OBSESSED WITH RESULTS

Isn’t it great you don’t have to rely solely on TV or print to advertise anymore?!  After watching Don throw his client out of the door on Madmen’s premiere episode of season 4, I thought, poor Jantzen for not having other advertising options.   If you didn’t see the episode, Don presented a provocative swimwear layout to Jantzen.  A black bar covers the model’s top. “So well built, we can’t show you the second floor,” was the slogan.   Jantzen, a family oriented and conservative company didn’t like the risqué idea, thus making Don so mad he threw them out.   Can you imagine throwing your client out if they don’t like your idea?

Today, there are more opportunities than ever to advertise, anywhere really.  It made me thankful that I work at Ionic Media, in the advertising industry today, because we can be more creative than ever.  There are so many ways to reach the consumer…  iPhones, iPads, Blackberrys, portable TVs, Facebook, Wi-Fi everywhere (even on airplanes now!)!  How much you want to spend or who you want to reach is a good way to start.  You could advertise on TV or why not put the commercials on the web?   Utilize paid search or optimize your current website?  The key is to not depend solely on one element, which will in turn be more efficient and effective.   The trick will be to coordinate all elements to send a consistent message.

Wow, what a relief to advertise today where you truly can run with your imagination.

So, you have an advertising budget for your product and have done all the research to figure out where to run your advertisements, how to disburse between Search, Display, etc.  Now how do you make these ads convert?

The Advertisement:

1. Text and Tone:  Create a strong CALL TO ACTION (this is the #1 most important detail).
   1. Use strong call to action phrases and words.  Examples include:
      1. i.      Free “ex. Get your free copy by clicking here…”
      2. ii.      __% off  “ex. Get 25% off your online purchase…”
      3. iii.      Make the offer time sensitive…”for a limited time only…”
      4. iv.      List cost – example – only $19.99 in bolded text and eye catching color.
      5. v.      New, Premium, etc.
      6. Graphics:
         1. Use graphics that catch the users eye.  Keep in mind that your advertisement is competing for the user’s eye.  If it is text heavy and not appealing to the eye it will be overlooked.
         2. Make sure ads load quickly.
         3. Keep the ad simple to read (i.e. average sized text), no shaky banners (most sites will not accept these and you may not want to be responsible for an epileptic seizure…seriously they become annoying more than anything else and don’t convert into a true sale.)
         4. Adding the touch of human faces to an advertisement also helps the user ‘connect’ with the offer on a personal level.  Remember – many people out there on the web are visual and the competition is fierce to capture their attention and lead them into action.

The Sales Process:

1. You have a click…now what?
   1. The same practice should be applied to your landing page and purchase process as it is to your advertisement.  The key points to focus on are:
      1. i.      Reiterating your offer.  The landing page content/offer should match the advertisement.  If it doesn’t, your messaging will not be clear and the user may think he/she  has landed on the wrong site or that the offer was bogus.
      2. ii.      Strong CALL TO ACTION! Keep that call to action in every step.  What does the user need to do?  Keep it simple, snappy and easy to do.
      3. iii.      Keep the collection of data fields above the fold of each page.  This reduces drop-off rates.  The easier you can make a process for a user the more likely they are to complete the process and not drop off.
      4. iv.      Short transaction process (shorten the amount of pages a user needs to go through in order to hit that oh so important ‘submit‘ button.
      5. v.      Provide a safe transaction zone for the consumer. (i.e. secured shopping).  If you intend to use any  user information for future promotions you need to be up front and let them opt in to this.  Transparency gains trust and hopefully this consumer will not be a one-time shopper but become a loyal customer, fan on Facebook, etc.

Andrea Cravitz
Client Account Manager
Ionic Media

The Barcelona Principles Checklist

By Richard Geasey

by Stoney deGeyter

Warning: This is a very complicated and math heavy post. It is best read slowly in small doses to ensure you can fully digest it all. I will also point out that I’m not a math or analytics expert so what you get here is my way of doing things which is probably far removed from the official Geek’s Guide to Web Analtyics and PPC Tracking.

In Part 1 of this 2-part series I guided you through some basic calculations that help you figure how to ensure that your PPC campaign is profitable by knowing your cost per conversion ceiling. The calculations I went through were very basic and provides a good starting place for any new or inexperienced PPC campaign manager. In this post I’m going to take you a bit deeper into some much more complex calculations in an attempt to get more accurate cost per conversion data.

The cost per conversion ceiling found when doing the calculations in Part 1 will actually be much lower than the final calculations we’ll produce here. Using the figures from the beginners post will leave you less room to maneuver on campaigns where costs are high and profiting is seemingly more difficult. We’ll fine tune things quite a bit here in order to give you more wiggle room while ensuring your PPC efforts remain profitable in the long run.

Every customer has a value beyond the first sale

Every sale you make is worth more than the cost of the products or services charged in that one transaction. You’ve heard it said it costs more to find a customer than to keep a customer. PPC and SEO is all about finding new customers. But if you run the business right, you should be going out of your way to keep the customers coming back time and time again.

The question is, from now until death, how many customers come back for repeat orders? How often and how much do they spend? Every industry is different. Where Amazon likely has customers come back monthly, weekly, and some even daily; car dealership only gets customers back every few years if at all.

If your average customer comes back five times over the course of their life and spends an equal amount of money, then each customer has a lifetime value of five. Technically, that means that if the cost of acquiring a customer (the PPC’s cost per conversion) is four times the profit you make on a single sale, you’ll still make a profit on that fifth sale.

That’s putting it simplistically. Different products may make different impacts on the visitor. Higher-end stuff may bring customers back less because there is no immediate need to replace it, but also brings back loyal customers that are apt to make more purchases. Lower-end stuff may need to be replaced more frequently, but also prone to disappoint your customers, making it less likely to produce repeat sales.

See more at: http://practicallocalsearch.com/how-to-optimize-your-ppc-campaign-to-profit-from-every-click-advanced/

By John Greer, Search Engine Watch, Jun 7, 2010

If you own a website, you’re already doing SEO. The e-commerce platform you choose, information architecture of your site, product marketing copy, meta data, and more all affect your organic listings in search engines from day one.

As you continue managing the site, you’re constantly changing your search engine visibility, so it’s important to know if things are on the right track. It takes a combination of several quantitative and qualitative measurements to get a good grasp on the state of your SEO.

Quantitative Factors

• Rankings on a set of keywords used to be the method of choice for SEO measurement. If you want to rank for “tickets” and you move from the bottom of page one to the top of page one, then you’ve met a goal. However, this mindset is limited to the keywords you focus on — users will come up with tons you didn’t consider. Additionally, what you see in Google isn’t necessarily what everyone else sees, due to several factors such as personalization and geography. Not to mention the fact that rankings don’t equal clicks — someone has to choose your listing over those around it.
• Natural search traffic is the next logical spot to consider. Pulling this data from your web analytics package will give you traffic trends, allowing you to compare them to SEO project dates. Assuming your numbers aren’t inaccurate, a common problem, you also need to put these in context of the whole site.
• Percent share of total traffic helps with context. Perhaps traffic is down a little, but is the whole site down? It may be a seasonal issue or a brand issue reducing traffic.
• Some final metrics on traffic are often overlooked in SEO. What does your traffic do on your site? Take one look at the page and run away screaming? Or do they actually stick around and buy something? Ensuring people are landing on the right pages, targeting the right terms, and even creating compelling landing pages are part of SEO. Keep track of things like bounce rates, goal conversion rates, revenue, and orders sold for natural search. Ideally, you have attribution set up to have an idea of how natural search revenue fits in with other sources.

See more at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3640565

The most interesting opportunity and challenge in today’s advertising environment is where agency services end and software development begins.

In digital advertising, the key to success is making sure that your clients see tangible results.

In order for an agency to provide marketing results for its clients, it inevitably has to have some type of development experience or have a good source of developers to combine digital advertising systems with reporting systems that are client-friendly.

How many different types of reporting are available?  The answer: tons.  So then there’s a deeper discussion.  At what point does an agency decide to adopt a tool or work with another agency or developer with tools to determine marketing results?

The truth?  It’s up to an agency to develop its own secret sauce.  Here, at Ionic Media, we have in-house developers that work on MediaFusion and the Valence Technology platform, as well as the ability to develop cross-platform optimization.  We are constantly looking at optimizing our in-house system, as well as evaluating new tools in the ever-evolving marketplace.

How does your brand or agency manage this issue? In-house developers? Outsourced vendors? Out of the box tools? Comments?

Marie Smith
Social Media Manager
Ionic Media