18 replies to this topic

[glyn]

You,ve a new ecommerce site and 10k to blow on advertising, what would you do?

[DonnaFontenot]

Pay Mashable to blog about it?

Not sure how far 10K would go. Never had that option before.

[tam]

Spend money on advertising... I dunno never tried it.

Depends on what it is for exactly. Might be worth keeping in mind offline as well as online publications. Sponsor something, use some of it as a comp prize, adwords maybe, perhaps just paying people for their time to get it plugged. Some would have to go on writing press releasing/getting images/video taken etc.

[EGOL]

$10K...

My definition of "advertising" is "assets that can be added to my site that will pull traffic from search".

So that $10K would be spent on a small number of kickass content pages. Kickass.

I already have a really good still photo camera and a reasonable video camera and lighting.... if I didn't already have those I would spend some of the $10K there.

My reasoning is.... I can blow $10K on advertising that will be gone in a flash or create kickass evergreen content that will pull search traffic for years and years... and could produce income long after I am dead.

[iamlost]

While I tend to follow the EGOL route and not actually 'advertise' I have thought about this a fair amount over the years. While you have set aside a useful amount it isn't generous in the way that an agency would think... sort of the equivalent of would go a fair ways on a penny stock venture exchange not so far on the NASDAQ.

So I'd suggest staying away from a direct advertising spend and look for indirect leverage:
* identify journalists and bloggers who write about ecomm and/or your major product categories. Invite the amenable to lunch and give a presentation (ala selling timeshare ). Perhaps do it twice: once for journalists and once for bloggers. If as you say your site is truly amazing you have something they may well want to have inside info on which to write.
Note: this has the added benefit of giving you an in with contacts to use (not abuse) as developments proceed.

* create highly specific extremely upbeat videos for YouTube - that announce your brand and give it class and oomph. Know your target audience for each and give them reason to get involved and share.

* a different YouTube approach would be to make time sensitive videos sort of like multimedia newsletters/deals announcements, etc.

* or pick out a product rep and get him/her blasted to agree on extra good discounts based on sales going forward... rinse, repeat...

[EGOL]

Most of my sites have more informative content than sales pages.

The informative content pulls in about 80% of the sales on one site.

On another, three-year-old site, the informative content is currently pulling in about 15% of the sales - but we didn't post the first video until November 2011 and didn't start a blog until June 2012. By this time next year, informative content might account for 1/2 of the sales? I hope.

[glyn]

Lovely, thanks all.

[jonbey]

Might be worth calling up some traditional PR companies. See if they can use their contacts to get some juicy product pages in some mainstream magazines or newspapers?

[glyn]

A little bit longer...

It's funny but offline PR is now making economic sense, while a while back everyone was talking about how this form of less measurable advertising was pretty much dead. Take for example a cursory research on a few verticals in which I operate.

PPC goes up to €1.25 a click. I know, because I am already position #1 on the exact organic term, that conversions are approximately at 0.7% (my site reflects best practice on so many levels even if I were wrong I reckon the cost on conversion might vay +/- 0.2%. Doing the maths [or math in US, which always does my head in] it's possible to see that in order to get a good ROI I need to be selling at a very high price in order to recoup investment. Popular knowledge says to look beyond straight ROI at things like newsletter signups etc, but frankly it's not worth it.

Contrast this with the fact that I can get 3 days PR for £800. This will likely land me in some niche journals, blogs (good for links) and social media circles. It also allows me to do positioning of the brand into markets that while I can approach with PPC doesn't have the same degree of communication and resonance with the particular audiences.

The fact that the niche is competitive for PPC also means that there is a long queue of people lining up their first Adwords foray and consequently will skew the cost of advertising away from anything that resembles a reasonable market rate towards something that makes offline PR actually more attractive.

Even if I'm averaging QS7-10 in Adwords it's still not worth it.

Classic isn't it.

G.

[DonnaFontenot]

I've never found Adwords to be worth the cost, but it's always possible I suck at PPC (I'm sure I do), plus my particular niches just never had enough of a profit margin to make PPC viable.

If I had $10K to spend on advertising, PPC wouldn't even be anywhere on the list.

[EGOL]

Even if I'm averaging QS7-10 in Adwords it's still not worth it.

I have always believed that lots of adwords accounts do not produce a positive return. The competition are cannibals. Nothing less.

I have attended Brad Geddes' two day adwords training (which is superb btw).

By paying attention to the attendees, lots of them clearly do not understand the math or understand conversion tracking. They don't get quality score.

If you are not tracking and are not doing the math then you are probably losing your shirt.

Ignorance is bliss???

Edited by EGOL, 26 November 2012 - 03:34 PM.

[glyn]

Yes indeed.

What I do find quite exciting is the remarketing element of G's adplanning tools.

[earlpearl]

I've never found Adwords to be worth the cost, but it's always possible I suck at PPC (I'm sure I do), plus my particular niches just never had enough of a profit margin to make PPC viable.

If I had $10K to spend on advertising, PPC wouldn't even be anywhere on the list.

I love the above suggestions concerning PR and getting great content. I was going to throw in Adwords/PPC. Unlike Donna's experience our PPC campaigns work well....but I think the key has far far far more to do with the profit margin context than sucking or not sucking at PPC. Most of our campaigns are such that the price of a purchase is a couple of hundred times the cost of a click.

So they end up working. (even I can't screw them up--talk about sucking).

But the suggestions to build organic rankings is far stronger IMHO and experience.

I'm in the midst of looking at a lot of accts, (albeit all local) with regard to what I describe as "potential dominence" of local/regional markets. We take all the impressions for keywords on a regional PPC basis. We add up ppc traffic and estimate organic traffic (estimates in which we add back "estimates" of traffic for both Not Provided and now Direct traffic coming from IOS6 mobiles.

Then we divide by total impressions. All to see the percentage of total traffic for critical keywords for these regional services/ websites.

The net result is simply that for keword with some great serps rankings (ie #1, maybe #1 with 4-6 site links, or #1 and #2 or #2 and #3....our percentages of all the searches are very high....above 50% and higher including organic and ppc. For phrases wherein we are lower ranked, say #2 organically and still #1 in ppc we might see around 30% of traffic.

In all the cases I've looked at so far, if we are ranked at or close to #1 in ppc the adwords percentage of impressions is around 10-15%. So to get to 50% or higher....that means organic is bringing in about 30% of traffic (give or take something.

Organic---> several times more important than Adwords.

The one sweet thing I like abt adwords is its detail and granularity as to search phrases; a level that I don't see anywhere else.

But all in all....as folks above stated...I would spend the money where it might get much better long term value.

at least that is my $0.02.

[Walter]

Hello,

Its getting cold here in the Chicago area, so maybe that's affecting my thinking. However, right now I'd take that ten grand and spend it on a trip to a tropical paradise and take pictures which I'd post on the site so I could deduct the expenses for the trip on my taxes

When I got back I'd wonder if I shouldn't have maybe spent the money on radio advertising.

Walter

[earlpearl]

Walter: Damn good idea. I can help you improve on that excellent idea. For $10K you can afford to buy me a ticket. Do everything else you thought of; bring a camera, post pics on the site, write off the expenses on your taxes....AND I'll give you a link to your site.

[Walter]

Well hell Earl.... a link to my site? How could I refuse. Now all we have to do is find an investor willing to front the 10K. That shouldn't be hard.

Walter

[jonbey]

Maybe some goal setting is needed first?

e.g., if you want to raise awareness quickly (i.e. for Christmas), then well designed banner adverts on a very popular website.
if to generate a buzz, get people talking, some social media stuff.
If SEO is important, then some marketing, get it mentioned on some popular (and high ranking) websites with a combo of great content and industry connections ..... must not use the word bribe here for fear of cyberdeath....

Although I still think the best option is .... buy one of these, get your ads painted on it and drive it around central London.....

But then, I do have some wacky ideas.

[RisaBB]

I didn't have luck with PPC either, but I think it's because I didn't eat, live, breathe PPC and had too many things going on to give it the attention it needs, which is a lot if you want to do it right. I didn't have luck with ads in hard copy magazines and newspapers.

I think if I had $10K, I'd write great content or hire someone, and either hire a link builder or train someone to do link building, and hire someone to be your Facebook, Twitter person.

Maybe issue a PR, too.

[chuckfinley]

• Display advertising in perfectly positioned magazine
  
• Buy the magazine mailing list with e-mail
  
• Drip on them with direct mail monthly
  
• Drip on them with e-mail monthly
  
• Flyer inserts with major newspapers in the area
  
• Display ads with perfectly positioned online site
  
• Buy their mailing list and e-mail
  
• Drip on them with direct mail monthly
  
• Drip on them with e-mail monthly
  
• Do local, offering connected radio shows
  
• Issue public interest press releases to local papers
  
• Spread this to social media with video

Do all this in a major metro that has a very high probability of being interested in your offering.

Of course, $10k won't be enough. How close you can get to that number depends on how much of the creative, marketing and PR work you can do yourself.

If you're looking for a good value, the flyer inserts may be it. It depends on how well you can target your demographic by income level.

Edited by chuckfinley, 28 November 2012 - 12:56 AM.