Ask the consultant: Plan your marketing

I do an Internet-based radio program. Our ratings have been increasing, but we need to significantly increase the audience to attract advertisers. How can we do that without spending large sums of money?

Jeff Bushman, THE Jeff Bushman Show, jbushman@gmail.com

Start by monitoring and tracking who is visiting your website. Google Analytics can be a valuable tool to help get this information and more. It's free and the information can help you to effectively plan your marketing by making changes to content, measuring bounce rates and improving conversion rates from visitor to listener to hosting a show or donating money.

Google Analytics helps you keep track of who is visiting your site and what keywords were used in the search. Less than 25 percent of Internet searchers look beyond the second page of results. It is imperative that individuals searching for Internet radio find your site on the first page and even better if your site is found in the first few search results.

Keywords used within your site can make this happen. Knowing the popular links and keywords used to find specific products can also help to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to maximize results; increase the listening audience, and eventually attract advertisers.

Google Analytics also can help determine if the quality of your Web page content is meeting consumer demand by tracking user activities. The data provided can assist you in optimizing your website by providing listeners with what they want and increasing the frequency of those online visitors by understanding their specific needs. It also can provide insight into areas that need improvement.

Lastly, the social reporting tools offered will enable you to discover the effectiveness of your social media strategy without spending large amounts of money.