Your business website is not just another marketing tool
Manage your internet presence rather than just see your site as another marketing vehicle. Do not turn your web strategy into a simple overall marketing tactic.
Raise your hand if you know what the typical metrics of traditional media are. If you answered “reach, frequency and impressions”, you are good. They are the most and exclusively measured metrics. Usually traditional marketers don’t go beyond the simple “more traffic generated more sales” paradigm. What they want to get is eyeballs and traffic to generate more sells.
I bet there were a couple of you a little nervous about this simplistic approach. How about those activities performed not only to increase sales, but also to improve conversion rates, customer retention, creating efficiencies and driving additional revenue for the business. Aaaah, now we’re talking! Let’s see how these advanced tactics can be used on the internet. Now, let me get a little technical here and try to look smart*:
Once you start using online marketing, you will need these tools to effectively execute your plan:
* Web analytics software with the ability to segment traffic
* Bid management software
* Financial models
The only way to build an effective online campaign is to determine the lifetime customer value (LCV) for the online customers. You need to understand how much a customers is worth so you need to determine the customer types and your conversion rate per customer type. This way you can identify your maximum cost threshold for customer acquisition expenses. In other words, once you know how terms convert and you know how much each conversion is worth, then you know what you can afford to spend.
Try to fix or get rid of terms with a lower conversion rate. If a term's bid price exceeds your threshold, either stop at your bid ceiling or move the term to your watch list. Then, maximize your spend on any vehicle or term that sufficiently returns your investment. Once you go through this activity, you open up a world of promotional opportunities beyond Google AdWords, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, display advertising and other vehicles all become available to you!
The next step is to involve your finance department. You need to get their help in order to understand and determine margin, LCV, expected rate of return and other financial metrics that will help you prove your need for budget.
As internet becomes more and more an important piece of your overall marketing effort, you need to get more comfortable with numbers, mathematical financial equations and modern technology analytics.
I hope I managed to prove you that the mixture of your web site along with an effective internet marketing campaign might be a very powerful and successful online presence with a huge impact on your marketing efforts. You know what they say: it might be a virtual presence, but it’s actual money you are spending. Spend wise, master the field, build a strong virtual presence and thus make real money! See you online!
Antonel Neculai
* Thank you Reid Carr, for your article "Stretch your ad budget with these metrics" published in iMedia Connection
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