Archive for the ‘Ads and Advertising’ Category
We really liked Avinash Kaushik’s presentation, ‘Top 5 Things Marketers Can Do Now’. Here’s a little summary that we broke down into smaller steps.
‘You cannot improve one thing by 1000% but you can improve 1000 little things by 1%’ – Jan Carlzon
1. Think: Increase profit – Reduce costs – Increase satisfaction and loyalty.
2. Traffic sources: In Google Analytics, look at the pie graph that shows where your traffic comes from. This will tell you areas that you could focus on. E.g. Very small piece of pie for ‘other’ sources means perhaps you can improve your newsletters as a source of more traffic.
3. Landing page optimization: Focus on only one page on your website out of the hundreds you may have. Choose your main conversion page or high impact pages. Improve this page using Google Website Optimizer to conduct A/B testing of ad copy, images etc.
4. Bounce rates: Use Google Analytics to see your bounce rate. A 25% bounce rate is good. A 50% bounce rate and you should freak out; it is bad except for blogs (not including new acquisitions). Ask yourself why customers are leaving on these pages. Can they be better directed to other pages?
5. Website content: Deliver value to your customer. Put the content of your website first (before advertising space). Solve customer problems first. Make your website what they were looking for.
6. Depth of visit: Use Google Analytics to find your average number of page views. Three pages or more means that they are engaging with your web site. Then search these people, where they come from and the keywords they use to find you.
7. Organic search versus paid search: Analyze the difference. How is each page doing?
8. Search volume: Use Google Analytics to search volume of a keyword over the course of one year. Compare this keyword or your brand (if you are large enough) to the category or industry average.
9. Websites viewed by your demographic: Use Google Ad Planner to find the websites that people visit most often anywhere on the web based on the demographic information that you put into the tool. You will find websites to display your ads and the precise audience you seek.
Here is a summary of the most interesting knowledge shared at the conference, Les Affaires – Adapt Your Marketing Strategy In Times Of Crisis held in Montreal on 12 March 2009.
Changes in Consumer Behavior Resulting From Economic Crisis
The US housing bubble of 2008, which propelled the current global financial crisis, is largely due to consumer behavior. Similar to the Great Depression of the 1930s where a run on banks perpetuated a downward financial spiral, it is consumer behavior again that is dictating the crisis of 2008.
Consumer behavior towards budgeting, debt and spending has changed in recent decades. Ever higher amounts of personal debt are more acceptable. According to Jacques Nantel, Professor Secretary General of Marketing at the University of Montreal, real household income has not increased in the last ten years. However, retail sales rose almost 180%, along with personal debt, from less than 50% of disposable income to more than 120%. It is this attitude towards personal debt that is accountable for the current economic situation, rather than the sub-prime mortgage market specifically.
As a consequence of the economic crisis, there are foreseeable adjustments consumers will make to their behavior. A reduction in credit is the foremost concern for consumers. Either their bank will press them to pay on loans, or consumers will voluntarily seek to reduce their credit card bills or consolidate all their debts into a lower interest loan.
That being said, consumers want to limit further debts and have developed distrust towards credit terms on sale items. Selling products with financing credit terms and various credit payment options are no longer the deal-closers they used to be. Instead, people are looking for quality and durability rather than the greatest quantity for the cheapest price. Consumers are rediscovering the virtues of a household budget and doing the math on saving for an item rather than paying for it on credit.
What this means for marketing
Just as the post-war generation’s spending habits were strongly shaped by war conditions, adjustments in consumer behavior are already taking place in those living through this crisis. Marketers require new strategies for success with these customers.
Firstly, marketing budgets are affected. Naturally, businesses are keen to cut costs and apply greater pressure on marketing teams for return on investment evidence. Strategic marketers with a strong brand name and lots of cash could use this time to fill in the recently vacated publicity landscape with their ads at discount media prices. However, launching a new brand might prove difficult, unless it’s a budget brand – and, as mentioned above, household budgeting is the new black.
This economic climate is the ideal time for marketers to explore online marketing, pay per click and social media avenues for advertising campaigns. Not only do you receive immediate and transparent results of return on investment, positive or negative, you also amass a wealth of demographic and geographic data to support future campaigns and your bid for a larger budget. It is the ability to target, in a very focused fashion, groups of consumers on the internet which promises to make internet marketing such a success. Additionally, email newsletters for retention campaigns can be specifically targeted towards your consumer demographics. Note here, it is imperative to avoid anything resembling spam, keeping in mind consumers’ heightened sense of distrust.
Consumers prefer to make purchases from someone they trust, who understands their individual needs. Online advertising allows you to focus on specific demographics and modify your advertising adcopy and images immediately to suit the times. Now is the perfect time to empathize with your consumer’s financial situation. Use the internet to market directly to your consumers and change your sales messaging to suit their new purchasing behaviors.
We would like to share some of our first and oldest findings about online advertising. Althought we still use many different type of banners with our clients there is one type we find very effective: Advance links ads. These are the ads you can engage with by starting a selection process right within the ad.
Advanced Links ads can be considered the ancestors of the ever more popular and richer widgets. Even if their functionalies are usually very limited (using 2 or 3 pull downs with a choice of answers), they provide strong engagement.
We have tested advanced links with many advertisers in different industries over many years and they brought every time a huge click-through (CTR) lift over tradional banner. An added benefit is also a lift in landing page conversions (CR).
The data below is statistically significant (+99%) and represent averages for a large spectrum of advertisers. Quick note: these results are in the same order of magnitude at the individual advertiser level.
Lift 1: Clickthrough (CTR%)
Who doesn’t want a 103% CTR lift?
Obviously many advertisers. Why does not more advertiser test advanced links ads and compare them to their banner? We often hear it’s a question of being able to have the ad’s selection of choices integrated or linked to the relevant landing page but this is not something that hard to do. A developper will only require a couple of hours to provide a potentially huge impact on your bottom line.
Some may say having such a lift may also bring a lower conversion rate. Our findings show it’s not the case…
Lift 2: Conversions (CR%)
Who doesn’t want a 2% conversion lift? Similar question, similar answer.
Getting people more engaged right at the beginning of their experience is clearly a great advantage as it also bring an increase in conversions.
This can be explained in 2 ways:
- Engagement: Having people more engaged early on make them more engaged later on too.
- Less steps: Using advanced links in ads let people start their discovery process earlier and saves steps later on. Whether it’s a sale or a lead form, letting people choose early what they want save them steps later on. Less steps = higher conversions.
Lets take the example of someone looking for a specific financial service product. If that person is looking to receive information about a financial service you can present them an advance link ad with a first pull down with a choice of different financial services, a 2nd pull down for the stage they are in their buying process and a 3rd one for, lets say, their family income.
The combination of answers gives you many actionable information to decided which landing page is better for them: the product, buying stage and family income choices let you present them automatically the most relevant landing page. The same objective is persued when you tie your landing pages to different PPC campaigns’ ads: you don’t send all you PPC clicks to the same page. Using advanced links ads provide you do the same advantage with banners and buttons.
Total lift 107%. Advanced links can be applied to almost any advertisers, products or services. Simply think about the choices a visitor needs to make on your site in order to complete your form or its purchase. Is there ways you can simplify your advertised visitors life (and yours) by engaging visitors early on with advance links ads? Almost anyone should be able to do this.
You may ask why we’re showing higher than average click-through and conversions % in the results above. This is accomplished with segmention and targeting. Presenting the right ad to the right person can go a long way. More on this in an upcoming post.
You may wonder if there are also ways to see an even bigger conversions lift from advance links (or also any other ads). There is; carry your ads’ scent to your landing pages. This will also be the subject of another post in the coming weeks.
There is a case to be made to use advance links ads in a CPM or CPA advertising model. You’re already paying for the impressions so getting highers CTR directly improve your ROI. But using these ads on advertising networks with in PPC model can be tricky if you did not improve your landing pages; you’ll see a CTR lift, higher cost but not necessarely a lift in conversions. If you are in the later case we advise you to proceed carefully.
