True Online Presence

Holidays Are Over, Top 8 Things To Do Planning For Next Year

The decorations are still on the house and if you are like me you still have leftover turkey and eggnog in the refrigerator. For those of us in e-commerce, the last six weeks have been the busiest time of the year. Although, it may be tempting to take a break, put your feet up and watch some New Year’s Day football, it is also an essential time of the year to start thinking about next year and what you can do to make it more successful.

Your advertising efforts are all fresh and to analyze your results now will be well worthwhile in laying the framework for next year. Here is a list of the top 8 things to do when reviewing your Q4 marketing results.

1. Did your analytics program track your results properly? A good analytics program is worth its weight in gold. Without a proper analytics program, you can still figure out some key sales metrics by looking at your different marketing channels, but it will be a difficult task to see the complete marketing picture. If your analytics program did not track properly or worse you do not have an analytics program installed, DO NOT hesitate and make it priority 1 for the new year. Get analytics in place before you begin spending marketing dollars in the new year. Google Analytics is free with an AdWords account and is quite effective in tracking revenue sources and much more.

2. The most important metric – ROAS (Rate on Advertising Spend). Rate on Advertising Spend (ROAS) measures dollars spent to dollars earned on your marketing channels. To calculate, divide revenue generated by ad dollars spent on each channel. For example, let’s assume you spent $8K in December on Google AdWords and generated $45K in revenue; your ROAS would be 5.62 meaning you earned $5.62 for every $1 you spent. A full cost analysis is required to determine your total profitability, but this metric will easily allow you to identify and rank the success of your marketing channels. Note, if you don’t have an analytics program such as Google Analytics installed, use average sale price and multiple by conversions and use that number for your dollars earned. It won’t be perfect, but it should give you an adequate ballpark figure.

3. The next metric to pay attention to is CPA or Cost Per Acquisition. To calculate, divide the cost by number of conversions. For example, let’s assume you had 100 conversions and spent $1,000. Your CPA would be $10. Compare that number to your cost of goods plus shipping costs. Is the CPA low enough to generate a healthy profit on every marketing channel? It sure better be because during Q4 for most ecommerce companies your CPA is going to be at the lowest level of the year. If you are not making a profit on each marketing channel in Q4, if that is in fact your busy time, you need to make changes now to your marketing strategy before 2015 starts.

4. Dig in to your campaigns. Really get into your campaigns. You are going to want to analyze both ROAS and CPA on the campaign level all the way to the keyword level (for highly trafficked keywords). Generally, not only does Q4 generate the lowest CPA and ROAS of the year, but it also generates the most traffic, providing a ton of data. Only by fully diving into your data can you find those hidden gems that help account for highly profitable sales and those landmines that were busy eating your marketing budget.

5. Act on the facts. Once you have taken the time to analyze your marketing efforts make sure you act. For Pay Per Click Campaigns, raise bids for keywords that worked, lower or pause bids for keywords that didn’t provide sufficient numbers. This should be done throughout the year, but the best time to do an in-depth review is the beginning of the year when data and revenue levels should be at a premium.

6. Review your ads. Did you have ads that were geared toward the holiday season? If so, those ads may no longer be relevant. Make sure your marketing is current.

7. Review your traffic – With more and more people shopping on mobile devices and tablets, it is more important than ever to make sure you know your numbers. How did your conversions, CPA and ROI numbers look on across different devices? Are you bidding the same amount for all devices? It is important to know, track and optimize as needed.

8. Review new channels – Did you start a new marketing channel during Q4? Maybe you ran a test budget for one of the CSE (comparison shopping engines) like PriceGrabber or Amazon Product Ads. Q4 is a great time to add to your marketing efforts, but it is important to make sure it was a success before moving into next year.

Reviewing fourth quarter marketing takes time and you will need to plod through extensive numbers to properly evaluate, but doing the work at the beginning of a new year can save advertisers substantial budget and is essential in optimizing sales. Reviewing marketing today is a task that will pay dividends all year long!

Still need help or looking for someone to bounce ideas off? I am currently offering free marketing strategy sessions to those interested. Contact True Online Presence at 1-888-456-6943 to schedule.

Happy Marketing!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Andy Splichal is an online marketing strategist with more than a decade and a half of experience helping companies increase their online presence and profitable revenues. Although this blog focuses on driving profitable traffic through Google AdWords, True Online Presence offers additional services for lead generation as well as other proven marketing strategies customized for each client.

What Pay Per Click (PPC) Is

Every time a user does a search on the various search engines that include Google, Bing and Yahoo/MSN the search engine brings back a set of results that they determine is the best matches of the user’s query. This set of results is pulled from an almost infinite database that has been compiled by search engines scouring (crawling in Internet lingo) the web with what they refer to as spiders. This database then returns free search results in the middle of the page at almost lightening speed.

Where search engines make their money is in also serving paid listings shown on either the top or to the right of organic or free listings. The paid listings that are shown use an auction style system for where to order eligible ads that is determined by different advertisers who have accounts where they bid on how much they are willing to pay if their result is shown for a specific keyword and a user clicks on their listing (ad) and is taken to their website. This is referred to as Pay Per Click or PPC.

In addition, the different search engines use an additional factor called quality score along with the amount an advertiser is willing to pay to determine the order that ads appear. Although, the exact way that quality score is calculated remains “proprietary”, a fancy word for not shared with the public, the basis of quality score is that a user goes to a page from an ad and does not immediately hit the back button returning to the search results (if a user does this, that is referred to as a bounce). The search engines use quality score because they do not want results shown that are not relevant to a user’s search. If the majority of users are clicking the back button (or bouncing) off a website, this shows the search engines that an ad is not relevant to the search and therefore the search engines either lower the ad on the page or will charge more for the ad to place higher on the page. In contrast, if a page has a good quality score then the search engine will actually charge less for placing the ads higher on the page since it is benefiting the user’s experience by matching them to results with which they are satisfied.

Search engines mark their ads to let its users know the difference between the paid placements and the free (organic) placements. In the example below, you can see a search on Google for UGG Australia. The top two listings are for paid ads as well as the listing on the right. After the paid listings, the organic or free listings are placed. In addition, this ad shows Google Shopping results (which I will discuss how to use in a upcoming blog post).

PPC vs Organic Example — Example of Google Search For UGGs

So aren’t free listings (SEO) better than pay per click (PPC)?

A common question I receive is why not just use the free listings if that is available instead of paying each time someone clicks on one of my ads. That is a great question and if you have a listing that shows up on the first page of Google then kudos to you! If you are not on the first page with your organic listings, you can plan on receiving little to no traffic. Getting on the first page of Google is highly competitive depending on the keyword and in fact can be even more competitive than bidding using Pay Per Click. In addition, thanks to updates by Google in the last few years namely the Panda and Penguin updates “tricks” that were once used by SEO companies promising to have your listing on the first page of Google no longer work.

Even today, I get 4-5 emails per week from companies offering superior SEO (search engine optimization) services and sometimes even guaranteeing results. One word of advice on these advertisements … RUN. There is no company that can guarantee results and SEO has become such a catch phrase that many site owners today don’t even know what SEO is they just know that they need it!

There are certain things that you can do to make your site “friendly” to search engines namely the proper use of title tags, meta descriptions and keywords on your page that will increase the likelihood that the search engines will list you higher on the organic listings. But the truth is, even the most solid of SEO techniques could takes months, years or never be able to have you listed on competitive keywords, which is why the use of Pay Per Click (PPC) becomes so important.

Advantages of PPC Advertising

While SEO could take substantial period of time, Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising can be up and running usually within 24-48 hours. An advertiser can determine which terms their ads will show and how much they are willing to spend either daily or monthly. In addition, when you sign up for a Google AdWords account (Google’s account management system) for Pay Per Click advertising they also give you free tools that help you ensure that your ad campaign is successful. These tools come in the form of a tracking script that placed on your conversion page will count conversions as well as Google Analytics which is able to track the dollar amount of conversions.

A well run Pay Per Click advertising campaign can generate substantial traffic and revenue for both eCommerce as well as professional service companies. A great way to quickly get in front of potential customers with the ability to track every dollar spent, Pay Per Click campaigns should be considered a viable option of any online marketing strategy.

It is true that a Pay Per Click campaign that is not well run could be a real budget buster. This is the reason that I plan on releasing more advanced techniques on how to ensure your campaign is set up correctly. I also have a number of advanced Pay Per Click techniques that can be found on the True Online Presence You Tube Channel detailing how to set up and use some best practices. Finally, for those new to PPC, Google is currently offering $75 in free clicks when you spend your first $25. This is for accounts have just opened in the last 14 days, so please contact me if you would like more information.

Happy Marketing!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

True Online Presence – Who We Are

True Online Presence is a SEM (Search Engine Management) Firm located in Pasadena, CA. We specialize in helping businesses both eCommerce as well as Professional Services increase their revenue through paid online advertising. We are a certified Google Agency Partner and proudly display the agency badge. As a Google Agency Partner, we have demonstrated consistently that we use best industry practices in running clients Google AdWords accounts as well as have established a history of controlling a certain threshold of budget for current clients.

Founded by myself, Andy Splichal, in May of 2014, True Online Presence was established to bring clients in both the eCommerce and the Professional Services spaces an SEM agency committed to delivering the highest level of service and ethical principles available in the industry. Before founding True Online Presence, I served as Director of Web & Marketing for a company consistently on the INC 5000 and Internet Retailer’s Next 500 lists between 2002 – 2013. In this previous position, I managed an online marketing budget of approximately $500-$700K per year allowing me to fine tune the skills needed today in bringing best practice techniques to the successful online management for clients of various sizes.

The purpose of launching this blog is to educate those interested in online advertising with tips, techniques and insights geared toward increasing online success. Not only will I concentrate on Google AdWords, but I will also share what I do using different CSEs (Comparison Shopping Engines) as well as other venues such as Yahoo/MSN pay per click. I will share what I do and what I see on an ongoing basis in order to navigate the online marketing world. I welcome comments and value discussion as the online marketing industry continues to evolve and hope you join me on my journey as I continue to strive to share ways to increase company’s bottom line revenues.

Happy Marketing!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: