Are you getting a good return on your marketing investment (ROMI)? It turns out that a lot of clients come to us and they just ... don’t know! Their marketing strategy has been, basically, the “hope” strategy ... they do some kind of marketing and hope it makes a difference. Very few businesses we know make a habit of knowing what value their marketing brings them.

What CAN online marketing do for you?

Online marketing can help improve awareness, leads, and sales. You can track the first two with statistics, and the third with cold, hard money. Here’s a quick summary of each one:

Awareness

Many of our campaigns begin with working to increase the awareness of our clients’ businesses. We do that by making sure their websites are properly coded and optimized, that the right keywords are in the right places, that their social media presence is both abundant and engaging, and that they’re well connected to other relevant places on the internet. We measure awareness by getting a baseline, then looking for improvements in things like:

1. Number of visitors to their website;
2. Number of comments on their blog; and
3. Number of followers, likes and share on their social media.

You should see a notable increase in these metrics after a month or two, and steady improvements thereafter. Measure the value of awareness by determining the value of a lead and calculating how much awareness translates into how many leads. At the same time, keep in mind that sometimes awareness is valuable in and of itself ... we have clients who simply want to build awareness of their business or of some new feature or aspect, and the immediate ROMI is less important. The key is understanding specifically what your needs are.

Leads

“Leads” means contact information for real people who interacted with your business online. The more information you have about them, the better. It’s one thing to know that they visited your website and sent an info request, it’s another (and much better) thing to know that they downloaded your spec sheet on Antique French Widgets and specifically asked about bulk orders in their email to you. What kinds of leads can you expect to develop with your online presence? Here are a few:

1. Calls or emails from your online “Contact Us” page;
2. Incentive downloads (like coupons or spec sheets);
3. Requests for proposals; and
4. Questions, survey responses, and frequent commenters on your social media.

An important key to winning with leads is to make sure you monitor your platforms so you know when leads are coming in, and making sure you actually follow up on them. You’d be stunned at how many clients we meet who have untapped leads (some have a few, some have many) sitting in their in-box or CRM platforms!

Measure the increase in your leads by setting a baseline before any new online campaigns and watching your stats in the following months. This is probably an oversimplification, but determine the value of a lead, multiply it by the number of new leads, and subtract what you spent on the campaign to understand your gross ROMI.

Sales

Sales is the holy grail for determining ROMI. It’s easiest to calculate for businesses that actually sell online, but it can be done for virtually any businesses with the right effort from those who actually field calls or fulfill orders. To point out the obvious, here are some ways to make sure you know when sales were generated online:

1. Actual online sales if you have a virtual shopping cart system;
2. Use of an online coupon or offer code when customers buy from you;
3. Customers who say “I saw you online”; and
4. Customers who buy a product or service only available on a specific online web page of yours.

The calculation can break down when salespeople don’t ask where leads come from, or fail to keep a careful record. That’s why some kind of offer code or unique online offer is helpful ... you can go back and review your sales data to see how many customers claimed that offer during your campaign.  

Measure the increase in your sales by setting a baseline before your online campaigns and tracking sales. Subtracting the cost of your marketing campaign from your gross sales will be helpful, but to truly understand the value of your campaign, you’ll want to also deduct internal costs that are unique to the campaign, like extra staff time, stocking costs, etc., and also consider whether there is any incidental awareness boost you’re getting from the campaign in addition to actual sales.

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Online Marketing in Ann Arbor, MI: Create a Strategy You Can Believe In!

There is more opportunity out there online than at any time in history, but capturing it requires clear thinking, a concrete plan, and good follow through. Does your business have what it takes to continually improve?

We’d love to hear what’s going on in your business. Please share your success stories or your challenges with us!

Online Marketing Ann Arbor, MI: SEO Ann Arbor, A Business You Can Trust!

We do SEO every day, and we’re pretty good at it. Our clients’ websites get to page one of Google, either quickly or over a reasonable period of time. Because we work with SEO every day, we know what to look for, and we have efficient ways of doing it. We’re also local, so if you have questions or concerns you can sit across the desk from us or call us on the phone (in the same time zone!) and we’ll make sure your questions are answered.

If you’re considering revitalizing your strategy for online marketing for your Ann Arbor business, call us at 877-815-6974 to arrange a visit. If you’re more comfortable with email, you can reach us at info@michiganseogroup.com or just contact us here. We’d love to start you on your journey to a robust online presence and success on the Internet.