Letting the web deliver business results you want
Archive for the ‘Internet marketing’ Category.
Apologies for a taking a bit of a break, I have been setting up other sites and that along with my other committments has meant I had limited time to do anything else. Well that’s my excuse - Still I am going to try again with this blogging thing to try to capture my thoughts etc. Going forward I intend to try and focus the commentary more on online retail specifically. I think most of the advice I have offered previously has been more generic.
| Creative format | Standard billing metric | Average click thru rates | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rich media | CPM (cost per thousand impressions) | 4% | Overlay:An interactive flash animation that appears on top of a web page for 10 seconds |
| Standard banners | CPM (cost per thousand impressions) | 0.5% | 468*60 standard banners |
| Sponsorship | Tenancy | 0.5% | Partnership agreement to appear on the shopping pages of an ISP |
| Pay per click | CPC (cost per click) | 8% | Appearing on sponsored lisings on search engines, including contextual advertising |
| Email lists | CPM (cost per thousand impressions) | 5% | Renting a third party opt in email list from a portal |
| Feed advertising | CPC (cost per click) | 0.5% | Creating an RSS/product feed that links to your site |
| Pay per call | PPC (pay per call) | 5% | Listing a telephone number on an advert and paying every time a user calls that number |
Below are some key internet marketing campaign metrics
Impression delivered
How many impressions have been delivered to date
e.g. 1,200,000
Clicks delivered
Total number of clicks delivered
e.g. 12,000
% clicks
Percentage of consumers clicking on creative
e.g. 5%
% clicks to leads
Percentage consumers converting from a click to a lead
e.g. 22%
% clicks to sales
Percentage consumers converting from click to sale
e.g. 7%
Number of orders
Total number of orders generated
e.g. 1,452
Number of new customers
This is the total number of new customers
1,200
Revenue
Total revenue generated
e.g. £35,980
Profit
Profit generated
e.g. £8,820
Retention
Percentage of last months customers who ae also customers this month
e.g. 35%
AOV
Average order value
e.g. £25
Lifetime value
All the profit that this campaign is expected to generate in total
e.g. £152,300
Campaign name
Name of campaign that this media is associated with, e.g. BA Come Fly
Site name
Name of the site/email list where the campaign will be delivered e.g. Financial Times
Channel
The type of media purchased e.g. email, banner etc. e.g. Paid search
Position
Position of creative on site e.g. Overlay on the homepage
Reach
The number of users who will view the creative, or the impressions purchased e.g. 500,000
Demographics
The demographic profile of the consumer e.g. Female, aged <25
CPM / CPR . CPC
A standard pricing metric for the media, cost per 1000 impressons (CPM), cost per registration (CPR) and cost per click (CPC etc. e.g. £60 CPR
Total cost
Total cost for the site e.g. £15,000
Some businesses question the value of internet marketing branding. They know that offline it has some value but online many businesses just don’t get it. But actually branding on the internet is if anything even more important than offline. Online there generally is no rich interaction with customers as you get in many offline businesses, therefore anything you can do to make a positive imprint in a viewers mind of your site is critical for driving sales, repeat business and referrals.
It is the detail that gets you with internet marketing. The opportunity is huge but the winners are the ones that are able to automate and optimise their processes. And it is this which is the most difficult thing to do. First of all establishing a consistent process in the first place that works can be a real pain just because it is easy to get lost. Then its about automating as much as you can and then putting quality time aside to monitor and adjust what is going on.
Slowly, slowly catch the monkey. The bottom line is that Rome was not built in a day and the moral is if you keep on going you will get there.
The internet is a changing miriad of technologies, services and audiences and it can all seem quite daunting to a small business trying to make its way online. But although things on the Internet are changing all the time, much of the time core principles do still apply. So if you understand how to apply one technology or service, when they evolve it is likely that you will not find it as hard to grips with the later versions. In other words it does get easier.
The key is to pull together some high level plan with some overall direction and take one step at a time. If you find a particular step too much or too confusing just break it down to smaller steps. But try not to lose focus and remember what you are trying to achieve. So whether you start by employing consultants or agencies in the hope that they will help set you on the right track, or you do it all yourself which is more time consuming but you will learn more, you need to just try to keep pushing ahead. Day by day, your internet marketing will become focused and effective and you will be able to achieve the online goals you strive for.
IMRG Research produced the results of consumer research today. Whereas offline the economy is suffering, good internet marketing is going to reap huge rewards for businesses. IMRG note that 86% of shoppers surveyed will research their shopping options for christmas online before buying on the highstreet. They also noted that 59% intend to research possible gifts in the shops before buying on the web. IMRG also note that their research indicates that shopping will start shopping for christmas much earlier this year to spread their spend over the months to help their cashflow through the recession.
Authoring articles as part of your internet marketing program can be a very effective way of raising your profile on the web and indirectly driving more traffic through to your site.
Find out where the other main players in your sector are authoring articles and distributing them. What are they writing about, are they missing something, do they tell a good story. By analysing your competitors article generation strategies in this way you can quickly find angles that are not being covered or not being covered very well.
As long as the article is relevant and unique in some way it will build up readership and it will become another way to create unthreatening dialogue with your target audience.
Should the same messaging be employed across all your internet marketing channels e.g. paid search, email, display ad, mobile etc.. Although many businesses have given little thought to their messaging strategy anyway, many businesses have and believe that to put the best foot forward is to deliver common messaging across the different marketing channels that they employ. Initial thoughts are that this must make sense as it will help build and instil the brand and what it is all about. Further consideration though suggests that a blanket approach to messaging might not necessarily deliver max value. The reason is that the customer is likely to react to and employ each channel differently. Therefore although it probably makes sense to maintain the top level messaging across the channels, the lower level messaging should be altered to reflect how maximum value for that particular channel can be achieved.