The Shocking Truth Behind Online Marketing

Discover what your Web Developers, SEO and SEM experts don’t want you to know and how you can keep them honest, dramatically improve results for your business by finding clients and making sales online!

There’s a misconception commonly held by the less technical among us that Internet marketing is somehow easier than traditional marketing and that anyone can do a few short courses in digital marketing, SEM, social media or Facebook advertising and be successful. Intuitively it makes sense: no paper needs be printed, billboards erected, nor commercials filmed. Placing ads on Google or Facebook is point-and-click easy, and when someone searches for whatever you’re selling, they should easily be able to find you.

In the new economy, everyone is just a click away from their customers. I wish it were that easy.

The old ways of thinking are DEAD!

In the past when you wanted to get your business online you did the following:

1. Find a website developer to build you a “Professional looking” wiz bang website with all the technical bells and whistles, sliding banners, audio, video, embedded flash or HTML 5 and on and on… or perhaps you engaged a traditional Marketing company who used a web designer to build your site and it looked fantastic, everyone was very happy with your slick looking expensive website... “It looks so good how can it not generate leads and make you money!”
2. Then you realised that you have your brand-new website (read online banner ad) up… but you have no traffic. So, you engage an SEO expert to help you with your Google rankings so you can get some “targeted” traffic to your site. you choose some keywords you believe your customers are using and will drive traffic or your SEO guru goes away and does some “Keyword research” to assist you with search terms that may or may not be effective for your target market. They make some tweaks to optimise your site and then go away to do some “offsite SEO and maintenance” and away you go…
3. If steps one and two still did not produce results then it’s on to the Google PPC freight train! It’s just like a tap, you turn it on and you get sales, want more sales then just spend more money. At least that’s how the PPC gurus sold you the solution!

While this system did work to a certain extent back then... it certainly does not today!

Free Traffic is King, No.1 Position on Google is the holy grail!... or is it?

Pop quiz: how many websites appear in the number one spot for any given search term?

Trick question. JUST ONE!

Can you guess how big the advantage is? Number one gets 83% more clicks than #2 and nearly 200% more clicks than #3. Because ecommerce is a $1,000,000,000,000 market (that’s one trillion) driven mostly by search engines, it should be no surprise that search engine marketing (SEM) is the most sophisticated and competitive form of marketing on planet earth. Considering that Google owns 66.7% of search traffic, the focus narrows to reveal that the big G is matter-of-factly the most powerful company that has ever existed, its algorithms being the sole arbiter of a massive chunk of the world’s economy.

Given the power they yield, Google does a tremendously laudable job of being fair. They have made a science out of identifying the best content – be it journalism, how-to videos, or fantastic prices on goods and services – and pushing it to the top. The problem is that small businesses can rarely offer better content – be it journalism, how-to videos, or fantastic prices on goods and services – than their bigger competitors.

Up unit 2013 it was possible for small companies – through difficult but effective search engine optimization (SEO) tactics – to lay claim to certain keywords and stake out territory in the search engine results pages. This allowed small retailers and content providers to grow in the face of daunting monopolistic competition. My former employer built a very successful business in a fiercely competitive market this way. Now, traditional SEO is basically dead, which means the one avenue through which the little guys could gain ground on the giants has vanished.

Google AdWords or Pay-per-Click advertising (PPC) was the obvious alternative, but now that too is insanely competitive. The nature of it is that virtually no highly-trafficked keywords can be targeted at anything better than break-even. It’s also maddeningly difficult to determine if your PPC campaign is going to be profitable or not. That means that there’s not much small businesses can do to get ahead that’s not hugely expensive and risky. Build a community around your Facebook page? Maybe if you sell skateboards, but not if you sell cubicles. Bet the farm making YouTube videos to turn your website into a community hub just to divert some of the traffic to your retail business? That might work, but probably not, and you won’t know until you try. If it doesn’t work, you’d better have deep pockets, or you might not survive to try again.

It seems almost impossible, doesn’t it? The good news is that it’s not! But you must change your way of thinking about Online Marketing, educate yourself on the strategies that work TODAY! And stay current because what works TODAY may not work TOMORROW!

There is no longer a magic bullet for online success regardless of what the latest Online Marketing Gurus are selling.

Is Online or Digital Marketing Effective Today?

Digital marketing is an ever-evolving world of trends, viral videos, SEO, and social media. What was the in-thing yesterday may be the worst way to spend your marketing dollars today. And since nobody likes to waste their valuable budget, it’s crucial that you stay up on these developments.

So what’s the best way to do this? By studying what other people are doing to get results and emulating it to the best of your abilities (without outright stealing their ideas, of course). To help you out, I have gathered eight of the most fascinating, and most recent digital marketing statistics—and I am even going to tell you why they matter to your digital marketing strategy.

1.        Mobile advertising budgets will triple by 2018.

Surprisingly, only 3.2% of digital marketing funds are going towards mobile advertising, but this is expected to rise to over 9% in the next few years. You probably already know the importance of mobile, so why not up your budget now and get ahead of the curve?

2.        The Acorns app received 20% of its new users through Twitter’s promoted tweets.

While that stat is impressive on its own, it’s even more noteworthy that these downloads only cost the investing app four bucks each, while most companies in the same industry are paying more than double for a new client. Makes you want to give Twitter’s ads a try, huh?

3.        Instagram’s revenue is going to explode to $5.8 billion by 2020.

What is it now? A mere $700 million. That’s some crazy growth if you ask us, so you better go sign up for an Instagram account ASAP if you don’t have one already (but we suggest you finish this article first). It’s always better to be ahead of the digital marketing curve than behind it.

4.        Nike has grown their Instagram following by over 600%.

So how did they do it? Well, Nike realized that videos have a huge viral potential if done correctly, and it has paid off. They went from 12 million followers in February of 2014 to over 73.4 million today. The lesson here? Consider creating some catchy videos and share them on your social media accounts, as part of your current digital marketing campaign. Easy enough, right?

5.        More than half of digital marketing firms are investing in native advertising.

While native advertising used to be considered unethical (disguising an advertisement to look like an article), with the introduction of other forms of native advertising, like search advertising or Facebook’s boosted posts, this digital marketing format seems to be taking off—58% of marketers have used it this year. It’s getting results, so you might want to give it a shot.

6.        Twenty percent of Google clicks for retailers were from the Product Listing Ads.

This is straightforward: If you are selling a product, you need to strongly consider starting a Product Listing Ads campaign. Or like most online businesses you could always move to the more popular Product Ads on Facebook (better yet, do both!).

7.        Eighty-three percent of high-income households made online purchases this year.

And they didn’t just buy toilet paper and clothing. MediaPost reports that these quarter-of-a-millionaires were shopping for high-ends goods, like Swedish furniture and designer accessories on Facebook. So if the big spenders are your target market, you better be spending a substantial portion of your digital marketing dollars on social media, focusing on your lead capture / follow up systems.

8.        By 2018, companies will almost double the amount they spend on analytics.

According to Adweek, companies are only spending 6.4% of their digital marketing budgets on analytics and reporting, but the figure is predicted to go up to over 12%. Apparently, they are beginning to understand the importance of studying their results, and you should too, but you don’t need to wait to do it.

It’s plain to see that online marketing has gone way past just SEO and Google PPC and to be successful online you need a cohesive Digital Marketing Strategy and Plan in place that is aligned with your business goals. If not, you will get left behind in the chaos and confusion that has been created by all the conflicting information out there.

What is a Digital Marketing Strategy and why is it so important TODAY?

Like most components of a successful business, digital marketing requires some sort of cohesive, holistic strategy and a plan. Your Digital Marketing Strategy (DMS) is your written plan that details when and how you will use the many available online marketing channels and resources to grow your sales or meet other realistic business objectives. Your DMS will also need to outline very clearly defined and easily MEASURABLE performance indicators (KPI’s) so that you know if your strategy is working or not.

With a well-prepared digital marketing strategy and plan, you will have a controlled and manageable execution method of your online marketing initiatives and a path to capitalize on the available online resources. Without a solid digital marketing strategy, you will likely waste time and money chasing trends that never really contribute to your business in a meaningful way. So it is essential for you, if you want to be successful, that you put a lot of thought into this.

Ask yourself what you want your digital future to look like? What scale of success do you want? What’s your overall goal for your business? Make sure that you align your DMS with your business goals and outcomes. There are going to be risks involved, so managing your strategy is going to identify and elevate a number of these risks.

But why not just learn as you go, learn from your mistakes and move on? Well because this method can severely harm your brand, your reputation and it’s just wasteful in relation to your resources.

One important aspect of a strategy that people often neglect is identifying their market share. Digital marketing is continuously growing, and if you haven’t identified your competition and your target market, and where they “hang out” then you’re not going to be aware of how to structure your communications or marketing activities.

You don’t need to be an online or digital marketing expert to put your digital marketing strategy in place, all the technical / Strategic work can be and should be outsourced to a professional but you do need to understand and have clearly defined business goals and more importantly a clearly defined niche target market.

If you don’t have a digital marketing strategy your competitor probably does, leading to sever loss of control on your part. Remember that a digital marketing strategy is the road that leads you to your goals. This is what is going to allow you to be successful in the online space.

The DMS Framework:

What Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) Should you be Tracking?

Digital marketing is one of the most popular ways for businesses to increase sales. In fact, spending on digital marketing is projected to increase by anywhere from 12-15 percent over the next 12 months.

What’s surprising about this number is that according to recent research, many businesses have a hard time measuring the results of their digital marketing campaigns. A third of marketers don’t know which digital marketing efforts have the best revenue impact, and some businesses don’t even track metrics that give this information.

To make sure you are spending your digital marketing budget in a way that will help you increase sales, here are the top digital marketing KPIs you should be tracking, and information on how they help inform your strategy.

1.                  MONTHLY NEW LEADS/PROSPECTS

Every marketer likes to keep track of the number of monthly new leads. In a way, this marketing metric is the principal indicator of the marketing team’s work performance.

However, the monthly new leads KPI should be taken with a grain of salt.

Not all leads are of high quality and turn into customers. That’s why it is necessary to accompany the monthly new leads KPI with additional metrics that display the number of high-quality leads.

2.                  QUALIFIED LEADS PER MONTH

Monitoring the number of monthly qualified leads helps to evaluate whether your marketing endeavours are well-targeted and attract the right audience.

Here are three steps of lead qualification that you should follow:

• Marketing qualified leads (MQL) – this category includes all the leads that the marketing team considers worthy of the sales team’s time.
• Sales-accepted leads (SAL) – prospective leads that have been submitted by the marketing team and accepted by the sales team.
• Sales qualified leads (SQL) – leads that have the potential of becoming paying customers. The sales team will commit to contacting the leads in this category and will devote more time to converting them to clients.

Use a pipeline management tool to get a quick overview of your marketing and sales funnels and manage your leads in a more organized way.

3.                  MONTHLY LEAD-TO-CUSTOMER CONVERSIONS

There is no use of attracting new leads if they won’t turn into customers. So make sure to track the lead-to-customer conversion rate with great care.

The monthly lead-to-customer marketing KPI can answer these three questions:

• How well-targeted are your leads? – a low lead-to-client conversion rate indicates that you should step up your lead targeting game
• Are your value propositions and sales slogans aligned with your actual product? – if you catch new leads with false promises, they will soon realize it and walk away
•  Is your sales process efficient? – if you attract many highly targeted leads but fail to convert them to customers, it might be time to review your sales process

Here’s a graph by Marketo that shows the average conversion rates for various marketing channels:

Did you notice that the two highest-converting channels were the ones based on trust? Take it as a hint to optimize your marketing activities accordingly (prefer long-term commitment to short-term gains).

The cost-per-lead is also an important sales KPI as it helps to evaluate your sales team’s performance.

4.                  COST PER QUALIFIED LEAD

In addition to measuring your average cost-per-lead, step up your game and evaluate the effectiveness of your lead acquisition by monitoring the resources spent on attracting qualified leads.

Cost per qualified lead can be a considerably higher sum than the regular cost-per-lead.

You can lower the expenses by allocating your marketing resources to highly targeted campaigns instead of fishing in the waters unknown.

Here’s an interesting fact: B2B companies have a significantly higher cost per lead ($43) in comparison to B2C companies ($15).

By comparing the cost-per-lead to the cost-per-conversion (CPC) metric, you can evaluate whether various marketing activities pay off the effort, time, and resources spent to attract new leads.

5.                  COST PER CONVERSION (CPC)

This marketing KPI indicates how much it costs to acquire a new customer. To calculate the CPC, sum up all the monthly marketing-related expenses and divide it by the number of monthly new leads.

Note that your lead-to-customer conversion time might be longer than one month. If this is the case, you should track your CPC with a 2-month time gap.

Compare your cost-per-lead with the customer average lifetime value to see whether your marketing activities are justified.

If your CPC is higher than the average lifetime value of a client, you’re losing money instead of increasing revenue.

To evaluate the effectiveness of marketing channels, calculate the monthly cost of time and resources spent on a lead acquisition source, i.e. AdWords campaigns, blog content, social media management, etc.

6.                  CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE

Every marketer should be aware of their customer lifetime value. This marketing metric is crucial when it comes to adjusting campaigns and allocating resources to various marketing channels.

Measure your customer lifetime value month-over-month to see whether the average deal size and the customer lifetime stay the same or increase/decrease.

7.                  MONTHLY WEBSITE TRAFFIC

In addition to all website traffic, monitor the number of visits to various landing page categories such as your homepage, product pages, pricing page, blog, landing pages, etc.

The easiest way to monitor your monthly website traffic is by using Google Analytics. Create a dashboard to get a quick overview of month-over-month website data.

You should also measure the traffic from search engines to see whether the organic search is bringing new visitors to your site. Use this marketing KPI as an indicator of your website’s SEO-performance.

8.                  URLS RECEIVING ORGANIC VISITS

The more targeted keywords you have, the more visits you’ll receive.

In fact, it is not THAT simple. You need your keywords to rank in the top 10 of SERPs (search engine response pages. Position #1 on SERP gives you the average click-through-rate of 32.5%, rank #11 results in a 1.0% CTR.

Check the number of URLs with organic search traffic and use it as an indicator of your SEO performance. Here’s what a search traffic report looks like in Moz:

9.                  BLOG ENGAGEMENT RATE

With content marketing becoming increasingly popular, almost every company runs a blog, hosts webinars or publishes e-books.

As you publish articles month over month, you should be aware of the rate of engagement between your blog posts and your audience.

The engagement rate indicates how many people actively engage with your posts (via sharing and liking them).

By using tools such as BuzzSumo (they also have a super helpful browser extension), you can keep track of all the social media shares a specific content page has received.

Use the blog engagement rate as an indicator of your content marketing performance. But don’t forget that attracting qualified leads is just as important as engaging with different audiences.

10.              RETENTION RATE AND ATTRITION RATE

Behind these complex terms hides a pretty straightforward question: how good are you at keeping your customers happy and committed?

The retention rate marketing KPI shows the number of customers who keep using your product over a long time period and make repeat purchases.

To understand the average retention rates of various applications, see this graph by Flurry.

The attrition rate, also called churn, shows the percentage of customers stop buying your products or services.

A high churn rate might indicate poor user experience and bad customer service, leading to bitter memories of your brand and products. Make sure to keep your attrition rate high and churn rate low!

The Wrap Up

Digital marketing is one of the most popular and effective ways to increase sales, but only if you have a clearly defined and documented Digital Marketing Strategy and are paying attention to the science of it. When looking to increase your sales, make sure you are tracking the digital marketing KPIs above, and then using the information to make smarter marketing decisions. If you do, you’ll find you’re able to more effectively use your marketing budget to increase sales.

Now, you may be wondering about how you can develop a bullet proof digital marketing strategy for your business; one that will increase your website traffic and conversions with smarter usage of social media, SEO and paid online advertising?

Or maybe your just curious about how a digital marketing strategy and plan could help your organization reach its marketing goals?

Contact me today on [email protected] or go to www.fitnessmarketingaustralia.com for a FREE 1-hour Digital Marketing Strategy Session which includes a detailed report of your current online and social media foot print complete with recommendations on how to move forward.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Wishing you online success