Digital Marketing "Summer Tune-Up" (3 Simple Questions)

 

Before summer speeds by and we’re officially into the fall season, I recommend taking some time now to tune up your marketing so you have a strong finish to 2015. Before we know it, the holiday season will be here… and then with the blink of an eye, the ball will drop in Times Square.

 

To help you assess your digital marketing and make fast improvements I put together the following 3-question “summer tune-up.”

 

Question 1: Where Can You Get More Website Traffic?

First, look at what’s already working and find ways to improve those campaigns.  What are you doing now that is driving traffic to your website? For example, if SEO is working (generating leads and sales), then determine how you can improve your current rankings and expand to even more relevant keywords.

This sounds overly simple, but do not skip this step!  It’s easy to overlook these easy opportunities to improve your marketing because they are typically not very exciting.  Personally, I find it hard to rally behind “doing more of what we’re already doing,” but the reality is that it’s by far the cheapest and most effective option.

Expanding into new territory is nearly always more expensive and more time consuming so focus on what’s already working first.  Then once you’ve maxed out a particular marketing tactic, then review your options to expand.

Second, assess what’s missing.  What are you not doing that could be driving traffic to your website? For example, if you’re using AdWords Search advertising, then consider expanding to Bing Ads to get even more exposure when your prospects are searching in Bing or Yahoo.  Or if you’re advertising in AdWords and Bing, then look into launching an ad campaign on Facebook.

 

Question 2: How Can You Increase Your Website Conversions?

Driving traffic to your website is only half the battle in digital marketing, yet it’s where most businesses invest most of their time and resources.

The second half, which is arguably the more important half, is converting that traffic into leads and sales.

Consider this example.  One business invests in marketing to drive 1,000 visitors to their website and converts 1% into customers.  A competitor invests half as much to get 500 visitors , but their website converts 2% into customers. Both businesses generate 10 customers, but the competitor invested only half as much to get the same number of customers!  If everything else is equal then the competitor is twice as profitable and can now afford to invest to drive even more traffic.

Can you see now how important it is to focus on improving your website conversions?

Now let’s review your website.  Do you have what’s called a “lead magnet” to capture contact information from website visitors?  A lead magnet is a free offer (report, white paper, video, coupon).

Note that a lead magnet is not an email newsletter subscription!  Email newsletters are not as compelling all by themselves and only a very very small percentage of your visitors will sign up.  Instead of an offering your email newsletter directly, offer a report that provides information or reveals a secret your ideal prospect needs to know. And when people opt-in for this report, they’ll also receive a subscription to your email newsletter.

If you already have a lead magnet, then take a closer look at it.  Could you make it more compelling? Can you offer more lead magnets that more closely match each of your different customer avatars?

 

Question 3: How Can You Improve Your Digital Marketing Tracking?

I’m not going to waste time in this article explaining the importance of tracking. Most people know it’s critical.  The problem is many businesses don’t take the time to set it up correctly, which means they can’t accurately measure the results of their marketing campaigns.

Here are the 3 key components you need to track your digital marketing:

1. Google Analytics to measure visitors and their activity on your website
   
   
2. Phone tracking to measure number of calls for each of your marketing channels
   
   
3. CRM (customer relationship management) tracking to measure leads and sales for each of your marketing channels

If you’re missing any of the components above, then set them up in the order they are listed.

The thing about tracking is it’s not retroactive.  That means if you’re investing in marketing now without tracking, then there is no way to determine which campaigns were profitable and which were losing money.  Only after you set up tracking can you start to calculate your return on investment (ROI).  That’s why I always recommend businesses get their tracking set up as soon as possible.

3 Steps to Pick the Best AdWords Keywords

In today’s article I provide 3 criteria for selecting the best keywords for your Google AdWords campaign.  

If you have ever conducted keyword research for a Google AdWords search campaign, then you know the process can be daunting. Go to adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner and start searching for relevant keywords for your business.  Within seconds you'll literally have hundreds of pages of keywords that Google has determined are related to your products or services.

 

That's a lot keywords to comb through!

 

In addition to the sheer volume of keyword possibilities there is another problem.  How do you know which keywords are better than others?  Google's keyword planner tool provides search volume, estimated cost per click and competition, but there is no column that grades the keyword opportunities.  Sorry, it's up to you to figure that out on your own.

 

To grade your keywords, you need to first list the criteria that make keywords better advertising opportunities.  In this article, I'll present 3 basic criteria that every keyword must meet before you add it to your AdWords campaign.

 

Criteria #1. Searched In Google

This first criteria should be obvious.  If the keywords you're targeting are not searched in Google, then you're not going to generate any leads or sales from your ad campaign.  There's no harm in adding keywords that are not searched, but you shouldn't expect to get anything from them.

OK, moving on we'll assume we're now only considering keywords that have search volume.

 

Criteria #2. Searched By Your Prospects

Next, we need to make sure the keyword is in fact searched by your ideal prospect.  For example, can you imagine situations where your prospect would turn to Google to search this particular keyword?  Or is it more likely that other people besides your ideal prospect would be searching?

This is not a perfect science and it requires you to put yourself in the shoes of your prospect.  Play devil's advocate and try to think about all the other people that might be searching for your keyword.  Also, review the current ads in Google.com for your keyword to see if those ads are targeting your prospect.  If they are, then that's a good sign.

 

Criteria #3. Searched To Make a Buying Decision

Finally, consider whether the keyword is more likely searched in order to make a buying decision or to do more research.  Your keywords can easily pass the first 2 criteria, but many will fail this last test.

Let's look an example for a chiropractor.  Consider these two keyword opportunities:

1. back pain
2. San Francisco chiropractor

Both are searched in Google. Check... Both are searched by a chiropractor's ideal prospect. Check... But one of them does not pass this 3rd criteria.  Can you guess which one?

It's "back pain."  The "back pain" keyword has no intent to make a buying decision.  It's more of a research keyword.  However, just about everyone that types in "San Francisco chiropractor" is looking to make a buying decision.  See the difference?

Again, this is not a perfect science and it requires you to put yourself in the searcher's shoes.  Think about all the different reasons why someone would search for the keyword you're considering and prioritize the keywords that are more likely searched by prospects looking to make buying decisions.  This will ensure you're targeting keywords in your AdWords campaign that are more likely to drive sales.

 

The 4-Part Framework for Digital Marketing Success

As a kid, I loved puzzles.  It’s not just puzzles though.  I just love the process of discovering how all the individual pieces fit together to make something.  That’s one reason I eventually went on to study engineering in college.

Now, as an adult, I still love puzzles, but I haven’t completed a 1,000 piece jigsaw in a while.  Instead, I focus most of my time and energy these days putting together the puzzle pieces that make up digital marketing.  That’s right, digital marketing is just one big puzzle waiting to be assembled one piece at a time.

But there’s one big difference.  With marketing, you don’t have the finished picture on the box to show you where and how the different pieces will eventually fit together.  That certainly makes marketing a lot harder, doesn’t it?

Well in this article, I’m going to give you that finished picture.  I’ll walk through the proven digital marketing framework so you can see how all of the marketing options available fit together to create a successful marketing plan.

First, The Foundation

Before we dive into the framework, I need to highlight how digital marketing actually works.   If you break it all down to the individual pieces, then digital marketing follows a very basic formula:

(Revenue) = (Website Traffic) x (Conversion Rate) x (Customer Value)

In other words, revenue from digital marketing is directly proportional to how many people visit your website, how many of those people convert into customers, and how much those customers are worth to your business.

Or to put it another way, there are 3 ways to increase your revenue from digital marketing: increase your traffic, increase your conversion rate, and/or increase your customer value.

Also, before we move on it’s important to remember that your revenue will be zero if any one of those 3 variables is zero.  That’s just basic math.  It doesn’t matter if you drive millions of visitors to your website if your conversion rate is zero.  You’ll still end up with zero revenue!

Now that you understand this formula, it’s time to introduce the framework, which I call the 4 Pillars of Digital Marketing success.  These are the 4 Pillars every business must continually work to improve to compete online.

1. Website Traffic

The first Pillar is website traffic.  Obviously if you don’t get any traffic to your website, then you’re not going to be very successful with digital marketing. This is where you need to focus when you’re just getting started.

Think of website traffic like fuel.  You need a constant supply of “fuel” or else you’r marketing will come to a screeching halt.

2. Website Conversions

As I mentioned above, all the traffic in the world does nothing for your business unless you can actually convert it into leads and sales.  For established businesses that already have a steady stream of visitors, improving website conversion is likely the biggest leverage point to increase sales.

Here’s a quick example to highlight this point.  Let’s say your website gets about 1,000 visits per month and of those visitors about 5 convert into sales. That’s a 0.5% conversion rate.  What happens if you can increase your conversion rate to 1%?  You’ll double your sales with the same traffic you’re already getting to your site!  That means you would double your sales with no more investment in traffic tactics like advertising, SEO, social media, etc.

3. Customer Value

Customer value is often the X-factor in digital marketing, yet many businesses ignore it.  Again, I’ll use an example so you can see how your customer value plays a role in your marketing.

Let’s say your conversion rate is 0.5% and your average customer value is $100.  That means, on average one visitor to your website is worth $0.50. That also means you can not afford to pay more than $0.50 to drive a visitor to your website.  If you pay more than 50 cents, then you’ll lose money.

What happens if one of your competitors has the same conversion rate, but a slightly higher customer value of $150?  Well, this competitor can afford to pay $0.75 and will inevitably be able to buy more traffic than you.  Even though the competitor may have the same offer, a similar website, and the same conversion rate, they’ll dominate the market due to their higher customer value.

4. Tracking

The final Pillar is tracking.  Without proper tracking in place, then you’ll be flying blind with very little hope to improve the other 3 Pillars.

Think of tracking like the dashboard of your car.  Could you imagine driving if you didn’t have a speedometer or a fuel gauge?  That would be pretty stressful because you wouldn’t know if you needed to slow down or speed up.  Plus, you would likely run out of fuel with no warning signs.

Proper tacking will guide your marketing decisions by telling you where you need to focus.