Sometimes two is bigger than four
I know what you’re thinking: “something must be wrong with Antonel. Too much computers, he needs some rest!” I would say: Nobody needs to rest, not now. We may still argue whether we are in recession or not but what we know for sure is that we have to get ready to bring in more customers for our businesses. And to do that, the magic word is (online) “marketing”.
The worst thing a business owner might do in tough times is to cut the marketing budget. You can grow your business (and sometimes even survive) only if you bring in more customers. It doesn’t matter if you cut your costs, if you offer cheaper products or services, they key is to have more customers. That means, to become visible and attractive to more people; to send out your compelling message to them and grab their attention. In times of trouble I would say “put more money into marketing OR/AND spend your marketing dollars wise”. To be “marketing wise” you need, among other things, to find new business communication channels and to get the best ROI for each of them. To be “marketing wise” you need to admit and understand that two plus two sometimes makes five or two might become bigger than four.
The best example I can give you is the use of online marketing. Let’s say you’ve placed your ad in a monthly email blast. Let’s suppose your ad meets the minimum requirements of attractiveness and call for action. Let’s also suppose you have a very attractive business website. Now here comes the elementary mathematics when you can stick to the classic “two plus two makes four” approach or become “marketing wise” and make it five. If you link that ad to your web site home page, visitors will have to figure out their way to the information they were looking for. Some of them might be willing to spend enough time to find that, but many others will do the very basic thing that makes your equation stick to “four”- leave your web site disappointed they did not find information about the specials your were advertising in the ad. On the other hand, if you create a special landing page within your web site and offer people that clicked on your ad more information about your specials, they might not only become your customers, but also spread the word to their friends. If you give them the information they were looking for at the right time and reward their efforts you might bring the “word-of-mouth” variable into the equation and the result of your “two plus two” becomes five (customers) instead of four.
Another way to be “marketing wise” is to consider the best way to calculate your online advertising ROI. If you place a banner on a web site or an ad in an email blast, you will be interested in monitoring the results. One way to look at the reports would be: “I’ve spent this amount of money on the ad and I’ve received that many clicks or leads”. You can compare the effectiveness of this campaign to other campaigns you are running and draw the conclusions. Let’s say you spend $600 to place an ad in a newsletter and you got 200 leads. At the same time, you spend the same amount of money in another campaign and received 300 leads. If you compare the effectiveness of the two campaigns, you might think the later is better in terms of ROI. $2/lead on the later campaign is better than $3/lead from the first one, right? I would say: it depends! Make sure the newsletter belongs to a very trustworthy organization and people that subscribed to that newsletter are anxious to get that information. They expect to receive some good deals and they would be glad to check your specials. In other words, the leads-into-customers conversion ratio might be very good (say 10% of the people that clicked your ad will turn into your customers). On the other hand, using a more intrusive communication channel (like purchasing a list of people from a third party) might only get you a 5% conversion ratio. Now think about it: you paid $3 per lead for the initial email blast ad, but with a 10% conversion ratio you got 20 customers while you’ve spent only $2 per lead on the other campaign that brought you, on a 5% conversion ratio, only 15 customers. If you compare the amount of money those customers spend to purchase your products and services, you would see that this time, three was smaller than two. In other words, in a “marketing wise” mathematical equation, sometimes two is bigger than four! Two highly-qualified leads might be of bigger importance and bring in more money than four other “normal” leads. So if you want to better determine your marketing ROI, don’t stop with the “cost per lead” analysis, but go beyond that and do some surveys to see the real conversion rates. Ask your customers some questions and determine which campaign really worked for you. You should reconsider the campaign that generates hundreds of low-conversion cheaper leads and push more money into those effective ones that bring you just a dozen of great-conversion (even though more expensive) leads.
I will leave you with this final thought: It’s a tough world out there. Don’t miss any marketing opportunities and be wise… Marketing wise! See ya’ll online!
Antonel Neculai
|
