Attract More Local Customers with NMR’s Brand New Analytics
Season 2 of the NMR Podcast kicks off with CEO, Keegan Edwards on how to attract more local customers with NMR’s Brand New Analytics tool!
Participants:
Keegan Edwards – CEO of New Media Retailer
Video Transcript:
[Please excuse any grammatical errors, transcript is machine generated]Hi everyone and welcome to this brand new episode of the New Media Retailer podcast. We are kicking off season two here today, and super excited to be talking to you all about the brand new New Media Retailer analytics reports, and how you can use those analytics reports to grow your business.
Grow your business with new analytics
So, you’ve probably gotten a phone call from your marketing specialist over the last few weeks, or last couple months, asking you to help get your analytics report connected. The reason they’re reaching out to you to do this is because these analytics reports can help you grow your business, understand what’s happening online, and help you to own your backyard and dominate your local market.
So, what I’m going to be talking about here today is what that analytics report actually entails, the information that’s involved in it, and then how you can use each piece of information here to understand your business performance and grow your business. So, if you are listening to this podcast, I just want you to know that there’s also on our YouTube channel, the New Media Retailer YouTube channel, there’s also a screen share version of this podcast where you can actually see my screen and you can get a sense of exactly what we’re looking at here together as I walk through the analytics report.
So, first thing to touch on, we are surfacing for you, your Google local search results in the first part of the report. So, once you have this fully connected, you’re going to receive an analytics report every single month. If you’re not seeing your analytics report please talk to your specialist, let’s make sure it’s not going to your spam folder, or junk folder or anything like that. We want you to see this report because it’s going to give you a ton of tools to help grow your business.
What local Google Search results mean for your business
In the first section of the report, it talks about the Google local search results and what that means for your business, so in the very first section you’re going to see information about the number of customers that found your business through Google searches. So with the one I’m looking at right here 15,000 people found this business in Google searches. The power of Google cannot be understated, so when we work on your website for you, when you have that marketing specialist available to you, what they’re doing is trying to optimize your entire online presence so as many local customers as possible find you, because our entire goal is to help you attract local customers to your business. So you’re going to see that number, you’re going to be able to look at past reports, and understand exactly how many customers are finding you as a result of what you’re doing with your marketing specialist to promote your business. Then after that, we want those people to come into your business obviously, so you’re going to see a quick snapshot of how many people called your store after finding you through a Google search. In this instance, there are close to 700 people who called this store after finding them in a Google Search. And then the number that clicked on directions to your store. So what that means, because we understand that a lot of people use that smartphone that they’ve got in their pocket to make these purchase decisions, right, when they’re looking for a hardware store, a feed store, a pet supply store, any of the above, a garden center, a lumber yard, one of the next steps that they take after they find the business that they want to do business with is they click on that directions button because it opens right up in Apple Maps, or Google Maps, and gives them directions to get right to your store. In this instance 335 people for this business in a single month drove to their store, clicked on directions and got directions to their store after finding them in a Google search. So that part’s really powerful just for you to understand month in and month out what’s happening to drive new people to your business, and to create exposure for your local business online.
Now, the second section of the report is the website activity, and this is going to tell you the total number of visits, and the visits from Google searches. So there’s the people who found you, and then there’s the people who actually visited your website as a result of that. Now one specific section I want to highlight for your attention is the “what people searched” section. Now this part’s really powerful. What that means is, it’s going to give you a list of keywords for what people actually typed into Google that led them to your business. Okay. And so, for this instance, I’m talking about a hardware store here, I can see things like steel electric pressure washer, steel cordless chainsaw, steel backpack blowers, right, those are high ticket outdoor power equipment type of products. Getting your business to be the one that’s found when somebody’s looking to buy a steel chainsaw can lead to those people coming right in and buying from you, right, because that consumer is looking online for the exact specific product that they want to buy from a local retailer. Now, when you work with New Media Retailer, that means that we’ve thought about that, right, we’ve taken the steps that we can take to make sure that when people are looking for products you sell, that they find your business in Google. And so, as I go through this I can see everything from coal stoves, to outdoor power equipment, to chainsaws, to hardware, to gas poles, to Miracle Grow, right, and depending on your type of business, you’ll see in that, what people search for section, you’ll see what people searched and how many people visited your website as a result of doing that. What we call these are Discovery Searches. That means that the person knows what they want to buy, but they haven’t decided where they want to buy that item yet, okay. So when they’re in that process the place that people turn to is Google, and what’s really important is getting your business to be the one that they find. So it’s great to see in those results when you look at that. What are people searching for to find you, and how many people are searching for that in your market. Now, what you may uncover is that a lot of people are finding you for specific products, and you may want to double down right, this is part of where it becomes important and how you can use analytics to grow your business, you want to make sure that your products are on your website, right, that’s the first step. So if you don’t have a site with us where your products are on your website yet, please talk to your my your marketing specialist about migrating to that version of our program, we have the latest and greatest. We may be working with you on a version of your site that predates the catalog integration. And what that is just as an overview, is we’ll actually connect your point of sale system to your website, we’ll match whatever products are in your point of sale and automatically deploy the products prices and inventory of all of those with pictures descriptions things like that to your website site catalog, so that you can keep it an online catalog up to date number one, but then also do exactly this, which is attract more people to your business, because now when they search for specific products that they sell, Google points them right to your website, right. So, that’s a big one. And then if you already have a catalog driven site, look through these search results, get an understanding of your Market different times of the year, what people are searching, different brands that you search really well for and that people are finding you for, and look for opportunities to add more products to your website too, make sure that when you bring in new things this full connection happens where you’ve got the products on your website, and that when people search for those, they find your business. So, that part becomes really powerful and again you’ll be amazed at how many specific product searches in your local market have led to you, everything from Ice Melt to, I’m just scrolling through some of the results here, to lawn mowers, to mailboxes, to wild bird feeders, things like that, we want to make sure. People use Google all the time time to find local businesses, and they’re not just searching for a hardware store or pet supply store, they’re searching for the specific thing they want to buy, in their specific area, and looking for that product near me, that’s how we capture them and drive them to your business.
The power of an online product catalog
Next section of the report, which is pretty awesome, is the number of page views of your online product catalog. So what does that mean? We actually will break it out for you in this brand new analytics report, and show you, hey for each product, right, there’s a page on your website for every single product in that product catalog. You can actually look in a single month, so for this customer 3,851 page views. That means that’s all people perusing their catalog in a single month, and you can see how many people look at every single product that you carry, right, so again this gives you a sense of how are people finding different items in my catalog, how many people are looking for different items, and you might find hey there’s a product in here that I don’t carry very much from the brand, but it seems like a lot of people go to my catalog looking for that brand and looking at that product, maybe there’s an opportunity there for me to grow my business or that department of my business by expanding what I offer, because I’m attracting a lot of customers who look through my online catalog and are looking for me to sell this type of brand, right, so in two ways, one way it gives you an opportunity to figure out what else you can bring in, and then another way it helps you understand, hey how much demand is there here in my market, and obviously the return on the investment of your website is huge because you know hey as an independent local retailer, your business is product driven, right, it’s about selling great products to great customers in your local community, they’re using that online catalog that you’ve put the effort into and working with New Media retailer and your marketing specialist to have a great up-to-date online product catalog. You can see the extent to which people are using it to make their buying decisions to find your business because of that keyword, go to your product catalog, look through the different pages of your product catalog to understand which products you have, are they in stock, what are you charging for them ,and then drive to your business.
And then there’s another part of this report that I really love, and that’s the in-demand product section. Now this is probably one of the best opportunities. We actually have customers who are printing off this part of the report, and bringing it to their buying shows with them. So when they go to the distributor show, or when they’re thinking about ordering, they actually use this in demand product section to understand some opportunities to bring in new products to the store. So what does that mean? The in-demand product section means what people search for on your website that they did not find, right, and those can potentially be in demand. So, what happens on your website is that there’s a good there’s a portion of people that go through and actually click through the catalog categories, right, there is a portion of people that do that. But the majority of people head right to that search bar at the top of your web site and search for the product, or the brand that they’re looking to buy from you, and they search that and then they get the results from your product catalog, and they can peruse the results and decide which products that they want to come in and buy. But, sometimes they’ll search for a brand or product on your website, and they’ll get empty results, they’ll see that you don’t actually carry that brand, or you don’t carry that product. That is what is in the in-demands product report. So let’s just say, to give an example, let’s just say that you’re a hardware store, but maybe you don’t sell Weber grills, right, and you haven’t thought that there’s maybe much opportunity in your market for that, but then you check out the in-demand product section of your report and you see wow, I had a hundred people come on my website and search in the search bar for Weber grills last month. Maybe there’s more demand in my market than I realized, and maybe consumers think that I sell that brand of grill, and are coming to my website and searching for that on my website and finding that I don’t actually sell it. That’s an opportunity to flip the script, right, so Weber grills is just an example, this could be for any type of product or product product line. It could be a product type, but when people search for things on your website, what are they searching for that that you don’t actually carry, because that’s going to give you a sense of what consumers in your market may really want to buy from you, and you might be their first stop to look and see if you sell it before they go elsewhere, but if you don’t actually carry it and it’s not in your online product catalog, then that’s not turning into new business for you. So that gives you an opportunity to think about hey, what do people really want from me, what are they looking for, and then turn around and go and maybe stock that inventory, give it a try, try a new brand, connect it so it’s on your website, and then see what that does to drive sales and new people into your business. So that’s a that’s a great report, you can use that in all different ways to grow your business.
Product database available on demand
And then the very last part of the report is your online product catalog growth, we’re working for you every single month, month in a month out, both from a software standpoint and from that marketing specialist who’s putting in the hard work to think about your business and what they can do to attract more customers. And in that online product catalog growth section you’re going to see that a number of new products added to your website this month based on your point of sale feed. So once you’ve got connected with your point of sale feed, you’ve got the setup, we’re doing data entry all the time and what happens is you don’t actually have to do anything other than make sure that your point of sale export is consistent to that setup that you have for your website, and what happens is every single month is we add new products to our database, we’ll look for your point of sale export, we’ll see what products you carry, and if we didn’t have it before, so let’s just say we didn’t have images and descriptions and things for a specific product that you carry, as soon as we add that to our database it’ll automatically look for it in your point of sale and find oh great we just added this product information, it looks like this store carries that product, let’s connect it and deploy it to their website for them. So we want to get as many of your products on your website as possible, you can see in this last month 48 new products were added for this customer, so that means without them having to do anything, we added those products, we did the data entry, they carried those products, the system connected and pushed that product to their website with their price, with their inventory, and the specific product that they carry. Now, doing 48 products by yourself, and that’s where the true value comes into this whole equation of working with us on the system, is it usually takes like around five to ten minutes per product to actually find the product, find the image, write the description, put it in a category, set up the variants for the product, that’s a pretty time consuming data entry process, and so for 50 products at let’s just let’s just do the ballpark here, if I were to take my calculator out and say okay we did 48 products, and let’s just say that that’s at 10 minutes, that’s 480 minutes of data entry, divided by 60, that’s eight hours of data entry potentially, to do to get all those products onto the website. So you’ll be able to see all the time that you’re saving without having to coordinate that yourself, have somebody on staff deal with doing the product entry for you, and obviously that’d be a lot of labor cost having somebody on staff do it, we’re taking care of all that for you so that your online product catalog can keep growing, so that when you bring in new products and they’re in the point of sale, we’ll look for those and connect them in our database and push them to your website, and we’re doing that all the time so that your online product catalog can stay accurate, consistent, and keep growing, right, saving a ton of labor on that standpoint, and then we know how this comes around full circle because once those products are on your website it helps you get found in Google search when people are looking to buy that product, it brings them to a clean catalog where they are looking through your online product catalog, viewing those different pages, and then obviously hopefully making that decision to click on the phone or click on the directions and drive right to your store and buy it.
And then the very last section of this report, it shows the growth over time, like I said we’re always working for you to grow your online product catalog, so you can see actually from start to finish, month over month, how many new products are being added to your website to grow your business and help keep that online catalog as full and consistent with your point of sale as possible.
So, give this a look, make sure that you’re receiving your analytics report, check out this video on the on the YouTube version if you are listening on the podcast, or just go to your analytics report and kind of follow along as I talk about this, and use this report. Make sure you’re receiving it every month, if you have not had the chance to get it connected with your marketing specialist, reach out to them today and get this connected so that you can see this full report, you can see it over time it’s going to show you first and foremost what you’re getting out of your website, which is a ton of value to attract local customers, and then number two, how you can use this report to think about the next steps for your business and growing it from here. So, wish everybody a wonderful day, happy start to 2023, and if you have any questions please reach out to your marketing specialist, that’s what we’re here for is to help you grow your business and attract more local customers. Thanks so much for joining this first episode of the 2023 season 2 New Media Retailer podcast.