We continue to hear from clients puzzled by the lack of sales generated by their website. What they don’t understand is that having a great site simply isn’t enough these days. With more than one billion websites on the internet, competition is fierce in almost every imaginable category. That means that a great website is a must, but only the first step in an effective marketing plan. That brings us to the #6 killers of business – not doing enough advertising.
Internet advertising has a simple process:
- set your goals
- create an advertising plan
- implement the plan
- revise the plan until the goal is met
- if results drop, change tactics
- if results exceed capacity, expand capacity or drop advertising by 10%
Your plan should include Search Engine Optimization (SEO); Search Engine Marketing (SEM); and for most businesses, Social Media Marketing (SMM). In a few rare instances, internet advertising should be supplemented with more traditional formats, such as newspaper ads, but be sure to set these up so the benefits can be measured.
In days of old, formulas for determining an appropriate ad budget ranged from 50% of expected revenue for start-ups in a highly competitive industry, to 2% for well-known and profitable brands. With internet advertising, we prefer to use a different approach. What is a customer worth to you over their lifetime? So what is it worth to convert one of those customers – 10%? 50%?
Once you’ve determined your budget for internet advertising, it really is best to leave the implementation to a professional team (like ours ☺). We have in place and people dedicated to monitoring results. That allows us to tweak up the ads to get progressively better results over time, reducing the amount you need to spend.
Wondering if you’re doing enough advertising? Give Nick a call at 604-556-0211 for a free evaluation.
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