Wednesday, March 25, 2015

5 Online Marketing Mistakes That Cost Your ROI

I’ve had the pleasure of working with nearly a hundred companies so far on advertising and marketing initiatives. My client base ranges from Fortune 500 to cool new startups ready to take on the world. While marketing and advertising for these companies I’ve started to notice many common questions and actions that have had negative effects on the bottom line.
When we are evaluating whether or not our services are the right fit for our clients, here are the questions that we ask to make sure that we can deliver, and are on the same page when campaigns go live.

1. Not Knowing Your (CPA) Rate

Often I’m asked how much money a certain marketing method will make for a client. The best way to answer this is to know their current CPA, and back into how many “acquisitions” seem appropriate for a certain campaign.
Often early stage companies haven’t had the opportunity to test different methods of acquiring customers or users, so they are not sure. Until you are sure, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Use small test budgets and test many different tactics (but still large enough to have an accurate sample size) until you find what works for you.

2. Not Knowing Your Conversion Rate

This is another question that you need to be able to answer. If I can bring you X amount of qualified site visits, how should that convert for you? If your conversion rate is currently low, is it because of the quality of traffic you are receiving, your product, or your web design?
You can narrow down if it’s the quality of traffic you are receiving by looking at conversion rates by site or advertisement. Are your retargeting ads receiving higher conversions than your amplification? Or are your Facebook advertisements receiving fewer conversions than influencer marketing?
3. Undecided on Funnel Approach
A top funnel approach is sending new people to your site. You want to invest in top funnel approaches (such as PR and influencer marketing) once you know that your product sells and you know what your conversion rate is. Top funnel approaches are best for those who have already optimized the bottom of the funnel (getting people to become customers or users).
Investing in a bottom of the funnel approach would be trying to increase your renewal rate or repeat customers. There are very different tactics for bottom of the funnel and top of the funnel, so before you invest your money in a certain area make sure that they can address your needs appropriately. Once your bottom funnel is optimized (people are buying!) you know that you can scale out your top of the funnel approach and start hitting your goals.

4. Not Pricing The Value of Long Term Advertisements Correctly

Everyone is used to display advertisements. You pay X amount, you get X impressions, and from there, you know how many conversions you receive. It’s cut and dry. The ad goes up. The ad goes down.
Other marketing methods, such as PR and influencer marketing are not cut and dry. Its not an ad that is served for a couple seconds and disappears forever. PR and influencer marketing (as well as other content strategies such as blogging) are long-term advertisements. You can’t price long-term advertisements and short-term advertisements the same way.

Long-term advertisements have additional value besides the initial impression (that you receive with display ads), with a few examples being:
·         Social shares (to Twitter, Facebook, g+….)
·         Discussion
·         SEO
·         Forever accessible
·         Increased brand recognition (reading is a much higher level of engagement than an ad that may or may not have been viewed)
When you are pricing out whether or not a long-term marketing or advertising method is a good value, you can’t look solely at impressions. Calculating total media value is a much better way of determining if your budget will go to good use. To do this, put a price tag on each piece of media or action, such as a Facebook share being valued at $5, and an organic site visit through the SEO of that content as $10.

5. Not A/B Testing

Perhaps one of the most simple, yet often overlooked is A/B testing. If you are investing in any top of the funnel approach (like PR, influencer marketing, or even behavioral display buys) A/B testing the page you are directing visitors to will help you optimize the layout for future initiatives.
Make slight changes in the page, such as language, colors and pictures and see which one yields the best conversion rate. If you invest in top of the funnel without A/B testing you are missing out on valuable data that will help your business GROW.



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