So, you want to jump into the world of online marketing? It’s a smart move for many companies because lead generation is virtually endless – if you know what you are doing!
If done wrong what seems like a good idea now could cost you thousands of dollars a month, have you calling hundreds of dead leads, and could financially weaken business or worse see it close its doors forever.
We have seen many companies jump into the world of online advertising only to see them close their doors months later without ever signing a single client. Assuming you don’t want to be “those guys” let’s go through the 4 key elements to successfully advertising online.
Successful Element 1 – Start Slow
If you are new to online advertising start with a small budget! Whether you decide to do it yourself or hire a professional pick a test area and utilize your budget to focus on building a successful campaign. It takes time to ‘get it right’ and once you have it working well in one area expand your reach and keep testing larger and larger areas until your market size has been reached. A good rule of thumb is to expand city – region - province – country – continent.
Successful Element 2 – What Problem Do You Solve
Most of your online advertising is going to be a combination of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine – pay per click (PPC) and social media channel targeting. If you want effective ads that motivate your potential lead to click on your ad – you need to solve the problem your product or service provides.
It sounds so basic and, yet we see many ads with weak ‘call to action’ statements that get ignored by consumers.
Remember that every search on Google is a question….and every question is a problem – so your ads need to target and solve the problem if you want your ads to be effective.
If you don’t have a deep and comprehensive understanding of what problems your product of service provides your ad campaigns will struggle to produce results.
Successful Element 3 – Build a Marketing System
Okay, so your ads grab the attention of your target audience, now what? Where you do send them? What do you want them to see? Who is responsible for following up?
If you are like many businesses that offer multiple products or services, it might not be so obvious what you can do to solve their problem. Online advertising is very different than other marketing opportunities and you literally have 4 or 5 seconds to capture their interest or they are gone!
Your marketing system needs to reflect what your marketing objectives are.
If it’s to build a massive email distribution list, then you need to give them a reason to leave their information behind (think e-book give away or an online contest).
If, on the other hand, you are wanting to build a list of potential customers looking for your products or services you should be looking to build a landing page.
An online marketing landing page is meant to be one page (or less) that quickly summarizes what problem you can solve for the consumer and how your product or service is better than your competition. In future blogs we will review the key elements of a successful landing page.
In either example you need to demonstrate a strong to call to action and it should answer the question “Why should they leave their information behind?”
Your marketing system needs to have an end to end integration with your business. For example, once the consumer leaves their information behind – what happens next?
Generating leads without system integration means all those leads go nowhere. Make sure your business is prepared to handle the leads as they come in. Who will call them? Who is responsible for sending them information and following up?
A good rule of thumb is to focus your advertising is on one specific problem and then make sure that your landing page, keywords, ads and follow up all match the same problem.
Successful Element 4 – Measure Success
Measuring success is what makes online advertising so valuable! There are so many aspects of any online campaign that can be measured.
Things like ad impressions, click through rates, landing page views, form submissions, new clients and revenue make online advertising a very valuable tool for measuring marketing results.
In later articles I am going to write about how print media is dead but for now just know that the success of any online marketing campaign is a measurable outcome that needs to be constantly monitored.
So how do you measure the success of any online marketing? As it turns out we have two very important financial / marketing tools that can easily measure the results. The two tools that we use are Return on Investment (ROI) and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Let’s take a closer look at how these different measurement returns are calculated.
Revenue earned – advertising cost
ROI (return on investment = ---------------------------------------------- X 100
advertising cost
Ex. You spend $2000 and from it you gain $8000 in revenue so…
ROI = (8000-2000/ 2000) X 100 = 300%
ROAS (return on ad spend) = Revenue from ad campaign / cost of ad campaign
Ex. You spend $2000 and from it you gain $8000 in revenue so..
ROAS = (8000 / 2000)= $4
So, what is the difference you ask – well a lot as it turns out.
ROI measures the profit generated by an ad campaign and the ROAS measures the effectiveness of an ad campaign.
If you haven’t already you should consider signing up for our Gravity Bounce Online Marketing Bootcamp as it has a wealth of valuable information for anyone wanting to learn more about how to advertise online successful.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article as much as we enjoyed writing it for you. If you ever have any questions always feel free to reach out by email or phone.
Aaron Johnston Google Expert & Marketing Guru
Email: aaronj@gbma.ca Website: www.gbma.ca
About the Author:
Aaron Johnston grew up in rural Ontario and has run multiple companies in varies industries over the years. After attempting to hire “the wrong guys” to try online marketing he decided he could do a better job! After 11 years of online marketing experience he shares his experience with others from Taiwan where he now lives with his two daughters.