Book Review

You Should Test That!
Chris Goward
John Wiley and Sons, 2013

This is an excellent book that reminds us how important testing is to our marketing campaigns.  Goward stresses how testing should be considered a necessary element of every marketing campaign.

Based on sound digital marketing practices, the author provide us tactical recommendations and best practices to best utilize your available resources for testing and how to avoid possible downfalls.

Highly recommended as a guide to developing and running your testing efforts as part of your digital marketing strategy.

Tim presented to IEDE Chile Global Business Immersion Program in Irvine California on July 25.  This course was presented at the invitation of the University of California at Irvine Extension’s Corporate Training department. The course was part of a new Custom Design Program for a group of business executive students from Chile. The 2.5 hour course content presented was: Social Media Marketing

The Ever-evolving World of Web Marketing

In the ever-evolving world of business and marketing, I find this statement useful: 

You can't really do marketing without knowing web marketing, you can't really know Web marketing without knowing social media, and now you have to plan for mobile marketing.

Mobile is the new "normal".

Internet Marketing Metrics

Some Useful Internet Marketing Metrics:

Bounce Rate

Represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and "bounce" (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site.

A bounce occurs when a web site visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs. There is no industry standard minimum or maximum time by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occur. Rather, this is determined by the session timeout of the analytics tracking software.

Calculation: Bounce Rate = Total number of visitors viewing one page only / Total entries to page
Bounce rates can be used to help determine the effectiveness or performance of an entry page. An entry page with a low bounce rate means that the page effectively causes visitors to view more pages and continue on deeper into the web site.

As a rule of thumb, a 50 percent bounce rate is average. If you surpass 60 percent, you should be concerned. If you're in excess of 80 percent, you've got a major problem.
Note: Interpretation of the bounce rate measure should be relevant to a website's business objectives and definitions of conversion, as having a high bounce rate is not always a sign of poor performance. On sites where an objective can be met without viewing more than one page, the bounce rate would not be as meaningful for determining conversion success.

While site-wide bounce rate can be a useful metric for sites with well-defined conversion steps requiring multiple page views, it may be of questionable value for sites where visitors are likely to find what they are looking for on the entry page (for example, reference sites such as online dictionaries or news sites where a visitor is interested in seeking the definition of a single term or reading a single posted article respectively.)

Don ‘t confuse this with page “stickiness” (the duration at which a visitor stays on apage before moving on). If a visitor stays on a page for a short time, and then moves to another related page on your site (such as from a landing page to a “Buy Now” page), that is a good thing: it means the page is performing it’s function quite effectively. If however, a visitor stays on a page for just a few seconds, and then presses the “Back” button, that is a sign of a poorly constructed page or ineffective campaign.

ROI
Return on Investment is the ratio of money gained or lost on a marketing activity relative to the amount of money invested. You must state ROI in terms of profit, not revenue.

Calculattion:  ROI = (Gross Margin – Marketing Investment / Marketing Investment) x 100

     Example

          Campaign #1

          Campaign cost: $1,000

          Revenue derived from campaign: $1,200

          ROI = (1,200 - 1,000 / 1,000) x 100

          ROI = .20 x 100

          ROI = 20%

The goal is to effectively prioritize your marketing investments so that the finite budget you have to work with is directed toward generating the greatest return. Applying the marketing ROI process can create a distinct competitive advantage, allowing you to make smarter decisions on whom to target, how to reach them, and how much to invest. The more the competition wastes their marketing budget on unprofitable efforts, the less share of the market they can earn.

Initial prerequisite: A company must have system(s) in-place in the infrastructure to track sales back through the organization to the source of leads. This goes hand-in-hand with the topic of metrics.

ROI is used to determine if the investment meets the desired return on investment. If there are competing marketing campaigns, the one with the greatest ROI will win the funding in a strict financial analysis.

Note: Gross Margin is only a measurement of operational efficiency of a company.

Gross Margin = (Revenue – Cost / Revenue) x 100

     Example:

          $1,200 – $200 = $1,000

          $1,000 / $1,200 = .833

          .833 x 100 = 83.3%

ROAS
Return On Advertising Spending and represents the dollars earned per dollars spent on the corresponding advertising. To determine ROAS, divide revenue derived from the ad source by the cost of that ad source. Values less than one indicate that less revenue is generated than is spent on the advertising.

Calcualted by: Ad Revenue / Cost of the Ad

Good for quick comparisons of ad campaigns.

     Example

          Ad Campaign #1

               Ad cost: $200

               Revenue derived from ad: $350

                    ROAS= 350 / 200

                    ROAS =1.75

          Ad Campaign #2

               Ad cost: $200

               Revenue derived from ad: $450

                    ROAS= 450 / 200

                    ROAS =2.25

          Conclusion, you would choose Campaign #2 over Campaign #1



Great blog post on social media analytics:

http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83454a6d169e2014e8c47bf32970d

Would like to share a good article on optimizing social media for small businesses: http://www.wilsonweb.com/newmedia/ross-social-media-optimizations.htm

Webinar: Planning Your Social Media Strategy

Presenting Webinar for UCI Extension: Planning Your Social Media Strategy, Sept 7. Details to follow.