Analysis – Advertising Avenue

The Importance of Measuring Marketing Results and Return on Investment

Nancy M. Hernandez — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 15:17:48 +0000

Marketing Results and Return on Investment (ROI)

The goal of any organization should be to earn and/or increase revenue. By including ways to measure short-term objectives and return on investments, companies can improve the chances of achieving those goals. Results can be used by leaders to guide the decision-making process. Here are some of the most important components to developing measurable outcomes.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

CAC is an index that reveals the average cost to gain new consumers. This information is also used to determine how much of an investment a company is making to attract customers on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual basis. This is important because it affects the bottom line – a company’s revenue. The lower this cost to acquire customers, the higher the revenue.

Customer life cycle

The customer life cycle is a term used to describe the progression of steps a customer goes through when considering, purchasing, using, and maintaining loyalty to a product or service. Companies must be aware of the costs associated with influencing a customer to buy their product or service and maintain that relationship. Loyal customers help sustain companies.

Return on Investment time (ROI)

The costs a company incurs to land a client, which can include anything from packaging to marketing, commercials, and web sites are just one half of the investment part of Return On Investment. The return is when a client purchases a product or service. A productive return on investment is when a company earns more in sales than it spends on marketing.

Businesses need to know how a marketing team will measure the success of any campaign before investing in that campaign. This is sometimes referred to as a measurable outcome. Without the ability to measure, how will a company know if their money is being well spent?

Examine data and measure performance

Data helps companies compare expected results to actual results and can influence a company’s direction. In order to answer questions about improving sales, marketing strategies, and customer acquisition these things need to be measured in some form or another. For example, what are the company’s sales for the year, and the last four quarters?

What marketing strategies did the company use and how much did they cost? What were the company’s customer acquisition costs for the year and the last four quarters? Numbers aren’t the sole reason for a company to move in a certain direction. They do however help a company make good decisions to remain profitable. Quarterly information is vital because it helps a company identify upward, downward, or consistent trends.

Business plans, flexibility, and inclusiveness

The most successful companies are those who do not rest on the accomplishments of the past. A business plan remains effective if data is examined consistently, especially when a company is successful. You don’t take your hands off the wheel when you’re driving a car just because it’s going straight ahead. Constant corrections and vigilance are key – checking data, coupled with reliable employees can identify trends that work well, but also reveal situations that require minimal correction if you catch them early.

An organization’s business plan should be established through extensive examination of data and input from employees and leaders. A productive plan should have flexibility built in; changing as needs or as the organization require. Strong internal collaborations with staff help companies anticipate and navigate challenges and meet objectives. Companies need employees in order to function at their best.

The human factor

Companies often have the staff and tools, but simply need help putting the pieces together effectively. While data is useful and has its place, it doesn’t exactly consider the humans involved in performing day to day functions. Using the experience of the staff is a highly effective way to learn what is most important in building good business practices. It also helps with employee buy-in when it comes to implementing processes. It makes employees feel valued and important to the company’s success.

Some employers avoid making employees feel valuable for fear that it may influence the discussion of raises. Consider this – companies benefit from keeping valuable employees rather than spending time and money to hire others. High turnover is also a leading cause of product/service inconsistency and loss of revenue. Keep and reward good employees – it inspires good work habits in other employees and is the hallmark of an exceptional and profitable company. You can’t get good results without good people.

For more information on success strategies for your organization, contact the experts at Advertising Avenue. We’d love to help.

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Checklist to Building a Website

Nancy M. Hernandez — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 13:38:38 +0000

An Easy and Effective Checklist to Building a Website

Building a website or updating your current website can be an intimidating endeavour, but with the right tools and help this can be a seamless process. If this process is not planned and managed properly it can be both time consuming and expensive. One way to create an effective web site with minimum fuss is to start with a good plan. To get started, write a list of what you need on your site.

The following checklist to creating a website is a simple but effective guide to start:

Purpose

The first step in building a website is deciding on its purpose. Will you be using it for blogging, promotion, e-commerce etc? This is very important as this will determine the necessary features. For example, an e-commerce website will require a payment feature where customers can pay for their items on the site or be routed to a third party site like Paypal. Also, who are you targeting with your website? We recommend going thru a discovery process to identify pain points (aka problems) that your customer has and addressing them on your site to attract specific niche target that qualifies as potential clients for you.

Priorities

Decide what is critical for your website today. Can you start with a simple site and add more bells and whistles later? Write down what you need now, versus later.

Domain Name

This is the first thing that you will need. A domain name is your digital web address. It is what your potential visitors will use to connect to your website. For example, the domain of this website is adavenue.com. This is also called a Universal Record Locator (URL). Domain names can be easily purchased at hosting sites such as www.godaddy.com and www.namecheap.com. Each site has a feature that you can check if a name is already being used. The cost of purchasing and registering a domain name is approximately $10 - $20 per year.

Email Address

Setup a business branded email address, such as info@companyname.com. A branded email address builds trust and credibility. Using a free service like Gmail or Yahoo gives the impression that you are not operating a legitimate, professional organization or worse that you are a scam operation. The best option is to get an email address with your domain main. Again this is fairly inexpensive at approximately $5 per month.

Site Pages and Features

Develop a list of your website requirements such as:

Number of website pages
Amount of website storage (images and videos needs more storage space)
Tools such as online forms, blogs, customer reviews, maps, slideshows
Links to or integration with social media
Video and/or audio players
Shopping cart

Do-it-yourself or Professional Services

This is one of the most important decisions you will make when building your website. If you want to create the website yourself there are many easy to use website builder software such as Wix, Squarespace and Weebly. One thing to consider when creating the website yourself is the growth potential of your business. If your business outgrows your website, you may not be able to move your content to a new site. Another concern with DIY websites is that you may not be able to fully customize the site. When choosing a professional to create your website, make sure that they understand your business and your vision, that way they can offer advice and insights that you may not have considered.

Web Hosting

A web hosting service is an Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible to its visitors via the internet. A web host provides space on its server (storage) so that other computers around the world can access your website using a network or modem. There are thousands of hosting services available, ranging from free with limited options to expensive, specialized web hosting services. You choose your service based on how you plan to use it and how much you are willing to spend.

Plan and Develop Content

There is a popular saying that “Content is king” it is true as that is predominantly what will attract visitors to your website. Content includes blogs, articles, infographics, photos anything that your visitor will find useful and valuable. The content should be a clear indicator of what you do and who you are, whether the site is personal or a business entity. However, the most important content on your website is your business’ contact information such as your company’s branded email address, physical address if needed, and telephone number, as well as any required information your line of business may require such as a state license number.

Promote your website

Having an awesome website that nobody is aware of is a waste of time and money so it is important to promote your site. Think about how visitors will find your website. Promote your web address on business cards, social media, in online directories etc. Google and other search engines offer free Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools that can help to organically boost web search ranking. Google analytics tool also tracks pretty much every bit of traffic you could imagine on your website; Analytics also shows many keyword insights as to which terms people use to land on your pages.

Maintain your website

You should budget time and effort to maintaining a website. Ensuring that you have backups, security and maintenance are crucial to not only the health of your site but your business. Regardless of the type of structure, you decide to build your site, you will need to do upgrades to CMS (e.g. WordPress), plugins, and/or extensions. Virus', malware or just plain human error can cause your site to go down and you should invest in systems that will keep your site running smoothly and ensuring that your customers visit is a stable one.

Whether you are building a website for a business or personal use of the above checklist will be invaluable.

Need help with your website? Contact us!

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Social Media Fundamentals

Nancy M. Hernandez — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 15:54:40 +0000

Fundamentals of Social Media Marketing

According to Statista, 82% of the US Population has a social media account. Social media for a business can be time consuming yet fundamental to the success of the business. You may be at a cross road where you know you need to do something, but you also know you can’t do it alone. While social media can be time-consuming, you shouldn’t let it overwhelm you, especially at the beginning. Perhaps you hire someone to set everything up for you in the medium of your choice.

For this example, lets say you open up a Facebook or Instagram page. You can start small and schedule an hour a day to post something. Not just anything, post something that is of value to your customers. And please don’t always ask them to buy your products, people get tired of being asked for their money. You must engage with your audience to address their inquiries and challenge, this is otherwise known as social media engagement. All social media channels allow both the organization and its followers the platform to communicate quickly and fluidly.

Be Social

For social media success, you need to be social. Discuss neighborhood events, provide pertinent information for your customers that they will find helpful. This will distinguish you from others and they will be looking forward to your posts. One thing to consider is having a fun post day, something that is uniquely yours and memorable. This will engage your target audience further.

Negative Feedback

One piece of advice that I would say is very important is don’t ignore or fight those that leave bad comments about your business. Those may be the ones that help you the most. Remember there are others out there that will be reading your response so be diplomatic and ask what you can do to change their mind. Most people just want to be acknowledged. You can turn a bad situation into a good one. Keep an open mind, you don’t always have to agree with a bad comment or troll but don’t make the matter worse. Be polite and curious and with an open mind try to turn it around.

We recommend you look into these online tools to help you audit and manage your social media advertising channels:

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