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Chapter 12 - Analytics
Case Study Chapter 12: Salford Business
School, The University of SalfordPassport to Trade 2.0, a project led by Salford Business School to generate free online training materials for SMEs and students
Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
OverviewPassport to Trade 2.0 was a European partnership, led by Salford Business School, University of Salford in the UK, and included five European universities and three SMEs. The partnership brought together a multidisciplinary team of organisations from eight European countries. The aim of the Passport to Trade 2.0 (#P2T2) project was to develop free online training materials to help SMEs and students seeking work and placements in 31 European countries. P2T2 was a European Commission, fixed term co-funded project from October 2011 to September 2013, and presented a challenge of sustaining the project results beyond the funded period. Organic SEO was chosen as the main strategy to maintain visitors’ flow to the website beyond the funded period, in order to:
1. Increase the number of organic search visitors to the main website from about 50 visits per month in 2012 to 3,000 visits per month, post project launch.
2. Improve organic rankings on Google for important keyword terms, to achieve at least 1,000 visitors per month for first page organic search traffic.
The aim was to create great content, such as text, animation and video, and an inbound link ecosystem, to drive traffic to the main website. Through the creation of a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC), which relied heavily upon crowdsourced content from industry experts and academics, the project was able to attract over 306,000 organic search visitors in a year. The project achieved first page ranking position within Google for the competitive key-phrases ‘business culture’ and ‘international business culture’. High visibility in search engine results pages succeeded in driving around 10% of site traffic.
ImplementationThe development and integration of a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) and a video animation allowed Salford Business School to demonstrate creativity and innovation over the usual business culture guides. Identifying a particular interest in how social media can be used for business development, the MOOC enabled local digital marketing agencies and academics to share their advice on the subject for free via 15 minute-long videos. All participants were encouraged to engage with the #SSMMUoS hashtag on Twitter. Using the popular ‘did you know’ theme, a short video animation for 31 countries was produced. These videos were optimised on YouTube as well as being integrated into the main website.
Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
With limited financial resources to develop content, the project crowdsourced material from industry guest speakers as well as a wide international advisory board. In addition to the English audiences, eight other language microsites were created and translated by in-country specialists to maximise the reach and accessibility of content.
ResultsOver a five month period (September 2013 – January 2014), organic SEO brought 38,472 visitors to site, compared to 365 visitors in the same time period over the previous year.
From 2015 onwards the website averaged over 100k visitors per month although the main project activities have now stopped. See image below of the Google Analytics Audience Overview from March 2013 to December 2016:
While the target had been to attract 3,000 organic search visitors to the site per month, the actual number of visitors achieved was an average of 8,549 visits per month.
Primary keyword terms showed positive search engine ranking results within two months of the site going live. The site is currently ranking on the first page of Google for targeted English based keywords, which are the most competitive of the languages targeted. Attaining ranking position on the first page for the primary key-phrases ‘business culture’ as well as ‘international business culture’ continues to drive an average of 10% of organic traffic to site. In total, 4,316 visitors per month are arriving at the site via first page organic search traffic.
Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Between September 2013 and September 2014 a total of 576,533 pages have been viewed by 280,099 users.
Further Information● http://businessculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Screen-Shot-2014-09-23-at-
16.20.52.png
● http://businessculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Screen-Shot-2014-09-23-at- 16.29.11.png
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpUZhgrWdU0
● YouTube infographic video http://goo.gl/b0Pz9X
● MOOC - http://goo.gl/z72eWI
● Twitter - https://twitter.com/Passport2Trade
● Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/passporttotrade2
Discussion Questions1. Which traffic source was the most successful contributor to the campaign?
2. What digital marketing channels contributed to the positive increase in site traffic?
3. Looking at the Google Analytics data, what pattern of visitor behaviour can be observed in terms of seasonality? How can this information be used to generate maximum engagement on the website?
Class ActivitiesExplore the historic performance of the website since it was created in 2012. Looking at the following key factors:
1. How long did it take for the website to gain momentum in Search Engine traffic?
2. What is the seasonality of the website traffic?
Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
a. Trends for days of the weekb. Trends for Months of the year
3. Make a comparison on website traffic to the previous year, over same period - what is the
trend?
4. View Real Time data and identify the location where the website visitors are currently based.
5. Explore the web pages that have the highest bounce rate - what can you see from the Google Analytics data and the content of the pages that might suggest the high bounce rate? Share your answer with others on Twitter using #passion4digital #Ch12
Use your own details and if you don’t have access to Google AdWords you could try using the
following username and password:
Username: [email protected]
Password: p25510n4digital
Login to Google Analytics - https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/
Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
