About 4 weeks back I learned SQL and it’s been one of the greatest skills I could have ever acquired as a marketing / business guy at a startup. Since learning SQL, our marketing team has: Determined the interests which are most highly correlated with our user base –> allowing us to create super high-value target groups for our Facebook ads. Determined the courses which are most highly correlated with those target groups (so that we know which courses to advertise). Compiled a set of rockstar vanity metrics that showcase the size and awesomeness of Udemy –> Did you know that students have enrolled in more than 143,907 courses on Udemy? Determined the demographic differences between our Facebook & Adwords ad signups (to better explain why our Facebook ad signups have an LTV that’s 4-5x those of our Adwords signups). Analyzed the future enrollment rates of our users based on which course they enrolled in first –> confirming our hypothesis that users who enrolled in a crappy 1st course were far less likely (about 70% less) to go on to enroll in another course on Udemy (ever!). This drove us to create much stronger quality controls on Udemy.

This article is from this source:

Why Every Startup Marketer Needs to Learn SQL

Source: Udemy Blog

Before you start spending money on PPC campaigns, you should have specific goals in mind for what you want your marketing to accomplish. If you do not have a goal set for your marketing efforts, then you can never tell if you will be successful or not. What is a Good Goal? A goal should be specific and measureable. The most common goals are: To make more money To sell more stuff Unfortunately, these goals are not specific enough. Do you want to make $1 more each month, or $10,000 more? Your goals should really be: Increase total revenue $1,000 each month for 12 months Get 100 new email subscribers per month at a cost of $5 per subscription Attain a $15 CPA for new leads with a minimum of 50 leads per month Many companies will set multiple goals.

Continued here:  

How to Track Sales for your PPC Campaigns

We are thrilled to announce today SocialBro as a Chrome app, which will greatly improve the tool’s performance and flexibility. Many of you have asked us for a faster version of our app, so we’ve developed this version with all the features of the current desktop client. However, it is more stable and efficient, especially for the huge Twitter communities.Users of Google’s Chrome web browser can now visit the Google Web Store and download a Chrome-specific SocialBro app (see below “Getting started with SocialBro for Chrome”). Like the Adobe Air version, currently the Chrome app is also totally free.We’d like to emphasize that SocialBro as a Chrome app is not a replacement for our existing desktop version. We have many people, companies and brands using the desktop version, who trust us, and we are naturally continuing support and development of that platform, just as we have done till now.Today, we’re also launching a user guide about SocialBro to help you to find out all the features of our app.Export and import the history for users of the Adobe Air versionSocialBro allows you to have in your Chrome app your entire history from the Adobe Air version (see below “How to export and import your history”).

Link to original:  

Introducing SocialBro as a Chrome App

Source: SocialBro Official Blog

People want to know when is the best time to tweet, when their followers are online, to interact with them in a better way. That’s why we created the tool “Best time to tweet”! On the SocialBro dashboard you will find the tool icon. “Best time to tweet” has many charts: when your followers are online, when you get more retweets or replies etc., generated by analyzing your top 100 followers, in this current free version. The first thing to do is to request the report by clicking the tool icon. The report takes about two hours to be generated.

This source article - 

When is the best time to tweet?

Source: SocialBro Official Blog

YouTube, a site where literally anybody can upload their videos for the appreciation of others, became the fourth most popular site on the Internet in less than a year. Compare that to newspapers and television, which both have been experiencing decreasing viewership in recent years. People need, want, and will seek out every conceivable sort of information, and the Internet is the place to find it.

Who Wants To Know?

Information isn’t just of use to the casual browser or dedicated auction enthusiast, however. Equally and increasingly interested are the very people posting content to the many pages on the web. Who is visiting which pages? How much traffic is your site getting, and how does it measure up against traffic going to similar sites? What has changed since you put up the big new advertising system last year? Necessity being the mother of invention, this increasing craving for varied and precise forms of information has led to the steady growth of a field called Web Analytics.

What Are You Looking At?

Put simply, Web Analytics is a system of study dedicated to collecting, measuring, and reporting on web and Internet data. This general idea breaks down further into two broad disciplines. The first is on-site analytics, which concerns itself with the journey of each user to a website, and is of primary concern to the owners of that site. It records information ranging from a record of which pages are being visited to a comparison of which pages garner more purchases from visitors. Off-site analytics focuses on information on the Internet as a whole, such as what websites more people are visiting, and what sites are being talked about most frequently. Both methods seek to answer the key question for any website operator – what are people looking at?

But What Does It All Mean?

Proper Web Analytics goes a step further than simple data collection, however. It also concerns itself with interpretation of the data in a context that allows the site owner to take appropriate steps. Let’s use the advertising campaign mentioned earlier as an example. Simple web measurement would be the collection of how many hits and purchases the site gathered before and after the campaign. A serious analytic comparison would explain how quickly purchases picked up after the change, what products and portions of the site drew more traffic as a result, and which pages remained unaffected. In short, web measurement is the gathering of the data; Web Analytics is the comparison and interpretation of that data.

The importance of the analytics field to the modern site owner can be observed in the sheer volume of material available on the subject. Sites offer free programs allowing users to set their own metrics, and others can be purchased, offering extra features and a professional interface. Hardcover and electronic format books have been published dealing with the material, and people have formed associations for the purpose of standardizing Web Analytics methodology and terms.

There is even a Web Analytics conference, the E-metrics summit, held in Santa Barbara, California and London, England each year. Going even further, there are listed job offerings in the field that offer salaries approaching $100,000 a year. Clearly this is not a passing fad, but a serious, vital step for any website interested not just in drawing an audience, but keeping it.

It’s All About Information

Of course this all begs the question – how does a user get started. Moreover, to what degree should they seek to implement Web Analytic tools and techniques? Perhaps a bit counter-intuitively, the quest for information begins with information. Site owners know what they want to accomplish with their sites, be it promoting a specific product or generating an audience for geopolitical discussions in a casual atmosphere. This information is the best place to start because it allows the user to begin understanding what information will help them pursue their goal.

For example, if a page is intended to promote an e-book series, then the user wants to know what information will help them do that promotion. They can then look for analytic tools that will tell them what pages are more successful at selling e-books, and what techniques are less successful.

Taking the time to sit down and think through the purpose that analytic information is ultimately intended to accomplish will make the search easier, and more fruitful from the beginning. With this basic framework established, the next step is the web itself. A simple web search on ‘Web Analytics’ or ‘Web Analytics for beginners’ will return a substantial amount of information. From there users can locate articles, videos, and e-books that will help them make the decisions they need to make their websites successful.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Web Analytics and Your Website – What You Need to Know