Profitable Connections

Helping You Grow Online

Project Tag: Online Advertising

  • Does Online Advertising even work? Are the ads worth the money?

    Does Online Advertising even work? Are the ads worth the money?

    Does Online Advertising even work? Are the ads worth the money?

    Yes…..

    ?

    Should I post my collection of goofy t-shirts as proof?

    Oh, you want an explanation.

    Digital Marketing companies use many confusing words, talk rather rapidly, and move on to something shiny when asked this question, because it can be difficult to answer. Initial investments can take time to work and consumer behavior can be unpredictable.

    The world does not have room for “consumer behavior can be unpredictable” on a balance sheet, so online advertising companies have come up with numbers for success. The big number that everyone ultimately cares about is ROI or Return on Investment. This number tries to show a business how much money is made or lost on an advertising campaign.

    Return – Cost=ROI

    Digital Marketing Companies often know the cost of the advertising campaigns because it’s on their invoice. They do not typically know the return value because this happens with the sales team when they make contact with the lead.

    The best way to solve this would be to have your sales team work closely with the Digital Marketing Company, so they can compare notes and create a great report. This is not always possible and marketing companies have developed other measures of success that can be nicely packaged and sent off to the customer who should have all the other pieces to create an accurate picture of ROI.

    It sounds so easy. I just send you a long list of confusing numbers with confusing acronyms next to them, and you combine those numbers with your own long list of confusing numbers and everyone pretends they know what is going on.

    Or

    We break it down into something simple.

    Advertising costs are tied to consumer actions, because that’s what you are paying for. You pay when they see the ad, when they click on the ad, and when they interact with the ad.

    When they see your ad.

    Ad views are called Impressions by most advertising platforms. They are typically charged per thousand. On the balance sheet, companies often use the acronym CPM. The M stands for the latin word mille, which means thousand in Latin. Why are we using Latin? It’s weird but that’s how it is done.

    When they click on your ad.

    Ads that are charged with a Cost per Click or CPC are usually used to drive traffic to a page on your website. You are charged when they click on the link.

    When they interact with your ad.

    Ad interactions such as completing a sign up form, calling a phone number, or commenting are called Engagements. Cost per Engagement or CPE are the costs associated with this.

    The hope is that out of the people that have viewed, clicked on, and interacted with your ads, a group will buy your product or service. Those sales are your return on your digital advertising investment. This is why it’s a good idea to find out how your customer found you. If you don’t know this, it’s impossible know what the return is on your investment.

    If you pay $1000.00 for digital marketing, whether its CPE, CPC, or CPM, the way to figure out what that money netted in return is the same. The sales team should know how a customer found out about the company. Let’s say they tell you that five customers saw the ad and all five bought $300.00 worth of stuff. Your company made a total of $1,500.00 in sales off of a investment of $1000.00. Your ROI or return on investment is $500.00. You made 50% return.

    In reality the math is rarely this neat. Often it may take multiple campaigns to generate a return. Successful ad campaigns are often a combination of a well created ads, funding to support those ads, a product or service people want, and an effective sales team.

    Our hope is that we have demystified these numbers somewhat. Let us know if you have any questions.

  • The Apple, the Facebook, and the IDFA

    The Apple, the Facebook, and the IDFA

    Apple has made some changes lately that has rattled the Digital Marketing industry, and the news ranges from the sky is falling to Apple is protecting user privacy.

    But what did Apple do? Will it effect you? How has digital advertising changed after the policy came into effect?

    It’s been something that has not only been confusing to the public but has been confusing the marketing industry as well.

    I thought it might be helpful to clear this up a bit, so let’s start at the beginning with what Apple has done and how this decision is effecting the industry as a whole.

    Apple developed a tracking technology for all their phones and tablets called Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), which tracks users using a web beacon technique of assigning a unique identifying number so that user information can be tracked across a variety of applications.

    Web Beacons

    In Apple’s iOS 10, they provided a setting that would allow the user to disable this feature, and 20% of users went through their settings and did just that.

    With the release of Apple’s OS 14.5, on September 20, 2021, users are prompted with a box that asks if the user would like to share their information across applications to which 96% of users are saying no.

    Apple announced that any application found sharing user data without using this box to opt in will be deleted from the play store. Their policy also says that applications can’t ask users to opt in, so they can be used or to access special features.

    It’s too early to tell what long term effects this decision will have; but in the short term, Facebook and Snap, who both rely on advertising platforms, have seen their revenue decrease. Apple dominates the mobile market, so these changes will effect large numbers of Facebook’s user base, but not all of them. Facebook says that this will be terrible for small business and a lot of other things that sound like the sky is falling.

    It’s unclear how this will effect businesses that use their advertising platforms or how this will effect Facebook and Snap long term. Facebook has stated that this will limit their ability to target ads to consumers, which it will do in the short term by preventing applications from communicating with each other. This is true, but they can still target users within their own application, perhaps using AI to develop algorithms to target their expansive user base.

    Small Business’s have many options besides Facebook’s advertising platform to generate leads. Consumer demand will not change, and there are a variety of options for a business looking to generate sales leads on the internet that are not limited by Apple’s policy.

    Privacy advocates and users are siding with Apple. Apple created IDFA, so it will be interesting to see what Apple does with the service moving forward.

    For more information, there is a great article by CNBC

    https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/20/apple-ios-14point5-release-date-with-att-idfa-restrictions-confirmed-for-next-week.html

  • Email Marketing

    Email Marketing

    Online advertising covers a variety of methods of marketing communication, and an early technology still in use is Email Marketing. Marketing through email has a long and interesting history. It’s easy to do, costs very little, and produces traceable results. I could start one this afternoon.

    But,

    Before this job, I worked for an internet service provider in their tech support department. It was a fun job at times, because I like solving interesting problems. It was an awful job at times, because people were very angry about those problems. A lot of those problems came from spam. Email is one of the giant arteries of the internet from which everyone is blasted a barrage of messages. A large amount of these messages are things you want, things you don’t care about, tracking tools, and to a small degree malicious code.

    I would certainly want to be one of the messages you want, but so does every other message in your inbox, and you only have so much time to scroll past.

    So how do I become the message that sparks your interest?

    Marketing companies have been trying to answer this question for many years, and they have come up with a few answers.

    One idea is to offer opt-in advertising, by providing the customer a way of signing up for the email campaign. This is usually done with a special offers or newsletter sign up box.

    Some companies use transaction emails to up sell the customer on additional products and services. Transaction emails are messages triggered in response to a customer action such as a confirmation email for a purchase. Along with the appropriate sales information, one can include information about upcoming sales and promotions.

    So what do you think of email marketing? Is it something you feel is effective? I would love to hear your thoughts on this.