Let’s talk about Click IN Analysis first...
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...
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 (ex., anything you read with your
newsreader -- but if you read newsgroups via deja.com and your browser, this
does not apply since the Traffic Stats section will report on any visitor who arrives
via a Web site -- you could, of course, still use a tracking link for this if you want
to).
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.
Same 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.