically. There’s a query and value for each data request.

type – We’re using “core” only for this template.

IDs (in yellow) – Enter the Profile ID for the Google Account here. Use the format ga:profileid#. You’ll find the Profile ID under Profile Settings in the Admin tab on your Google Analytics account:

start date / end data – This is the actual start and end dates for the data pull.

Pro Tip: Rather than change the end date manually at the end of the month, go ahead and put the year-end date. That way the monthly totals will update automatically every month until you’ve reached the end of the year.

last-n-days – This is not required if start date and end date are entered. See Google API reference for more information.

metrics – We’re using mostly two metrics for this template: ga:visits and ga:goal1Completions (where the number changes based on 1, 2, 3 goal, etc.). I also like using ga:visitors (rather than ga:visits) to show unique traffic.

dimensions – Because we’re reporting on monthly traffic ongoing (meaning, updating every month), we’re using ga:nthMonth.

sort – Here we’re not using any sorting calls.

filters – We’re also not using filters.

segment (in green) – Enter a standard code or use Advanced Segments for customized views. Use the format gaid::segment#. With our template, we’ve used mostly Advanced Segments. If there is no code in the segment field, then one is not necessary. Finding the Advanced Segments number is a little tricky but easy once you know where to look:

1. Turn on the Advanced Segment

2. While in Analytics, look for the numeric code after “Duser” in the URL:

start-index – Again, not using this feature here.

max results – We’ve set this at 10,000 as a high ceiling to capture everything we’re reporting on. So far this hasn’t created too many issues; we’ve had a few instances when we get notices from Google that we’ve reached a maximum on data requests. This is most likely because we’re running API calls for multiple profiles in the same account.

sheet name – As each query runs, a new worksheet will be created automatically (or updated if it already exists) labeled the corresponding “sheet name”. When creating the sheet names, try to use clear and memorable names – it will make your life easier when sorting through the data when creating your charts. For ease of explanation, we’ll call these worksheets “data sheets”.

Note: These data sheets get updated every time the queries are run; that means anything added manually will get erased the next time the query updates.

Here’s a screenshot of the tabs showing the gaconfig and corresponding data sheets for “Mobile Traffic” and “CPC Traffic”:

Step 4 – Organize the Data

Now we can organize the data so it can be evaluated. We’ll use the data sheets (from above) to build out the presentational worksheets (“preso sheets”) for each of our Report Metrics (from Step 2).

Remember, the data sheets get overwritten each time the queries are updated, so we’ll want to create preso sheets for sorting the data and, ultimately, creating awesome charts.

To illustrate the process, we’ll walk through building the preso sheet for our first metric – Conversions By Type.

Let’s start with the preso sheet. You’ll see it’s labeled “1.1 Conversions – Type”.

Pro Tip: Use a number in the name of each preso sheet so you can reference it easily when pulling the charts into the Google Site. Likewise, we add numbers to the preso sheet names in order to distinguish them from the data sheets, which we recommend “hiding” after you’ve linked them to the appropriate preso sheet.

Here’s a screenshot of the worksheet:

You’ll see that we’ve broken down conversions by the four types of conversion for this campaign: Contact Us – Reg, Contact Us – Quick, Verify Insurance and Self Assessment. If you have only one conversion, then go with that.

The data for these columns is pulling from the “Conversions” data sheet which was set up in the gaconfig to separate the data for each of these into columns. Simply link your preso sheet to the data sheet so that the numbers get updated automatically every time the query runs. What’s great about query results is that the first month’s data always populates on row 13; this makes it very easy for confirming if the right cells are connected. We’ve set up the preso sheet for you already so you can enable this for the Analytics API or use this template in your own Google Doc.

Notice that we’ve listed the monthly dates in Column A to correspond with the start date / end date we set in the gaconfig sheet.

Pro Tip: Add the months to extend through the end of the year (or whatever reporting period you’re using in the start date / end date) so that the monthly results update ongoing, without having to be updated manually.

Step 5 – Create the Charts

Now that the data is organized, it’s time to make an awesome chart. Following are the basic steps. Phoebe goes into more detail below about the best way to design the charts.

1. Highlight the data, including any label columns or rows

2. Click Insert

3. Select Chart

4. Under Start tab, confirm correct data is selected and displaying

5. Under Charts tab, select chart type (bar, column, etc.) as well as side-by-side or stacked results

6. Under Customize tab, edit Chart Title, Legend, etc.

Since we set the end date to be the same as the end of the reporting period, the chart will show empty data for the future months.

Pro Tip: Use the full date range of the reporting period (including future months) in the chart. When the data updates on the Google Doc it will automatically update the chart on the Google Site. Otherwise, the chart will have to be updated manually in the Google Doc and then inserted again into the Google Site.

BONUS – Simplify Non-Branded Search & (Not Provided)

We’ve included our handy formulas for estimating what portion of (not provided) search traffic can be attributable to non-branded search traffic. You can find this in the “2.1 Non-Branded Search” preso sheet. You’ll see that the formula pulls in “Total Org Search”, “(not provided)” and “Nonb Search (no ‘not prov’)” from the data sheets (which pull from the Google API – see the red arrows).

Everything else calculates automatically. Here’s a screenshot of how the preso sheet is structured:

Here’s what the final chart looks like:

Now, it’s time to create the impressive and efficient online report using Google Sites – This is Phoebe’s part.

Step 6 – Create The Google Site Report Using Our Template!

Congratulations. Today is your lucky day. Literally L.U.C.K.Y. We are going to share with you the beyond-awesome Google Site Campaign Report template. It has everything you need, including everything we discussed above! (Talk about standing on the shoulders of giants.) We just want to make your life easier, because when you are happy, we are also.

Not familiar with Google Site? No worries. We will walk you through this!

1. Sign in to your Gmail account

2. Go to this link to get the template: https://sites.google.com/site/executivesummaryreport/

Here is what the report template looks like:

3. Click “USE TEMPLATE”

4. Create the report site name and url

a) Our template “Campaign Report” is automatically selected

b) Name your site

c) Create your own URL address for your site

d) Click “CREATE”

Step 7 – Customize Your Site: Create Your Own Banner

1. Create customized banner

Download our banner template to create your own banner. We’ve included links to the Photoshop, Illustrator and PNG versions:
• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• PNG

2. On your Google site in the top right corner, click “More” then “Edit site layout”

3. Select and double click the banner

4. Click “Choose File” to upload your own banner.

Step 8- Pull In The Data To Create Your Own charts.

1. Make sure you are on the page with the chart you want to edit.

2. Go to the upper right corner, and click “Edit page(s)”

3. Select “Edit Chart”

4. Click the pointed link (on the below img) to get to the back end of the Google spreadsheet.

5. Now, you can enter your own set of data to create the chart for your campaign!

Step 9 – Delete/ Add A Page

1. It is super easy to delete a page – Go to the upper right corner, and click “More” and then “Delete page”.

2. To add a new page, click the “New Page” icon on the top right corner.

3. Then set the page name and location

a) Name your new page

b) Select a location of this page for the Navigation

c) Click “CREATE”

4. Feel free to use our title/section graphics template for your new pages. You can totally create your own set of graphics or use solely text instead.

Download our graphics templates:

• Photoshop
• Illustrator

Step 10 – Insert A New Chart

1. Go to the top right corner, click “Edit Page(s)”

2. Go to the top left corner, select: “Insert” > “Chart”

3. Select the Google spreadsheet which contains the graph/chart you want

4. Select an existing chart or build a new one

a) Select the existing chart on the spreadsheet or “Build a Chart”

b) To match the way we do our chart, put 800px for the width and 500px for the height.

c) If you are “Building a Chart,” put the range of the data you want to be included on your chart under “Select sheet and range.”

d) Go to “Charts” to choose your Chart format

Which one should I pick? Well, it depends on what you want to show:

Comparison: Bar Chart, Line Chart
Distribution: Scatter
Composition: Pie Chart (Show simple share of Total)

e) Go to “Customize” to customize your chart! To follow our style, choose “Bold,” 16 font size and dark blue for Title.

d) Now, you have the chart on your page (Note: To make the chart visible, you will have to click “Save” on your upper right corner.)! If you want to edit the chart again, you can move your mouse on the top of your graph, then an editing panel will show up, so you can play with different options.

Now We’re Cooking With Gas!

If you haven’t yet checked out our Google Site report template, be sure to take a look.

Now you have (hopefully) everything you need to use our Google Site Report templates to make your own awesome reports. Don’t forget – not only do these online reports make it easy to show clients what’s happening, they also update whenever you refresh the data (or set a “trigger” to run scheduled updates). That’s a huge time saver in itself!

I hope you are as excited as we are. If you have any questions, please leave us some comments. We will try our best to assist!

In a world full of endless data and information, it’s sometimes difficult to wrap our heads around measuring what matters. Clearly, Albert was onto something.

Image: The Lepolas

For a free tool, Google Analytics (GA) is pretty magical. With little to no setup, you can quickly see which channels are sending you the most traffic, the types of pages that are attracting visitors, and what those visitors are doing on your site once they get there. But as smart marketers, we need to know more.

If you’re reading this blog, hopefully you’re no stranger to tracking traffic in GA, but if you’ve ever wanted to track like a boss, today is your lucky day. Let’s take a closer look at UTM parameters, and learn how to use them to make better marketing decisions.

What are UTM parameters?

A UTM parameter is a tag added to the end of a URL. When users click a link with parameters, unique data about these URLs becomes available in the site’s Google Analytics account. Usually, anything that follows a “?” within a URL is a parameter.

To set up custom campaigns in Google, you can add parameters to the end of a URL. A UTM parameter consists of both a parameter (also known as a “variable”) and a value.

When creating your UTM, there are 3 common variables you should always include (and a plethora of others too):

• Campaign Source (utm_source) Use this to identify the source of your traffic. Common referrers include social media sites like Twitter or Facebook, a specific newsletter edition, or a site where you have some banner ad placement.
• Campaign Medium (utm_medium) This shows the marketing medium you used your URL in, such as an email newsletter, a specific banner ad size, or CPC.
• Campaign Name (utm_campaign) Create a general theme for your content, and use the same campaign name across mediums and sources to compare results. An example could be “videoinfographic” or “founderscorner3”.

So what does a UTM parameter look like when it’s attached to a URL? Here’s an example for a tweet we sent out from Hootsuite about how awesome Thunder is.

Fun Fact/Jeopardy Trivia: The acronym “UTM” was derived from Urchin Tracking Module, which Google discontinued in March 2012.

Where can I see the results?

In Google Analytics, you can quickly see which URLs with UTM parameters drove traffic by visiting Traffic Sources > Sources > Campaigns. When I’m analyzing results, I like to click the “Source / Medium” tab in the Primary Dimension section, and then I select “Campaign” as the Secondary Dimension. This shows me a birds-eye view of the sources, mediums and campaigns that sent the most traffic.

If you have Google Analytics Goals set up, you can also click “Goal Set 1” (FYI: Goal Sets are another soon-to-be-discontinued GA feature) in the Explorer tab to see how this traffic correlates with conversions.

One thing missing from the picture here is the ability to look at “Source / Medium”, “Campaign” AND “Landing Page”. To do this, I suggest setting up a GA Advanced Segment for each major channel you’re testing.

Here’s an example I created for Thunder Scoop, our monthly newsletter (are you on the list?!). As you can see, I named this Advanced Segment “Thunder Newsletter UTM Traffic” and included “Source” containing “Thunder_Scoop” and “Medium” containing “email”. After turning this Advanced Segment on, I can now use “Landing Page” as my Secondary Dimension, and even explore other dimensions like which browsers my visitors are using, cities they’re clicking from, and the screen size they’re using to consume my content. I’m pretty impressed. Are you?

UTM parameters tools

There are several tools that help you create custom UTM parameters with the click of a mouse. Here are a few I like to use.

The most obvious is the Google Analytics URL builder. If you like your vegetables from the Farmers Market, you should probably build your UTM parameters at the mothership.

In addition to a URL Builder, Raven Tools’ Google Analytics Configuration Tool also helps you set up GA goal and event tracking, as well as basic GA tracking.

Since I use a lot of the same UTM parameters and just swap out the campaign name, I really like taking advantage of HootSuite’s Custom URL Parameters feature. Basically, you add presets of parameters you regularly use, and then you can quickly add the parameters to URLs while also shortening the links with a few simple clicks. Makes life easier, and who doesn’t like that?

5 handy UTMs

Since I mentioned I use a few UTMs to promote Thunder on the regular, thought I’d share them here for easy UTM-ificiation.

Social Media Promotion

Use these UTMs for links shared on social networks. Some people choose to lump all “sources” together into one social media bundle, but I’m sure you’re not surprised I like to separate them out for more analysis.

?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=hootsuite&utm_campaign=thunderisawesome
?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fbwall&utm_campaign=thunderisawesome
?utm_source=google&utm_medium=googleplus&utm_campaign=thunderisawesome
?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=liupdate&utm_campaign=thunderisawesome

Email Newsletter

Make sure to track every link in your newsletter. Services like MailChimp give you the option to add automatic GA tracking, but they apply one source / medium / campaign to your entire newsletter. Instead, opt to add each link manually, and track monthly features with the same campaign over time.

?utm_source=Thunder_Scoop_May_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=thunderissmart

Press Releases

Sometimes, we use press releases to announce big news, like new client relationships and awards. Make sure to coordinate with your PR team or agency about UTMs. If anything, this supports their work, since you can closely monitor the traffic from press releases and see how well the announcement converts.

?utm_source=PRWeb&utm_medium=advancedrelease&utm_campaign=thunderispopular

Banner Ads

If you’re doing any kind of advertising banner advertising on a site, please tell me you’re using parameters to quickly see which ads perform better.

?utm_source=sel&utm_medium=468x60fullbanner&utm_campaign=thunderloathesbannerads
?utm_source=sel&utm_medium=240x400verticalbanner&utm_campaign=thunderloathesbannerads

Sweepstakes and Promotions

If you’re running any special giveaways on a third party app, make sure to use parameters to evaluate campaign success. My previous UTM parameters post touched on this, as well as the ability to add call tracking information to UTM parameters.

?utm_source=woobox&utm_medium=fbtab&utm_campaign=thunderlovesprizes

Challenges with UTM parameters

With great power comes great responsibility, and the same can be said for UTM parameters. Here are a few challenges and solutions associated with these handy tags.

Inconsistency

Challenge A big advantage of using UTM parameters is the ability to compare stats across sources, mediums and campaigns. However, if one character is off, GA will treat the two parameters as unique tags. Parameters are also case sensitive, so make sure to keep things consistent, because having a “Twitter” and “twitter” source really screws up your data.

Solution Keep track of parameters in a centralized doc that you can refer to over time.

Ugly links

Challenge In case you haven’t noticed, these UTM parameters add a lot of extra characters to your URLs. Besides looking ugly, it’s also inconvenient when you’re trying to keep things under 140 characters.

Solution Use a URL shortening service like bit.ly, ow.ly or goo.gl, since UTM data still passes through short links.

You can’t track internal links with UTM parameters

Challenge Each time a link with a UTM parameter is clicked, a new visit is generated, therefore inflating the number of website visits, and skewing other data.

Solution Use event tracking or site search to track internal campaigns with GA.

Miscellaneous UTMs

Challenge Did you know anyone can add UTMs to your links? It’s kinda like an awesome Easter Egg.

Solution Browse through your GA Campaign data, and have a good laugh.

Pinterest Don’t Care

Challenge Pinterest strips UTM parameters from links, regardless if you add them before pinning.

Solution According to some, you can edit the link and add the UTMs in, but keep in mind that most affiliate links are rejected by Pinterest, so UTMs might not fly under the radar either.

U(TM) Complete Me

While there are a few drawbacks to using UTM parameters, most will be completely delighted by the detailed metrics available at one’s fingertips. Adding tags to your links helps you determine which channels and promotion efforts are the most successful, which leads to more informed campaigns. Woohoo!

Have you had success tracking campaign success with UTM parameters? Please share in the comments!

C-Suite Doesn’t Trust Marketing

A 2012 report from The Fournaise Marketing Group states that 80% of CEOs don’t trust the work done by marketers. In fact, 75% of these CEOs think that marketers misunderstand (or misuse) the term “ROI” while 90% trust the opinion and work of CFOs and CIOs. That’s a potential spread of 165% – not so good for marketers!

At a high level, this isn’t very comforting but it also makes sense in that “marketing” is still elusive and hard to quantify, while technology and accounting are clearly definable practices with clear goals.

In a SEOmoz post by Eric Pratum on the opinions of multiple experts about measuring social media, I think Ian Lurie summed this reality up nicely in a statement he made about social media ROI: “We can’t really track social media ROI because we’re not dealing with computers, we’re dealing with humans who can be swayed by their environment.”

Social Media Value is Much More Than a Click

Another inspiration from Eric’s post is the reminder that it’s imperative to educate executives about the significance of social media to a brand’s online presence and how it simply isn’t as trackable as a paid click via Adwords. Furthermore, the ROI of social media is much larger than what is captured via referring clicks and shares. These represent a slice of the overall impact at best.

With this in mind, I’ve attempted to create a social media model that is organized around the most important part of the ROI equation – the return, aka “sale.”

I want to mention there have been some big strides in calculating the ROI of social media metrics. Several recent outstanding posts delve deep with explanations of trackable metrics and corresponding equations; two I’d like to call out are Courtney Seiter’s 30 Social Media Metrics That Provide Real Value and Angie Schottmuller’s Social Media ROI: 14 Formulas To Measure Social Media Benefits. I won’t even begin to touch on what they’ve already done so expertly. I’d like to take a somewhat different angle and try to explain social media ROI to a C-level person who probably won’t have the time or interest to dig too deep into metrics but thinks social media is valuable enough to give it at least 5 minutes.

What’s that ROI Equation…for Social Media?

Let’s go back to those CEO’s and their mistrust of marketers’ use of ROI. I think it’s fair to say that if someone is talking ROI in the same breadth as accountants, then growth in fans and engagement alone aren’t want they want to hear in terms of ROI.

For a little backgrounder, lets look at the traditional ROI equation:

ROI = (Revenue – Costs) / Costs

Revenue = Sales
Costs = Labor, time, materials and other “costs” required to support the activity to generate revenue

For social media ROI, I’d like to throw in cost savings too as part of the equation, so that the revised equation looks like:

ROIsm = ( (Revenue + Cost Savings) – Costs) / costs

Revenue = Sales
Cost Savings = Costs that are avoided because social media was used rather than another activity
Costs = Labor, time, materials and other “costs” required to support the activity to generate revenue (here, social media)

Creating A Social Media ROI Model

With the goal to create something that is useful in the abstract, following is what I arrived at as a potential ROI model for social media. I don’t pretend that this will cover all circumstances of social references and costs. My intention is really to create a framework that can be used for estimating the ROI of social media in general.

The model is organized according to how close a specific social activity is to a sale and then provides an “informed” estimate of what the direct and numeric impact might be. To help illustrate, it’s organized like a dart-board target: The bullseye (or center) is the actual sale and every circle around the bullseye is a social media activity that impacts the sale. How close the activity is to the bullseye reflects its impact, with Circle 1 closest to the sale and each extending circle gradually less significant. It’s the same idea as scoring a game of darts.

Circle 1 – Conversion

This conversion is from someone who clicks directly from a social media profile like Twitter or Facebook and then makes a purchase on the website. This assumes the conversion happens on a website and includes last and assisted click conversions.

The value of this social activity can be expressed as:

Activity	Attributable To Sale		Value		Total Revenue Or Impact On Revenue
Purchase/Sales	100%*	X	Sale ($100)**	=	100% Or $100***

*Attributable to Sale: This ratio reflects the direct impact the activity has on the sale; it’s 100% here because the visitor is clicking through to purchase.

**Value: The value is the revenue from the sale. Here, I’m using $100 as an example of a product sale price.

***Total Revenue Or Impact On Revenue: This is the direct impact the activity has on the sale. Using the $100 sale price example, I’m also showing it as a dollar value.

Circle 2 – Customer Service / Retention

Now we’re moving further away from a direct sale. These activities reflect the impact on revenue and cost savings of customer service via social media. I’ve broken it down to three parts to reflect the values of (i) customer retention (by keeping a potentially disgruntled customer), (ii) new referral customers (via happy customer who recommends company to someone else – one of the most valuable and elusive sales channels) and (iii) operational savings of using social media for customer service versus offline resources.

The values of this social media activity can be expressed as:

Activity	Attributable To Sale		Value		Total Revenue Or Impact On Revenue
(i) Customer Retention	68%*	X	Sale ($100)**	=	68% Or $68
(ii) New Referral Customers	75%***	X	Sale ($100)	=	75% or $75
(iii) Operational Savings	95%****	X	Cost of phone customer service ($7.50)	=	7.13% or $7.13

*Attributable to Sale: This ratio reflects the direct impact the activity has on the sale. A study by Dan Kennedy shows that 68% of customers who leave a business do so because they feel unappreciated or unimportant. Turning that around via proactive customer service could potentially result in a 68% contribution to social media’s impact to sales. (Note: This study is from 2006; I’m still on the look-out for other studies for this figure.)

**Value: The value of the activity whether it’s a direct sale or operational savings.

***New Referral Customers: The 2011 Edelman TrustBarometer study found that 75% of customers who trust a company actively recommended them to a friend/colleague. That indicates 75% of happy customers will be a company’s sales force, leading to a potential 75% impact on revenue.

****Operational Savings: This is the savings from using social media for customer service versus phone-based customer service which is more expensive. A 2012 Gartner report indicates that social media customer service costs 5% that of traditional phone customer service. Here I’ve used the average of $7.50 per customer service call (from Emily Yellin, author of “Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us”). Multiplying 95% (phone-based customer service savings) by $7.50 (average per customer service call) results in a net savings of $7.13, or 7.13% (again, assuming a $100 product sale).

Circle 3 – Engagement

Moving further along, this reflects the impact of social media engagement (e.g., likes, comments, retweets, etc.) on sales. These are not direct visitors to a website but rather the engagement that happens on social media channels as reflected in comments, shares, likes, etc.

The value of this social activity can be expressed as:

Activity	Attributable To Sale		Value		Total Revenue Or Impact On Revenue
Social Media Comments & Interactions	63%*	X	Sale ($100)	=	63% Or $63

*Attributable to Sale: A 2012 IDG Research study shows that 63% of consumers are more likely to buy new products and try new services if they read positive social media comments about them. This can be interpreted to indicate that active engagement with consumers via social media might have a direct impact of 63% on sales.

Circle 4 – Audience Growth

I’ve placed social media Audience Growth after customer service and engagement because both of those speak to a higher level of customer interaction than increasing fans, followers and other social activities. Here, the goal is to quantify the impact audience growth has on sales in general via the impact on sales of (i) Social Media Click-Through Traffic and (ii) New Facebook Fans (which cautiously could be extrapolated to Twitter and other social channels too).

The value of this social activity can be expressed as:

Activity	Attributable To Sale		Value		Total Revenue Or Impact On Revenue
(i) Social Media Click-Through Traffic	1.2%*	X	Sale ($100)	=	1% Or $1
(ii) New Facebook Fans	24%**	X	Sale ($100)	=	24% or $24

*Social Media Click-Through Traffic: Optify’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report found that 1.2% of social media website traffic resulted in a conversion. This is a B2B study but the B2C impact is most likely the same or slightly higher. This results in an impact of 1% to total revenue or $1 given our $100 example.

**New Facebook Fans: A 2011 Hitwise study demonstrated that 1 Facebook fan is apparently equal to 20 additional visits to a retailer’s website over the course of a year. Multiple that by the 1.2% conversion rate for social media website traffic and we can see how 1 new Facebook might have a 24% impact on total revenue.

Circle 5 – Impact On Search

It’s well known that Google has been tracking social mentions since at least 2011. While many sites are seeing bumps in rankings from an increase in social mentions, finding a correlation between social mentions and rankings isn’t easy. Meanwhile, Google has clearly stated that it’s influencing search results based on Google+ activity. Even so, following is an attempt to estimate the direct impact of social media to rankings to conversions. I imagine as we all see more empirical data and studies, this figure will change considerably.

The value of this social activity can be expressed as:

Activity	Attributable To Sale		Value		Total Revenue Or Impact On Revenue
(i) Increase In Google Rankings	28%*
(ii) Increase In Search Traffic	27%**
(iii) Increase In Search Conversions	.1%***	X	Sale ($100)	=	.11% or $.11

*Increase In Google Rankings: SEOmoz’s 2013 Ranking Report is reportedly in the works so in the meantime I’m relying on Will Critchlow’s excellent post from 2012 in which he walks through his analysis to prove a correlation. In the end, he couldn’t find a definitive correlation but he also didn’t refute the link between social mentions and rankings either. Even so, I’m going to go out on a limb and use the figure of 28% which is the sum of 21% for Domain Level Link Authority and 7% for Page Level Social Metrics (both from SEOmoz’s 2011 Ranking Factors).

**Increase in Search Traffic: Optify’s 2011 study, How The New Face Of SERPs Has Altered The CTR Curve, shows how the click-through rates increase from 8.9% on page 2 to 36.4% on page 1 of Google for a net gain of 27%. For sake of this model, I’m making the gross assumption that the majority of sites will increase in rankings to page in Google.

***Increase in Search Conversions: This figure comes from 28% (Increase in Google Rankings) X 27% (Increase in Search Traffic) X 1.45% (organic search conversion rates from Optify’s 2012 B2B Marketing Trends study), which equals .1% or $.11 given the $100 example.

What’s the Outcome?

Tallying together these figures results in a potential return of 338.24% from social media activities.

Keep in mind that this is an abstract, or industry, estimate. Also, factoring in costs would be required to get a true ROI. Likewise, these figures do not reflect scale and volume which vary according to specific campaigns and companies.

Don’t Stop…Drill Down to Get Specific ROI Metrics

To get a more precise picture of a company’s social media ROI, I highly recommend visiting Seiter’s and Schottmuller’s posts on social media ROI.

Bonus: Another exercise of great value is to calculate the Customer Lifetime Value of your sales, and customers. Avinash Kaushik has a fantastic post on this topic from several years ago. It’s still highly relevant and becomes even more so as social media greatly amplifies the recommendations and referrals of customers.

What are your experiences and thoughts about social media ROI? Please share via the comments!

That’s exactly what happened at Thunder, and we realized we were spending a lot of time on reporting each month. Thanks to an extensive internal time audit, we figured out just how much time was being spent gathering, analyzing and presenting data from Google Analytics alone (it was a lot). So we set out to speed things up while tackling the issue of shifting clients’ focus as well, and that’s exactly what we did. Here’s how.

Just like everything else in this industry, it all started with Google. A team of Google developers realized how difficult it was to export and work with data from Google Analytics, so they created an Analytics API for developers to use. Furthermore, Nick Mihailovski who lead the API development, created a slick way to put Analytics data into Google Spreadsheets using their own Apps Script. Put all of this together and you now have a way to automate the export of data from Analytics into Spreadsheets – it’s called Magic. No, I’m not kidding it really is called Magic, and it lives up to its name.

Instant Gratification

With the help of this new tool, Thunder was able to reduce the time of gathering data for one website from hours to instantaneously. Magic allows you to set up what metrics you want to report on going forward and then set a trigger for pulling that data via the API however frequently you’d like. This means every time you log in to your Google Spreadsheet that contains the report, the data is up to date with the latest values! We didn’t even have to open Analytics.

This blew my mind.

The next best thing was the fact that since it all lived in Spreadsheets, I could create my own custom tabs with formulas to rework the data however I wanted. I could also display that data in an easy to understand chart right next to it that updated itself automatically since my formulas were referencing API data. So just to recap, I was now able to open my report and it was done for me.

Getting Everyone Excited About Key Metrics

Obviously I was excited and just about everyone at Thunder was realizing how much campaign execution time just opened up for them. Our challenge was now to figure out how we could present these metrics to our clients in a quick manner that got them thinking about more than rankings. Max went to his special thinking place and came back with a great idea – why don’t we automate the presented report too? We could link the Spreadsheet to a public Google Site, and the site could be accessed at anytime by authorized users.

This great idea solved the main issue of why clients were checking rankings – they could. Think about it. If you own or run a business and you’re getting monthly reports, you probably aren’t feeling 100% in control. You have to wait for the end of the month to make future decisions. With Max’s idea, clients could now check the metrics we wanted them checking whenever they wanted! We also were able to add branding to our reports, so the Google Sites could be presented in a meeting at any time.

Ready To Automate Your Report?

I wish I could say the process of connecting the dots was easy but it really wasn’t. Max and I put a lot of time into researching Google blog posts, browsing developer forums and watching how-to videos. It took a lot of trial and error but I want to share what we’ve learned so you can get started if you’re interested.

I’m not able to show you which metrics we use exactly, but here’s a list of the exact articles we referenced when putting the reports together. If you want to learn more and get started right away, I recommend checking out all of the links below because it’s important to understand the “what” as much as the “how.” Good luck and let me know if you need any help in the comments!

Resources

Connecting the Google Analytics API to Google Spreadsheets

Using Magic to Automate Google Analytics into Google Spreadsheets

Core Reporting API Reference Guide

Analytics Dimensions & Metrics Reference Guide

In the spirit of futuristic trends, we reached out to our team and asked them questions about how they find things on the Internet. Where do they go when the want to find a local business? Which search engine do they prefer? What kinds of devices do they use to search the web? Did we mention Google Glass and burritos are also in the mix?

Here’s how the Thunder Cats search!

What do you think? Do you search differently or the same?

With the monthly newsletter deadline getting closer, I was sorting through several ideas for May’s Founder’s Post. From thoughts on volunteering, to the impact of well-organized meetings, I was vacillating on what would be the right topic.

In the end, it was an email from my life partner, Gabriel, that helped me make up my mind. He sent a link to an awesome post titled Stop Lying To Yourself: How To Change That Voice In Your Head by Leigh Newman who, turns out, is an author, the Deputy Editor of Oprah.com and clearly a great writer. Number one on her list of things we tell ourselves that a) aren’t true and b) keep us in a rut of our own making is “Asking people is too embarrassing,” which fit perfectly with my third topic idea for this month, ask for help. Decision made.

Ask For Help?

Yes, ask for help. After telling myself lies about how I can’t do [x], or that there’s no resources for blah blah blah, or I don’t know how to get this or that, I believe the second biggest obstacle I’ve created for myself (and Thunder) is that I’ll do it myself because (i) I can and/or (ii) I’ll look stupid if I ask for help.

This is true even after hearing one of the earliest words of advice I got when starting Thunder from our incredible accountant, Phil Wright. He told me early on, “Don’t do something just because you can…use your time wisely to make the greatest impact possible.” Sure, at the time, I took his advice and hired a bookkeeper for the company because he’s an accountant, so that’s what he’s talking about, right? Wrong! He was talking about much, much more. So much more that I’m constantly reminded every time I ask for help, I’m able to do more for myself and Thunder than I thought possible.

Here’s an easy example. I like working with clients and on interactive campaigns. Overall, that’s a good thing, given what Thunder does. But inevitably I experience what I call “campaign creep.” That’s what happens when I get too involved in campaigns, and before I know it, I’m spending more time managing campaigns than managing a business. I’ve now learned that when this happens, I ask for help to get something campaign-related off my plate, and then I’m able to focus on initiatives and things that help the entire company.

Which brings me back to why I sometimes don’t ask for help in the first place. I think deep down most of us don’t ask for help because we’re afraid we’ll look stupid or that we’ll look like we don’t know what we’re doing. To be fair, I’m not talking about asking for directions here.

I’m also not talking about things that we can find the answer to on Google. I’m talking about goals that can be personal and professional…the big goals. Typically these are the ones that we need the most help with but are also when we’re the least likely to ask for help.

Ask For Help When It Matters Most

Here’s an example from Thunder how asking for help put resources into motion toward accomplishing some very big goals for the company, as well as created clarity of vision and direction, and also led to company-wide buy-in.

Like any company, Thunder grapples with the “cobbler’s shoe” scenario in that our website isn’t all that we know it could be. We’re super proud of our blog but our website doesn’t accurately reflect all that we do, which in turn influences the type of client we attract and, potentially, the general perception other companies and people have of us. We’ve known all of this for awhile now and finally last month decided to get organized and ask for help.

We brought in an old friend of the company and web project manager extraordinaire, Susan Rust, to help us organize ourselves. Keep in mind that we’re in the business of helping clients identify their primary objectives, develop a strategy for achieving those goals, and then executing on that strategy to achieve measureable results. We should be able to figure out this website thingy ourselves, right? Well, we’re a talented group of people so we probably could, but we’re not a web design company so this really was new to us, at least as a group. Asking for help was a big step forward.

Help Will Always Be Given [At Hogwarts] To Those Who Ask For It

Susan got us started with a kick-off meeting that ended with some clear deliverables and next steps. Great! Now, our issue was who is going to do what? As anyone who’s relaunched a website knows, it’s a big effort and a lot of work. Meanwhile, the website isn’t the only initiative that we wanted to accomplish. We’ve been accumulating a great list of “want to’s” but no priority or plan to identify where to start and who would do what. What’s more, work had already started on several initiatives that weren’t getting finished, which was leading to people feeling inertia and wasted effort.

As the CEO I was torn because I knew all of these initiatives would make a big impact on how the company grows and develops. At the same time, I knew that people were feeling stretched and also unclear about their priorities. Feeling the pressure, the little voice in my head went to town “saying” that to be a good leader, I should simply choose what the priorities are, delegate who does what and move this ship forward. Well, that little voice was on a roll, but I knew that wasn’t the best way forward and, anyone who knows me, it’s not really my style. In fact, I was more at risk of the opposite dilemma of not identifying the priorities and meanwhile fretting about how to get this done without actually asking anyone what they think or how we might do it, resulting in even more wasted efforts and growing frustration for everyone involved.

At this time, it became crystal clear that I was being plain stupid. ‘Nuff said. All I needed to do was ignore that annoying voice and ask for help. In fact, who better to help with this situation than the extraordinary group of people I work with.

So, we held a company meeting and, standing in front a blank whiteboard, I explained that there’s a lot of great initiatives to move Thunder forward, and I have my ideas of which ones are most important, but that doesn’t really mean anything unless everyone is on board and on the same page. I then asked to have an “open meeting” where everyone could contribute what they think is the most important thing to do to support Thunder’s growth as a company. Everyone gave their ideas which were written on the whiteboard. I added mine last. We quickly came up with a great list of priorities for Thunder. Here’s a shot of the whiteboard.

As you can/might be able to see, we ended up with 8 initiatives we believed to be very important for Thunder. In the spirit of threes, I then asked if everyone agreed that we only select three at this time. Once we accomplish one, we can fill in the open slot with the next priority and so on until all of them are done. We all agreed. As a group we decided on the following three near-term priorities:

1. Website Relaunch, including the four sub-initiatives of (i) content, (ii) design, (iii) build-out and (iv) on-page optimization
2. Thunder Mission & Branding
3. Thunder’s Friday Workshops

We also designated a lead for each of these initiatives and identified a support team for each. Talk about asking for help. With this simple request, we identified (i) Thunder’s near-term priorities, (ii) the leader for each initiative and (iii) the support team for each. Wow! I was beyond excited and thrilled that we did this as a team. In some ways, we asked ourselves for help.

I Would Ask For Help But It’s Faster To Just Do It Myself

If the first trap is fear of looking stupid, then the second trap of not asking for help might be the misperception that it’s better if I just do it myself cuz I know how to do it…and it’ll be faster that way. Right? Wrong!

While sometimes it does make sense to just get ‘er done, in most instances it’s more impactful to show someone how to do something than to go at it alone. This not only helps empower more people but it also takes the pressure off of being the only person who can do something. What’s more, this has the ripple effect of making a stronger organization (or team), and it might also reveal that someone else can improve (gasp!) on what I’m doing now. I run the risk of sharing an overly-used online quote, but I think this one really does sum up what I’m talking about: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” (African Proverb – I can’t vouch for this but it’s the only source I could find.)

The Sooner The Better

I’m guessing by now you’re getting the idea and why ask for help is italicized every time.

I’m continually amazed at what we can accomplish when we ask for help. There are so many people and resources eager and willing to help us, no matter how large or small our goals. It all starts with asking for help. And, in case you haven’t already guessed this next part, it’s an awesome feeling when help comes your way…and even more so when we can offer it back too.

So, what are you waiting for? Is there anything personal, professional or whatever that you could ask for help with? You’ll be glad you did.

P.S. Yes, I’m a Nemo and Harry Potter fan.

Read all of Max’s Founder’s Corner posts.

In this post, I review what we learned about campaign profitability and how we arrived at the figures. I also touch on the big “aha moments” for Thunder in regard to how this information impacts how we operate now and how we grow. My goal is to share our process and hopefully inspire other agencies, as well as learn from those who’ve gone further than us in this regard and would like to chime in.

What Are The Campaign Costs?

Okay, so we want to know which campaigns are profitable. Well, first we need to define costs. To determine this figure, I’ve used a basic formula of:

Let’s break it down further into its parts:

Hours X Salary

This is the number of hours (per the Time Audit) associated with a particular campaign times the hourly salary for the people who worked on that campaign. As such, the hourly fee for someone more senior is higher than someone who is more entry-level; this seems obvious but part of the exercise is also to determine where we can shift the efforts of people involved on a campaign so that we can see where some campaigns might require fewer hours from a senior person while other campaigns might merit more senior level time.

Multiplier

This is the figure of 1.2 that we calculated to reflect the costs of payroll-related taxes and administration, health care and similar costs. This multiplier is for costs directly related to the employee. As such, it does not reflect company-wide costs such as overhead, utilities, infrastructure, computers, etc.

Additional Fees

These are any per-campaign costs that are not reflected in payroll, primarily writers from our network who are paid via 1099.

Thunder Time

This accounts for the hours associated with internal communication, Thunder’s blog, business development and administration. Whether it’s campaign execution, client support, internal communication, sharing knowledge or administration, nearly everything we do is in support of clients and their campaigns. As such, I decided to associate the costs of our support of these activities directly to the campaigns rather than lump them into marketing and operations. To calculate how much of Thunder Time goes into each campaign, we used a weighted average that is derived from dividing each campaign’s costs (Hours x Salary x Multiplier) by the total costs for all campaigns.

Which Campaigns Are Profitable?

Now that we know the costs, we can determine which ones generate profit and how much. To determine profitability, we subtracted the Total Costs (outlined above) from the amount invoiced for the same period. We conducted the Time Audit in February, so we are using the data for one month, and then extrapolating out for the entire campaign. The following chart illustrates which campaigns generate profit (above 0%), loss (below 0%) and break-even (at or near 0%), with the campaigns listed along the horizontal axis:

With this picture, we can quickly see which campaigns lose money or break-even and, more importantly, where we might determine a minimum “threshold of profitability” for all campaigns, say 20% or 30%.

Which Campaigns Grow The Company?

While the above shows profitability on a per-campaign basis, another way to slice the data is to show the impact of each campaign to the overall profitability of the company. To help illustrate this, the following chart shows the same data but weighted by the size of the campaign. This was determined by dividing the revenue for that campaign (we used February’s invoice) with the total revenue for the same period (sum of all the invoices).

While we still have three campaigns that stick out as unprofitable, here we see that there are more campaigns that hover around the 0% to 1% range, as well as fewer and more pronounced outliers at the higher end of the scale. Because this chart reflects how much a campaign contributes to overall profitability, the higher percentages of these outliers indicate that they contribute disproportionately more to the company’s profit than the lower margin campaigns, which contribute less.

This raises some vital questions and opportunities for Thunder:

Stop the bleeding: For campaigns where we lose money, can we change the way we support those campaigns or migrate those campaigns out of Thunder altogether?

Increase efficiencies: Given our current operations, Thunder has a lot of campaigns that contribute around 1% to the total profit of the company. That’s a low margin, especially given the company’s desire to invest in new methodologies and technology, as well as increase salaries for staff. Can we increase the margins for these campaigns or should we transition them out of Thunder altogether?

Increase campaign scale: Thunder is definitely in a transition period of migrating from smaller campaigns to larger campaigns. While there are some “large” campaigns that hover around 1% or lower (which reflects higher operating costs or lower efficiencies), the top contributors to Thunder’s profitability are all large campaigns that have higher profitability margins. This highlights the company’s strategic goal of working on larger campaigns with greater productivity that results in higher profit and more resources. As we maneuver the waters of campaign size and building up Thunder to support those campaigns, we will no doubt get smarter about which clients are our sweet spot (I look forward to writing that post in the near future for Thunder’s blog).

Growth strategy: Are we an agency that supports smaller clients or larger clients? Do we target enterprise level clients? While Thunder currently supports a range of clients from all these areas, these figures highlight where we see our opportunity and how we see our growth path. At present, we are a high-touch, highly consultative services company that sells our expertise and our time. If we focus only on small clients, then we’ll be hampered by scale because we will over-deliver in regard to services which will result in smaller margins and then less resources to invest in resources and talent. If we focus on large clients, then there’s a better fit for the quality and style of our services, but we still grapple with productivity and efficiencies. This is an area we’re working on in regard to our internal processes. It’s also an area where we see the opportunity for developing internal tools and programs to support greater productivity and also new services (again, topics I look forward to writing about in the near future).

What Steps Can We Take Now?

For Thunder, there’s a lot we want to do in terms of our web presence, internal education, building out the team and investing in technology. Some of these are in the works, others are near-term but not happening today. So, what steps can we take right now, given our resources and current organization?

1) Fish or Cut Bait

Now that we’ve identified which campaigns lose money, we can decide if they can be “let go” or if their campaigns can be handled with greater efficiency. When we look at the data and what goes into supporting these campaigns, the typical pattern is that Thunder’s services are not a great fit (primarily because they cost more than the value of the leads generated) OR the campaign requires more support than the client’s budget allows. In all the cases above, we decided to end the campaign and support the migration to another provider. On paper this is easy, in practice it’s a little more daunting. In the end, it was relatively smooth once we explained that we weren’t “dumping” them but rather “supporting their transition” to a better solution, which in some cases resulted in changing their online strategy and approach altogether. Our goal has always been to help clients with their campaigns so we’ve always done our best to support this goal even when transitioning a campaign to another vendor.

2) Evaluate Low-Margin Campaigns

With the unprofitable campaigns addressed, now we can look at the campaigns that are profitable but have low margins and, thus, contribute less to the bottom line. We decided that we would not end any of these campaigns right away. Rather, we are figuring out whether we can increase efficiencies (and their consequent contribution to the company’s profit) and then re-evaluate whether or not to continue when they renew. For those campaigns where we can increase efficiencies, then we’ll probably retain those; for those campaigns where we cannot, then we will most likely not renew them.

3) Re-Allocate Resources

From the time audit, we know how much time people spend on campaigns and specific tasks. We also know how profitable different campaigns are. We can use this data together to determine the best use of people and resources to best support a campaign as well as increase the margins, whenever possible. One area where we identified immediate resource allocation improvement was in regard to writing blog posts: Many senior account executives are also good writers so when they need content, they’d write it themselves. While they create great content, the downside in terms of productivity was that they were using their time (which has a high value) on a deliverable that could be supplied by a high quality and lower-cost provider, in this case a writer. Our solution has been for account executives to work with writers on idea creation and content development, and then revise the final draft. This involves more steps but it also frees up the account executive to focus on strategy and higher-level tasks while utilizing the writer for a task that s/he does best. In the end, this approach has resulted in greater efficiencies. We’re monitoring to see the final impact on margins of these changes.

4) Target Higher-Level Campaigns

In looking at the business development funnel, we are focusing on larger scale and higher margin campaigns early on. As our lower margin clients drop off, we are replacing them with higher margin clients AND smarter campaign execution in terms of resource allocation and efficiencies from the get-go.

Altogether these changes increase Thunder’s margins which enables us to increase salaries, invest in technology, grow our talent and expand our operations all of which, in turn, result in better campaign support and performance. All in all, a win-win for everyone involved.

What About You?

The above questions and considerations aren’t unique to Thunder. With this data, we’re able to see some realities about who Thunder is and how we operate. This, in turn, gives us the power to make more informed decisions about how we function and how we grow. We’ll keep you posted as we learn more and make more strategic changes.

I hope you found this to be helpful information. As I mentioned early on, it’d be great to hear from other agencies and companies to hear what they’ve learned about their business and choices they’ve made.

Read all of our posts about Productivity Evangelism at Thunder SEO!