Our top ten blog posts in 2019 – or what your website data COULD tell you

I’m writing at the end of the first week of 2020 and it’s a been a big planning week for all of us at Ideal. A big part of our plans for 2020 involve reviewing what is already popular, doing more of what works and changing what doesn’t. Our website has to play a big part in that, especially considering what we do.

It’s straightforward to get stats on your most popular content if you have Google Analytics installed on your website and if you’re interested in doing more with your Google Analytics, I recommend ‘Are you getting the most from your Google Analytics account? 6 steps to optimise your data and provide meaningful reports’

I was quite surprised to see the results, which you can see below. This is because they don’t reflect the questions we hear our clients ask most frequently. Not everyone who comes to our blog is a potential client, but search engines can often provide insight into thoughts that clients won’t share so it’s worth analysing as there are three common themes:

1. Specific to a subject area – these blogs are so specific that we’re probably dealing with someone who knows quite a lot about a particular area and is looking to close the gap. Maybe a marketing manager or junior digital marketer
2. Definitions or fundamental marketing processes – some questions may feel embarrassing to have to ask, like ‘above vs below the line advertising’, ‘article pitches vs press releases’ or ‘finding your USB/USP.’
3. The rest are specific to industries we cater to like recruitment, hospitality and estate agents and so suggests an interest in seeing more industry specific examples of marketing in action.

We have a few lessons to learn from this:

• There are a few definitions we can build into our processes, proposals and reports to help clients who may have varying levels of understanding of the marketing terms we use day in day out.
• We should avoid using industry jargon where necessary – above the line, vs below the line should never need to be referred to in client communication unless they introduce the terms to the conversation. We deal with everything from marketing managers who have 30 year long careers in marketing but don’t necessarily know all about digital marketing, or business owners who want to focus on running their business and only want to know what they need to know.
• We can build more specific guidance for those who know a lot about marketing but don’t know it all and want to be hands-on.
• We should produce more content specific to the industries we support.

Aside from this, I see the interest in our change of management; it’s encouraging to know that readers care what goes on behind the scenes and we hope to share more of this in 2020.

The biggest lesson of all is WE SHOULD DO THIS MORE OFTEN – it took all of ten minutes to get and sort the data to get the finished numbers.

So what can you take away from this? Have you reviewed 2019’s data for your website? If not, do you have everything you need to get this information? If not, get in touch and we’ll get you in the right direction. AND don’t forget that post on Google Analytics.