96% of people visit a website and leave without completing the actions marketers want them to take, whether that’s buying a product, downloading a coupon or whitepaper, or interacting with the site on a deeper level. People do trickle out, even at the last step. TRANSTION: AND….Source: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/11/22/how-and-why-remarketing-can-gain-back-lost-customers; Understanding Shopping Cart Abandonment, Forrester Research, May 20, 2010
A commonly asked question in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is "what is a good click-through rate (CTR)?" There is no easy answer and it can vary greatly depending on channel, targeting, keywords, and more. According to ClickZ and industry trends, however…:Search: In a healthy account you will see CTRs vary depending on the type of campaign. For example, branding campaigns typically earn a much higher CTR than non-brand. Advertisers may see 1 percent to 7 percent for non-brand with brand ads being 3 percent and up. Consider the differences in each campaign, but focus on optimizing ads with a CTR less than 1 percent.Display: Typically advertisers could see 0.05 percent and above, with retargeting campaigns' CTR as much as double the percentage of site targeting campaigns. Try to optimize any ads with CTRs lower than about 0.03 percent, if clicks are a consideration. Most of the time, display ads are used for branding so impressions are a more important metric.http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2186867/click-rate-ppc
Ben – thanks so much! You did a great job of explaining why search matters for small businesses and provided some great tips for managing SEM Campaigns. As always,we’ve provided a couple of easy to use worksheets at adsolutions.yp.com/practical marketing for those of you who want to start practicing what we’ve discussed here, and, at the end of the webinar we’ll give you an additional resource in case you’d like some advanced training. However, in the next few minutes we’ll discuss those other marketing activities that we introduced at the beginning of this webinar: Email, its cousin Direct Mail and Banner Ads. These activities > as well as search > are part of a larger umbrella of marketing called “Direct Marketing”
At it’s foundation Direct Marketing is a type of marketing designed to generate leads or opportunities for your business. Direct Marketing isn’t about the “type” of media used >> it can be tv, radio, print, email or search >> but it generally follows these 3 principles:Delivering custom message ONLY to people who are likely to become your customers. Asking the person to do something as a result of seeing your ad – like “call now” Tracking all the actions or leads from your campaignFor instance - in Search Engine Marketing, Your custom message is delivered via a search engine to a group of people that have defined THEMSELVES as your ideal customer since they are searching for the products or services that you offer, the message usually includes the basic call to action of “click here” and you can track all of the clicks – or leads – generated by this campaign. In Email Marketing and Banner Ads Your custom message is delivered via email or banners to a group of people that YOU’VE defined as your ideal customer, the message can include a call to action >> the action or the leads generated by the campaign can be tracked
> On the upside email is relatively inexpensive. The chart here compares the cost of email to the cost of other media such as newspapers or radio on a CPM basis. CPM = Cost per Thousand Impressions or the Cost for Having your Message Shown to a Thousand Eyeballs. The question you need to ask when comparing costs is not only what is the Cost per Thousand, but what % of that thousand are your ideal customer? With email marketing you’ll know your message is primarily reaching your ideal customer. > On the downside, email marketing requires lists. By “lists” I simply mean a list of names and email addresses of the people to whom you would like to deliver your message – basically, a list of your “ideal customers.” You have 2 basic options for getting lists, eitherMake your own list by asking everyone you come in contact with - who looks like your ideal customer - for their name and email address. This is the best option, but could take a while to build an email list large enough to be of real benefitRent/buy a list from an email marketing company. This option is fast, but generally the lists are lower quality than a list you build yourself.
What’s required for email marketing? The main things are: list (which we already discussed), your message, the email and landing page. As we go thru this you’ll see how search, email, direct mail and banner ads all have the same characteristics: messages, media and leads or actions – all leading to an opportunityMessage – ultimately, you as the business owner, need to decide what the message should be. You can pay someone “punch it up” and make it sexy, but what is said depends on you. And, although your full message is seen in the actual email, it’s the subject line (teaser text you see in your inbox) that get’s the recipient to open and read your email – so you need to pay attention to those subject lines.The email should follow best practices for design and “deliverability”. Design is the look and feel of the email and “Deliverability” means all the things that need to be done to ensure that your email isn’t considered spam or worse yet - illegal. Landing page – same as in search, this is the web page where the visitor lands if they click on something in your email. And it’s rare that you will send ANY ads – whether search, email or banners - to your websites’ home page. Usually you’ll want to send the person to a page designed specifically for the ad. If the ad promised free beer, then the landing page needs to deliver free beer
This takes us to direct mailOn the upside, it’s relatively easy to get addresses and to create lists of your ideal customers, especially if they live in a specific geography – like a specific zip code, or a radius around your business, or “new home” developments - and this is why I included this option in the webinar because, even though it isn’t digital, it still fits within the umbrella of Direct Marketing – which means its smart for small biz. On the downside, compared to email, direct mail is more expensive because of the printing and postage and/or delivery costs. Just remember - these costs are often off-set by quality of your list especially when you are getting your message to a specific geography.
What’s required for Direct Mail Marketing? Similar to email you need a list, a message and the media – or the direct mail pieceOne point I want to bring up here is that printed media can actually be tracked. The most popular tracking tools: Call tracking numbers. We’ll talk about these more in webinar 5, so I’ll just say these are phone numbers that you put in your ad that forward to your actual business phone number, allowing you to track how many calls were generated as a result of your printed media.Purls – custom urls or web addresses that is short and easy to type, specifically for printed media – “printed url = purl”. Using a purl on your printed items makes it easy for your “ideal customer” to visit your website, and for your to track the number of leads generated by this campaign. AND QR codes – QR codes are those decorative squares that you often see on printed items, that include a request for the reader to scan the code on their mobile phone in order to go to a webpage or download a special coupon. >> stop for a quick poll and ask those of you on the call: which .. if any .. of these tracking activities do you use on your printed media? We’ll use this information as part of our discussion during webinar 5 when we talk about tracking and measuring marketing results >>> And the answer is: … Not a surprise, but very helpful – thanks! So let’s move on to banner ads
Banner Ads || The upside – no list is required. And, in the last few years, using banner ads to get your message to MORE “ideal customers” MORE often has become MORE feasible. Now-a-days many ad networks - and some of the major sites like facebook - allow you to send your message to an “audience.” An “audience” is an anonymous group of online users who have visited similar sites, conducted similar searches, clicked on similar ads or indicated certain attributes like “female” or “lives in los angeles”. Because the ads are sent to a specific “audience” you know that your message is being sent to the people most likely to do business with you.
On the downside, unlike search, where your ad is delivered to someone who is looking for your type of business, with banner ads is your message may be delivered when your ideal customer is busy doing something else like reading the news, so you have to make sure your message is very loud and the requested action is very meaningful – for both you and your potential customer.
What’s required for banner advertising? – “audience” (list) || message || An “ad” and unlike search ads, which are primarily text, banner ads are usually very graphic || A landing pageWith all of these options SEM, Email, Dmail and Banners, the goal of your message is to get the recipient to take action. But, you don’t need every “call to action” to lead to an immediate transaction or purchase, sometimes the right action is an interaction. Let me put this another wayIf in your campaigns, your primary “call to action” is “buy now – get 20% off!” – meaning a call to transaction - then your message will only be meaningful to someone ready to buy right now.However, if your primary call to action is “come to a free event at my location”, meaning a call to INTERACTION, then not only will you get leads from those ready-to-buy customers, but you can also develop a relationships with customers who may be ready-to-buy in the future.
So – we’ve spent the last 20 minutes giving you a quick overview of some direct marketing activities that work well for small businesses: search, email, direct mail and banner ads. Hopefully, you’ve seen one that makes sense for your business, or for some of you, you what makes the most sense is actually using all of these as part of an integrated program. but before you start anything think about these 5 thingsMake sure you’ve really thought thru who is your ideal customer and what is your story since that will be the basis of almost everything you do to market your businessThink about your goal – do you need new customers? Are you interested in keeping existing customers? Your goal will ultimately determine what you doThink about the types of actions that you want to drive – and consider not only driving for transaction – but also interactionStart building your own email listLook for inspiration. Most of us are not going to create a great idea out of thin air – but if we see other great ideas it may spark something new for us.Ben – anything you want to add before we go to our questions?