Do you know where your traffic comes from?

I was talking with a wedding vendor in Portland Oregon yesterday and I asked her if she knew where her traffic was coming from. She said that when she asks brides that question they usually tell her from her website which causes a problem.  Why?  Because her website doesn't rank in the search engines.  That means that brides are finding her via her advertising efforts but she can't get a bride to tell her which ones.

I told her to go read the blog written by marketing expert, Alan Berg. http://alanberg.com/blog/ .  He wrote a blog post on the subject entitled, "Google Analytics can’t tell you if your ads are working."  He said, "It can tell you if you’re getting clicks from your ads, search engines and other websites, but it’s not connected to your balance sheet. Google Analytics doesn’t know when you make a sale, it knows if someone saw your site, but not who that person is. It’s up to you to connect the dots from the click to the sale.

This is not exclusive to the internet. It’s never up to the customer to tell you if your ads are what brought them in. It’s always been your responsibility to find out. This was true before the internet, it’s true for print ads, direct mail, email, bridal shows, radio, tv and any marketing you do.
If you’re waiting until she comes in to give her a form to fill out to know if your ads are working, you’re getting incomplete or incorrect answers. Don’t take my word for it, test it for yourself. List all of the places she could possibly find a business like yours, including places your business is not listed (other sites, magazines, ads). What you’ll likely find is that they check off boxes for some of the places you don’t advertise or where you’re not listed. Try it, you’ll see. It will show you that, by the time she comes in, she doesn’t really remember… or better yet, she doesn’t care, since it doesn’t matter to her. She’s already in your office, she just wants to talk about her wedding or event."


Isn't that interesting?  The bride DOESN'T CARE where she found you so she's not going give you accurate information.  So what can you do?   It's time to put the P.O.W.E.R back into your marketing. 

Download the book 21st Century Bridal Marketing FREE at www.bridalmarketinggroup.com .  You may also want to check out Alan Berg's new book "If your website was an employee would you fire it." www.http://alanberg.com/books/