When measuring the effectiveness of your security business’s marketing, you need to remove the blinders and get out of the dark. John Wanamaker — considered by many to be the pioneer of advertising — is credited with the saying, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” Thankfully it’s 2019 and there’s a (marketing measurement) tool for that! 

We’re going to discuss some of the must-have tools you need to properly measure your security company’s marketing effectiveness. It doesn’t matter if you are a manufacturer, integrator or dealer, take heed or your competition will pass you by and leave you in the dust. 

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA), www.google.com/analytics, is a free tool that is highly underutilized in our industry. It provides a plethora of data that tells us everything from the number of users on our website to how many conversions it generates. A few things to monitor and/or setup include reviewing traffic and comparing historical trends. For example, GA will provide you with data for the number of website visitors, where they came from, how long they spent on your website, where they exited and more. 

You can even set up reports that are automatically emailed to you either daily, weekly or monthly. Figure out which data is important for your custom report and how often you’d like to receive them.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is complementary to GA. First, you’ll want to add and verify your site by visiting www.search.google.com/search-console. Secondly, it will need to be integrated into GA to get a complete 365 picture of your website and Google’s search engine presence. Next, you’ll want to submit a Sitemap. Once this is done, GSC will let you know of any site errors and which pages it shows as being indexed within Google’s database, and offer suggestions to fix them. 

You can also measure impressions or the number of times your website’s pages are viewed within Google’s results. GSC will tell you the CTR or click through rate within search results; a higher CTR signals to Google that your website resonates with users. GSG can even compare your site’s search performance across desktops, mobile and tablets. 

Facebook Audience Insights

Facebook Audience Insights (FAI), www.facebook.com/ads/audience-insights, allows you to learn about your current Facebook page fans — or you can create a custom audience and learn about their age, gender, education level and even job title. Taking things a step further, you can learn a lot about your audience’s likes, including many of their favorite companies and brands. This will help to paint a picture of your current customers and/or ideal prospects.

LinkedIn Website Demographics

LinkedIn Website Demographics (LWD) is especially helpful for groups that install for commercial end users, manufacturers and service providers. It allows company page owners on LinkedIn to get information on the types of users that are visiting their site, and not just the actual LinkedIn Company page. To learn more, visit https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/website-demographics. 

The security space is undeniably competitive, and letting your website marketing efforts take a backseat means letting your security business slip behind. Your website is the most important tool you have for marketing your business, hands down. That’s why leveraging these tools is vital. How you use these tools will provide incredible insights into the user/potential customer, how they engage with your website and how you can improve for greater engagement.