I was just speaking to a client about setting up Google analytics on his website. We tried to set it up for him 3 years ago but as a one man show, he didn’t have the resources to follow through on the results so he decided to put it aside for the time being. I think we can all relate to that.
His analytics has been up for one day and already he is marveling at the information that Google can track and that he can use to negotiate with his “referrers”. Once we set up a couple of goals , he was able to compare each advertising vehicle in terms of return on investment (ROI).
The days of impressions and click throughs are long gone now, you must be able to track ROI or suffer the consequences. In PPC, you may be bidding on keywords that aren’t producing sales and in SEO, you may be going after keyword phrases terms that simply don’t pay for themselves.
As the economy gets tougher over the next few months, you will need to take the guesswork out of your marketing program. Google analytics is an easy and inexpensive (free) way to start.