Data Driven Daily Tip 185: For months I was podcasting about once or twice a month, very long form, interview style. It was a good start, and gave me some stuff to talk about, however recently I decided to change my strategy to see if listenership improved. I increased frequency to basically daily, or at least 4-5 times per week, and made the episodes shorter, like 2-5 minutes in length. See how the data shows the listenership skyrocketed? Not only do you need to start a podcast, but you need rework your strategy. It's not what's next, it's what's NOW.

Data Driven Daily Tip 184: What Is Medium.com? It's a free place to blog from daily to weekly to monthly, but as long as you're doing it consistently, it will do your business well. As of 2016, more than 60 million active users were on Medium, and we have reason to believe that audience size has close to tripled in the last two years. On top of that, our own web data shows that companies who blog on Medium regularly see the most qualified website traffic from it as a referral source, with more than double the average engagement from web visitors vs. other backlinks. Translation: Blogging on Medium.com regularly with a byline backlink to your website results in more engaged users to your website, which will eventually mean more qualified sales and leads. We recommend Medium.com to all of our digital strategy roadmap clients. Now, here's a key way to grow your following on Medium.com. Listen to find out!

What’s the difference between the Facebook Ads metric “Website Conversion Value” and “Website Purchase Conversion Value?” A heart attack, initially. 🙂 I kid. You see, when you go in to analyze the performance of your Facebook Ad in terms of generating sales to your eCommerce website, you need to go in and click the blue “plus” (+) icon to the right of your columns and “Modify Columns,” then you always need to add two columns. 1. Return on Ad Spend. 2. Website Purchase Conversion Value. You see, if you add “Website Conversion Value” you get a MUCH BIGGER NUMBER, that does not represent your actual eCommerce Sales, but rather an arbitrary potential number defined by your Facebook Tracking Pixel Set-up. If you want to customize this more mid-funnel number, it’s not a bad idea, here is some discussion. But you don’t have to do anything, you just have to add the correct column. 🙂 Hit me up with any questions on Facebook Advertising at paul@datadriven.design.

I'm HUGE on what the data says is working for your marketing strategy. The data doesn't lie. So this may seem confusing, but I'm really not concerned with the headlines recently that Facebook lost $125 billion last quarter. It's really irrelevant to your marketing strategy, especially when Facebook Ad - when done correctly - result in the lowest cost per customer acquisition and highest return on ad spend across all media channels, let alone digital media channels. I have a ton of respect for the AdHawk Blog and Newsletter, but they got a little overboard in giving so much love to this article, which says "only" 2.23 billion of Facebook's 3 billion users are (active on the platform). Seriously? Only 2.23 billion? Name me another marketing channel that you can reach your target audience for $1 or less per, that has a prospective audience of 2.23 billion? LOL. It's freaking laughable. IGNORE THE HEADLINES. Be a practitioner.

ATTN MARKETERS: (from CMOs to Small Business Owners) Whenever social media platforms start launching features to combat one another (feature wars), it's usually an amazing opportunity for marketers. In 2015 it was Instagram adding "Stories" to copy Snapchat. User attention FLOCKED to Insta Stories, and hasn't wavered since. Now, it's the launch of IGTV to dominate YouTube. Well, less than three weeks later, YouTube launched a very subtle "messages" feature to help extend organic reach of videos, and keep people native on the platform. Here's how to marketers, from CMOs to Small Business Owners, should use this.

How To Create A Paypal Button and a Confirmation URL for Google Analytics: Data Driven Daily Tip 180. ATTN MARKETERS: (from CMOs to Small Business Owners) So this one is pretty effing cool in my humble opinion (I know, I know, Data Over Opinions, right). But this opinion of mine (on how cool this is) actually puts you all in a place where you can get more data than ever! You see, one problem I’m helping you solve in this Data Driven Daily Tip is HOW TO create a Paypal payment button to embed into your website. But the more strategic, more critical business function that I’m showing you here is, how to create a URL that redirects your customer back to your website to track conversions. Then, how to set up a Google Analytics goal off of that URL. What am I talking about? In plain English: this video shows you how to set yourself up to understand where your Paypal payments on your website are coming from (i.e., referral traffic, social media posts, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, SEO, etc.

So you know I’m a total geek, but even I stop sometimes and say “WTF Google? Why are you making things so complicated.” But, we can’t sit and complain about it, we have to just figure things out, so case in point – WTF is Parallel Tracking and why are Google Adwords and Google Adwords Express Advertisers getting email notifications that they need to switch to Parallel Ad Tracking by October 2018? Here’s what you need to know: Parallel Ad Tracking Is – A change in the way tracking code is served, that increases page speed load time, and security. More here. Here’s How to Switch to Parallel Tracking – Log into your Adwords Account, click “All Campaigns,” the “Settings,” then “Account Settings,” then “Tracking,” then toggle “Turn Parallel Tracking” to “On.” Then run the test by clicking the test button. If you’re only running Google Adwords Express Ads, you won’t see any of this, but Google Adwords Express (Soon to be Google Ads Smart Campaigns) Advertisers do not need to do anything!

So I’m huge on two things: 1. Starting sentences off awkwardly with “So” or “And,” and … 2. Pressuring all marketers, from CMOs to Small Business Owners, to use Google Analytics for 30 minutes per month. Whether or not you follow my step-by-step process outlined in the Data Driven Academy, of looking at Audience, Behavior, Acquisition and Conversion Reports, one thing I haven’t talked about yet but need to more, is the Intelligence Feature in Google Analytics. The Intelligence Feature essentially analyzes your data, thinks for you, and shows you “what you need to know.” Now, it’s definitely not a perfect science, but it’s a great starting point for familiarizing yourself with just how much this free tool, Google Analytics, can help you optimize your digital presence and ultimately grow your business. Email me at paul@datadriven.design with any questions. Thanks for reading, watching and listening, and have a great day! KEEP MARKETING!

I’m a huge fan of using platforms the way that the platforms say to use the platforms. So today, I want to lift the hood into a part of Instagram that I guarantee most of you if not all of you haven’t seen yet. As content strategists, we’ve given clients and Data Driven Academy attendees the following advice over the last 12-24 months: On Instagram, document over create, show behind the scenes content. Don’t worry about curating everything or making everything look perfect before you post. Repost Content and repurpose other people’s content while giving them credit. Connect with other accounts by searching popular content, including accounts and hashtags related to your business and interact with those accounts. Comment on their posts, DM (direct message them) to increase visibility to your account and grow your following. Don’t underestimate the power of a nicely completed business profile, complete with Hashtags, Emojis, and of course, contact information!

Do you have an online store? You know, like Shopify, BigCommerce or even WooCommerce? Get ready, because there are some serious things you need to know about the most effective digital marketing practices to generate sales on your website. In short, Instagram and Facebook are where you need to be, running ads specifically. Get the following ready: Facebook Business Manager / Facebook Ads Manager Account Your Shopify / BigCommerce Log-in Your Instagram Account You need to set up the following: Shopping Bag Link in Instagram Stories Instagram “Collections” Ad Campaigns Facebook “Product Catalog” Ad Campaigns You’ll need to Connect Your Facebook Product Catalog with your Instagram Profile, something we’ll show you how to do in the Data Driven Online Academy.