In the wake of Group Buyers - what's next (revised)

I came across this video on youtube and it's freaky how i've been thinking about this all along - how to WOW your customers after they get in through the door.  This is exactly how businesses should treat ALL group buyers.

Thanks to BigCommerce.com for this fantastic video .... please keep them coming...

Effective Online Marketing Strategy - Making Sense of Stats

I'd like to share what I've learned so far in (1) managing advertiser accounts, and (2) what businesses should request for online stats:

As an online marketing solutions provider, keep Stats (A) Simple, (B) Honest and (C) Highlight Emerging Trends:

• Use histograms & frequency tables and show percentages rather than pageviews, unique visitors, hits, etc. on graphs.
• Report the pitfalls in addition to the successes as pitfalls themselves when analysed can show significant milestones, e.g. 

"Your "glass wool insulation" product category performed the best over the last 60 days, resulting in 28 direct email inquiries from 954 page views - 3% conversion rate.  Your "polyester foam insulation" product category had the lowest conversion rate at 0.5%, however, it steadily increased from 0.1% over the last 60 days to 0.5% making it one of the most improved product categories."

• Always suggest new ways of maximising online exposure and ROI - nothing stays stagnant in the online space, ever. e.g., (added bonus if they're done without spending more $$)

"Government legislation on residential insulation grants has negatively impacted general traffic that generally results in direct email enquiries from home-owning consumers.  Over the same period, however, we have found an increasing number of traffic to our commercial insulation product category zone, particularly 'bulk buy'.  If you see this trend at your end as well, I would like to suggest the following strategy to increase leads:

1. Update banner copy to reflect insulation bulk buy. 
2. Update site to create dedicated bulk buy zone for your polyester foam insulation. 
3. Modify current ppc campaigns to drive relevant traffic."

As an advertiser, (A)Read Between the Lines, (B) Seek Citations & Knowledge and (C) Appreciate Honesty (but also be vigilant):

• Stats are most useful when they tell a story rather than finding, "I spend x amount of dollars on this campaign and I need to make x + y back to justify ROI, so have I done it?".  Try to ask the following:
• How many unique visitors did my "Contact", "Distributor", "Reseller" pages get? - activity on this page indicates visitors are actively looking for a physical representation / phone number to call, and potential lead source.
• Have you followed up on email inquiries? A lead is a lead is lead is a lead.....  I have clients that are so turned off by grammatical errors on product info requests that they completely ignore them!  Then there are ones that complain about getting inquiries from areas that lay 5kms outside their service zones...and discard them right there and then!  

"If someone has gone to the effort of providing their mobile number & address to request a quote or product info, you should immediately jump to the opportunity and call them up.  Maybe they are willing to pay the extra service charge - simple demand economics theory suggests if you can provide your products/services at the level of price someone is willing to pay, then nobody loses out.  This, of course means that the customer is able to pay for it, but how would you know if you don't follow up?"  

• Are there any parallel marketing campaigns running that could have impacted each other?  E.g. Own Adwords campaign and SEO initiatives to drive traffic to your website impacting traffic to your micro-site within a niche directory for the same keywords - consolidate your existing campaigns.  

• When your online marketing solutions provider make sweeping remarks on industry trends, upstream traffic, keyword popularity, don't be afraid to ask for citations and in the process try to learn the general terminology.  This is NOT rocket science, and always be weary of consultants / account managers that keep using the term 'complicated' when describing what they've done for you.  Steer away from asking 'How' and towards 'Why' questions.  Yes, there are companies that use ways to boost traffic to your site, so always ask why there are peaks and troughs.  Things don't just happen, everything happens for a reason!

• Last, but not least, appreciate honesty.  As consumers are rushing online, so are marketers together with businesses that want to emulate competitors and nab as many of those consumers as possible.  It's an exciting world out there, however, the perceived value of 'moving offline to online' and so-called 'success stories' can be highly inflated.  Not to mention the army of 'digital marketers', 'online specialists', 'PPC guns' and 'SEO gurus' at the beck and call of flashy agencies and advertising platforms. It can be a bit overwhelming and not very simple, so what do you do?  Use your online advertising solutions provider as a you would use a marketing department within your company:
• Appreciate learning the confronting facts sooner rather than later.
• Treat your online marketer as your employee, hold them responsible and reward accordingly.
• BE OPEN to building relationships with them, e.g. invite them to product demos, seminars, training events and product launches - it's always a good sign if they take initiative and suggest how to get more bang for your buck!
• Always remember, with Social Media and Networking, people that sell to you can easily become your customers ;)

How to determine ROI?

From my experience as a digital media consultant and account manager, most small to medium sized businesses/enterprises (SMBs/SMEs) 'waste' their online marketing dollars because they are unable to 'capture leads'. I deal with clients on a regular basis complaining about online marketing strategy with XYZ company not generating into enough click-throughs to their website and/or phone-based inquiries.

These clients usually call us after receiving their monthly bank/credit card statement that show deducted payments from various subscripting-based, online e-marketing providers, e.g. SEM resellers, business directories, etc. In light of the recent economic downturn (and possibly one that'll last for years to come), you have to understand this is very normal - think of a mom n pop small business start-up, struggling to make ends meet reacting to, say, their Google Adword spend as opposed to an Accounts Payable department of a large company having to merely get approval to pay outstanding invoices. The same company can consult with their, say SEM strategy, department to check if their monthly 6-digit Adword spend is justified (yeah, there are many out there!), while Finance department pays their 6-digit invoice amount. However, the small mom n pop shop, say corner shop for wedding gifts, is biting through their nails, hoping they won't be sent to a credit/mercantile/debt-collection agency for not being able to pay off their bills - simply because their e-marketing spend toward their, say online ad, had not even generated enough to pay for itself!

I see these cases every day of my digital account management career and it is frustrating to see these SMEs either jump on the band-wagon and dedicate too much dollars for online promotion, sales reps selling the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner that can in theory make you a martini and/or SMEs expecting their one dollar to bring in 100 dollar worth of return. All these scenarios are completely ludicrious, which is why I've decided to create this blog to share my e-marketing experience working for one of the worlds largest news and media companies for both SMEs and companies that provide e-marketing, online marketing, SEM/SEO services, etc to these SMEs.

I will skip the theoretical jargon and go straight through to actual case studies that I've worked or am currently working on. As I am degree qualified in e-Commerce, I may pull some theory in these studies, but will keep it very simple and interesting.