Marketing in Digital Age

Sometimes Google AdWords makes recommendations that look something like this:

This was taken from Google Places. Google’s recommendations may not be this same amount but the logic behind calculating how to get maximum value is the same. There are few ways to go about this. You can 1) ignore that recommendation and go on using your current bids, 2) trust Google and chose recommended amount, or 3) manually test suggested amounts and then go with your findings. If you chose the third option, this blog is for you.

To test Google’s suggestions you need some basic Excel skills. This is how I transferred mine into Excel:

To work with more than 3 suggestions, I used Excel to predict values using FORECAST function. Red Amount, Clicks1 and Clicks2 are forecasted predictions. Then I calculated Average clicks using Excel’s Average function and Cost per Click. This is what it looked like after forecasting:

The next best thing to do is to graph this to have a visual representation of what you’re looking at. I used a simple line graph in Excel with Average Clicks on X-axis and Cost per Clicks on y-axis.

When you look at the graph, it becomes apparent that at $1.04 cost/click the line offsets the most and the slope changes. Google’s recommendation is to invest $440 for best possible results to get an average of 427.5 click. However, this graph suggests that 135 clicks (or $140) is the tipping point. Anything over $140, with an average of 135 clicks, is a good investment and anything under it isn’t. Surely you’ll get the most bang for your money by investing more, because your cost per clicks goes down. And Google is not completely wrong in suggesting $440.

This method can be used in most cases to determine suggested values based on historical data.

We know about corporate strategy and strategic management, but what the heck is an Online Marketing Strategy? It’s part of the bigger picture, the overall marketing strategy, but it branches off to its own steps. However Online or Digital Marketing Strategy compliments corporate strategic objectives steps and Marketing Strategies. Say for example if one of corporate strategic objective is to expand in various countries, then the Marketing Strategy would be to increase brand awareness. In turn, this will lead to digital branding campaigns trying to ‘get eyeballs’ on ads across various platforms in those countries.

Digital Marketing strategies include many technical steps, which most of the time are ignored or done incorrectly. Let’s strip it down to basics and see the general concept of Online Marketing. Building a website is like building a brick and mortar location. Brick-by-brick or page-by-page you’re putting together a place, where your location will be wowed and customers would love to do business with you. Your store name or website title matter a lot, but so does your description, keywords, content and tags of the goods and services you intend to present to visitors. Brick and mortars select specific locations as one means to driving traffic to storefront, while in digital world your traffic drivers are links that are found on other sites and search engines. Therefore to be foundable you have to be search engine friendly and work continuously on backlinks. You may advertise on billboards and television, but in digital marketing you run considerably different campaigns on various search engines and social networks. You may track brick and mortar store conversion, but you have to also track digital conversions to find out the quality of your ads, site and location on search sites. Various reports and marketing research can assist brick and mortar businesses in finding their target markets and fine tune company’s focus. Digital Marketing reports, like Analytics, can also help with recognizing target markets, interests, trends and direct focus to creating better value for Online customers. If brick and mortar companies want to increase return customers, one method is to maintain a continuous relationship with customers. It is also possible to form and maintain customer relationship digitally through proper customer relationship management.

As we can see there are clear similarities between brick and mortar and digital, but the steps we take to get there vary considerably. Digital marketing has more hands-on approach, where professionals are directly involved with the website, its contents, advertisements and reports. The information that Online visitors can get about the product, goods and services is much higher than when looking at store shelves. However, a window of information that appeals to only visual stimuli does not compare to in-store brick and mortar displays and talking to a sales associates. For example, when we walk into a supermarket we immediately smell foods; we can touch our fruits and pick which ones we want; we can smell the meat behind the meat counter or marvel it while butchers cut that one favourite peace that we love. Therefore, in digital marketing we strategize on visual and logical appeals- if it looks good, makes sense, is trustworthy and valuable, and cheap then buy it.