ThinkAccelerator Marketing
We have had many conversations with business owners who are
1. overwhelmed with the technicalities of online marketing that they think it’s not for their traditional business
2. frustrated that their website is not producing results and wondering how to revamp
3. not seeing results from their online marketing efforts and think that online marketing doesn’t work
I would like to share some of the insights on the common mistakes and causes of businesses who are jumping the gun in revamping their online presence and doubting the effectiveness of their new media marketing.
Trap #1
“I think our website looks dated and the last designer didn’t do a good job. We need to revamp it with better look and feel”. And invariably, the result is not much improvement. Why?
Launching into a redesign of your site blindly without knowing how to meaure the effects on conversion is a waste of time and money.
We actually had a customer that we measured their site using heatmaps and conversion tracking to see where the hotspots were and it turned up a surprise for them that a particular area that they had spent so much time to design did not produce any clicks. It looked good to them but did not produce any result. And they didn’t know because they didn’t know how to measure. We helped them redesign their site based on the tracking we have done and measured where the hot areas were and it increased traction in 1 month of launch.
Trap #2
Abandoning online advertising (Pay Per Click or Placement Ads) because it is getting too expensive and jumping onto the seemingly ‘free’ Search Engine Optimization promise.
You have just been outmarketed and jumping into the fire.
Many companies are suckered into advertisements of “Get Free Traffic by SEO’ing Your Site to first page” . Some firms promising the heavens and that they can get your keywords to number in x months. SEO is a longer process and it doesn’t guarantee sales. Many businesses make that mistake thinking SEO (for first page on their keywords) is the end game. It’s not.
Key questions we ask before we even do SEO :
- What keywords do you know you have to optimize for ?
- Are they the ones bringing you the business?
- Are you tracking conversion from the beginning of the conversation i.e ad copy , keyword phrase to landing page to offer and conversion?
We have seen companies who paid thousands of dollars to advertise a month but can’t tell which keyword brings them the sale. All they know is traffic has gone up and they are getting more sales but over time , it tapers off as competitors come in. Most don’t know how to track the conversion down to the entire chain of events and hence are unable to dump the keywords or sources that aren’t producing and move their budget to areas that are making sales.
Their online advertising managers only manage the budget and look at increase in traffic and that their ads appear on first page! Knowing how to track, what tools to use and what questions to ask makes the difference. If you have no idea of how to read those reports or have a feeling you aren’t getting the right interpretation on your data, schedule a call with us. A trained eye of an experienced specialist can see things that may be missed easily by a generalist.
Trap #3
“Let’s design a bunch of variations of design tests and see what sticks.”
And track wrong goals that ignore conversion outside of the click or just measuring clicks on ads.
Our view is profit per visitor is what we are after. Knowing how to combine multiple disciplines from copywriting, design, market research , buyer psychology to testing methodologies, online ad technology management makes a huge difference in being able to properly analyze and improve a marketing channel and marketing funnel. It’s not a one dimensional game where one skill or one tool does the trick.
If you are facing the above issues, take a step back and regroup your data. Then give us a call just to have another pair of eyes to look through and work with you on identifying gaps that you might have missed.