It turns out…Google Analytics goes hand-in-hand with successful business marketing! As I spent more time poking around the website more with Lorrie, our web marketing therapist, I found that Google Analytics has a filter option that further ensures the accuracy of monthly data! Allow me to elaborate…

You can go to www.myipaddress.com and instantly discover your unique IP address, put it into the Google Analytics filter, and your Analytics report will only collect visitor’s data from people that are not filtered by the IP addresses! This way, we are able to filter out all of our team members who regularly visit our website. Not only does this give us a better picture of our actual monthly traffic, it keeps us up-to-date on the most effective Analytics tool so that we can pass our knowledge on to our partners!

Follow the simple steps and filter your web data (using IP addresses of your team) today:

Step 1. Go to Analytic Settings from your Dashboard (on whichever website you are analyzing)

Step 2: Go to Filter Manager at the bottom right hand corner of the page

Step 3: Add Filter to add new IP addresses to be filtered (the existent filters are listed)

Step 4: Insert IP addresses to be filtered (in the same format as the existent filters–Google Analytics are particular about the formating so be careful or this will be ineffective!) Use the dropdown menu from Filter Type to select “exclude all traffic from an IP address”

Step 5: Type in your IP addresses and save changes!

Viola! Enjoy your newly updated and improved monthly website reports!

With Lorrie’s exponentially-growing inbox in mind, I decided to take a chance and write her an email anyway. BUT, instead of titling the email like I normally would, I wrote out my entire title line in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS!!! To my joy and surprise, I received a response from her Blackberry within the hour! A short week later, I was sitting with Lorrie and talking about my full-time future with WMT. It turns out she really appreciated the ALL CAPITAL LETTERS title because it grabbed her attention and the email stood out from all the rest of the emails she received. This small yet effective action communicated to Lorrie that I was serious about getting her attention…and it worked!

This may seem like a silly and oversimplistic anecdote about obtaining employment at first glance, but it actually exemplifies the very important principle of knowing your audience. It is extremely crucial to understand your audience’s situation (timeschedule, preferences, even pet peeves!) in order to communicate yourself to them in the manner that interests them. As a marketer or any professional in any industry, you can benefit a great deal from knowing and understanding your audience so that it’s not so much about “what do I need; what do I want” and more about “what do they need; what do they want; and how can I offer them what they seek?” And hey, it would probably benefit in personal relationships as well to first listen to the other person before pitching your own tunes out.

I paid attention to my boss’s needs and got a job. Imagine what you can get just from thinking about others first!