Click INs occur when people click on an OFF-SITE link and
come into your Theme-Based Content Site. Click INs cost you time and/or money
(explained above).
So analyze what works (do more of it) and what fails (drop
or improve it). In order to do Click IN Analysis, you create special tracking
links. You create these links specifically to track the success of your
OFF-site promotional campaigns. You place a different link in each of your
promotional campaigns so that they are easy to track.
When the user clicks on a tracking link, she first goes to a
computer program that records the click, and where it came from. Then the
program sends the visitor to the page in your site that you had specified.
Click IN analysis yields the following...
• total clicks coming in, for all your special links, and
also for each special tracking link that you create
• “first-time vs. repeat” click INs, for all click INs, and
also on a link-by-link basis. In other words, has the person who is clicking on
a link clicked on it before?
You now have a way of measuring the exact traffic-building
success of every offsite promotional campaign, whether you’re...
• bidding for keywords on Pay-Per-Click engines
• buying ads in e-zines
• posting an ad on the bulletin board of your local grocery
store
• no matter how you promote!
Here are some of the uses and advantages of Click IN
Analysis...
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Ethically Spy on Your Site's Visitors, Increase Signups and Sales Conversions, Site-Usability, and Know Exactly What Your Visitors Want!
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1) The Untraceable Link -- Some links have no Referring URL,
so it’s impossible to know where they come from through regular traffic
analysis. But geez, we need to know this data. For example...
i) links from a free e-book that you are using as a
promotional tool.
ii) links from e-mail of any kind... sig files, links in
mailing lists, Autoresponder campaigns, links in the e-zine that you publish,
ads that you buy in e-zines.
iii) links from non-Web based newsgroups
iv) links that are simply typed in, often due to offline
exposure (especially targeted print media). Tracking links are great for any
kind of offline promotion.
v) links from your blog.
By creating a special tracking link for each of these
“untraceable links,” you’ll know what has been previously impossible to know.
2) Testing e-zine ads -- set a different tracking URL for
each ad that you write. That way you can measure which ad generates a better
response. Here’s how... Run Ad #1 in E-zine #1 and Ad #2 in E-zine #2, then
switch a month later. Which ad got more responses overall? Stick with what’s
profitable. Drop the rest.
E-zine advertising becomes very cost-effective when you can
drop the dogs and increase your budget for the winners.
3) Test Web-based advertising -- Even if your promotion is
Web-based, it’s more convenient to run tracking links than to review the
Traffic Stats Referrer information (which do tell you which sites links
originate from). So use your special tracking links to track the performance of
banners, Pay-Per-Click Search Engines, even posts to forums and discussion
groups.
So far, we’ve talked about tracking the various possible
origins of the tracking links (i.e., the OFF-SITE places where potential
visitors see and click on your tracking link... e-zines, pay-per-clicks, etc.).
And we’ve assumed that the ultimate destination of those links is to your
Theme-Based Content Site. But you have several options for the ultimate
destination of your OFF-SITE tracking links...
1) Your Theme-Based Content Site -- Let’s say that you have
a terrific page about a special kind of flower. That page has several
in-context text links... links to books, growers, affiliate programs, etc, etc.
You take an e-zine ad. Where should the ultimate destination be?
Easy... to your Keyword-Focused Content Page! Since you have
worked so many in-context text links into your OVERdelivering copy, you have a
whole bunch of chances that a sale occurs on at least one of your
merchant-partners’ sites.
2) Straight to a merchant-partner -- On the other hand,
suppose you write a wonderful article about this special flower as content for
a prominent e-zine published by a third party. Your “payment” is that you can
include your URLs. Where should these links point?
Easy... work those special tracker links into the content of
the article, and point them straight to your merchant partners. One link for
each merchant. Since anyone who clicks passes through the tracking script
first, you’ll see exactly how many people clicked on each link! No point in
directing them to the same info on your site, right?
3) A free trial download -- Even a download URL can be the
destination. Offering a free e-book on that special kind of flower? Take an ad
in an e-zine, offering the link straight to the download. Naturally, the e-book
will have links to your various merchant-partners, and to your Theme-Based
Content Site. Every one of those in-book links should be special tracking
links, too!
4) Your online store -- Same idea. If you have an online
store that needs traffic, and if the situation dictates that you’re better off
by sending visitors “directly” to your store (after passing through the tracking
script, of course), then do that. The same point goes if you have a site that
sells single products or your services. If an ad costs you $100, but you see
that it generated 500 visitors, and if you know that 2% of your visitors buy...
it’s easy to figure out whether your ad is profitable!
No matter where these visitors originate from, and no matter
where you send them to, Click IN Analysis reports how well each promotional
effort is working.
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