Marketing research distinguishes successful business owners from the rest. And Internet marketers are no exception.

The most successful business owners, on-line and off line, learn what is most effective and efficient for their businesses. They do this learning by either direct observation, market segmentation or some other marketing research.

Now if you’re an Internet marketer or other small business owner, don’t tune me out here. I AM talking to you. Marketing research isn’t limited to large companies.

You May Be Doing Marketing Research If …

If you’re not doing any of these types of research, ask yourself if you want to be successful enough to do what most successful business owners do.

If you need help, Redshift provides clear and incisive business and consumer market research and data analysis.

A Marketing Research Demonstration

On Friday, I demonstrated how simple marketing research can be with my first monthly Entrecard statistics analysis. I’ll be posting these statistics monthly until the statistics show me that Entrecard doesn’t provide enough return on investment to continue doing it.

More Marketing Research Coming Soon!

I’ll also be reporting, on this blog, other statistics and analysis that I’m doing in my business. If you follow my posts, you’ll see how simple and informative marketing research can be. You can easily follow my posts my subscribing to my RSS feed. Just click the RSS button in the upper right sidebar.

To read about email marketing for Internet marketers, click the link below:

Market Segmentation And E-Mail Marketing

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Posted 8-4-08: Marketing Research: How Do Internet Marketers Do It?

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One form of marketing research is keeping records of your marketing efforts and their results. On July 8, I joined EntreCard. So today I want to post my statistics for my first month and interpret those statistics to see how to improve.

Converting Four Entrecard Graphs Into One

To get this multiple line graph, I took the data from the four graphs on Entrecard’s “more stats” page. I typed the numbers into a worksheet in Microsoft Word, then went to the graphing menu and selected a line graph.

Too much trouble, you think. Read my interpretation to determine if this kind of marketing research can help your business.

Relationship of Entrecard Drops and Organic Search

The most notable relationship on the chart is between the number of cards dropped on my blog (the blue line) and organic clicks (the green line). In fact they follow the same path so well that you can’t really see the blue line except at the three times when I ran advertisements.

This relationship is expected. I didn’t implement my first ad until the 21st. I got 3, 30 and 53 drops on the 21st, 22nd and 23rd respectively. This was the result of ads purchased with Entrecard credits. The other ads raise the blue line slightly above the green line for the last three days of the month.

The Results of Ads That I Ran

This table tells me that UnconventionalMarketingBlog brought me the most traffic for the least amount of credits per drop. This is provided in two tables in Entrecard, but I like having the two together. I wouldn’t go to the trouble for just one month, but as I continue to keep records and advertise on different sites, these statistics will help me to get the best return on my investment.

Relationship Between Entrecard Drops That I Made And Those Made To My Blog

Now back to the line chart. I see a slight relationship between the number of cards that I dropped and the number dropped on my blog. While my dropping has been a bit inconsistent, it has generally risen throughout the month. Drops on my site indicate a steady rise, but not nearly as dramatic as the rise in my drops.

You can see that when I decreased drops the last three days of the month, drops on my blog also dropped with about a day’s delay.

Summary And Insights From Entrecard Statistics

So what can I learn from this analysis.

First, there is a slight relationship between dropping and getting dropped on, but the number dropped on me tails my drops. This indicates that as I drop more, I should get more drops.

The question is if the number of visitors that I’m getting is worth the time that I spend dropping. So next month, I’ll keep track of my time so I can see how many drops that I get in return for my time. Once I determine the average number of drops per hour, I can compare that to other traffic methods that require time instead of money. Then I can compare which method provides the best return for an hour invested. You can see the results for August, by clicking the link below:
Interpreting Entrecard Statistics - August 2008

You can use a similar approach to interpret your entrecard statistics and improve your business in the process.

Top Droppers

People You Need to Know 17
Internet Business Ideas 16
Article Specialist 16
The Success 14
Online Social Networking 13
A Marketer’s Ramblings 12
CDubMarketing 11
Money Maker Times 10
BloggerHitz 10
impNERD 9

Thank you top ten droppers.

If you’d like to be listed in one of my posts with a do-follow linkback. Check the numbers by the top droppers. If you can beat it next month, you may get one of their spots in my Top Ten Entrecard Droppers list.

For more on entrecard, see

Blogs Get a Boost With Entrecard and Sezwho Partnership

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