Atom Feed (xml)
In today's marketing environment the weakest link is in the integration of online marketing with offline marketing. A well designed web site and a carefully organised print or electronic campaign are both teriibly crippled if they aren't tightly combined with the company or product website.
Here is what I mean; I looked at a recent local Newspaper. What I found was, when it comes to combining offline advertising with the web advertising, eighty seven percent of the ads in issue were either wasted or doing a poor job of communicating an Online presence for the advertiser's business.
Advertising is a tool. Advertising communicates benefits and simulates action. When an advertisement pulls a consumer to a website, the opportunity to present targeted information is huge. Motivated visitors are buyers. That means that your sales message and your website offer must work together. The marketing lures a potential client in and the website must give the visitor value to convert to sales.
Some people are will argue that advertising is a branding vehicle, and that you can not gauge an ads true success by its immediate pull. Simply stated, that's not accurate. When looking at all the advertisements I reviewed for this article, one hundred and twelve contained direct calls to action; visit, call, learn, contact, and so forth. Seventeen did not. Half were clearly suggesting that a visit to the business was a logical next step. When a call to action is presented, the ad's success must be based on the action being taken. From this point, the branding concept becomes an excuse if the ad does not perform as expected.
Logically, the next big question is "What should we do if the ad actually drives new visitors?" What happens if a visitor responds to the message and decides to take that highly desired next step of following the URL? What should happen is that these visitors should be sent to a high focused sales page. They should be presented with an offer that relates directly to the ad message they responded too. The offer should mention the referring publication for continuity and communicate an understanding of the visitors expectations. The offer should talk more specifically about the offer presented (solution, benefit, social proof... whatever). The offer should itself contain further calls to action or a clear process to purchase a product or service.
Online marketing is not a fore and forget media. Truth is, most visitors from the ads are dumped into a general pool of all visitors and left find the information they desired. This occurs without any focused content visible that relates to the ad they responded to.
From the ads reviewed I found that; 1. Sixty-six percent of the ads in our sample issue use a home page as the URL linked to. These ads cost a fair amount of money to deliver a message, and drove the visitor to a general page that had no specific next step (either graphically or textually). 2. Nine percent have no URL at all. 3. Twelve percent have unique URLs, but were wasted since the visitor was drive to a hit counter to determine pull.
These are simple errors that are easy to fix. Businesses everywhere are in dire need of cost-effective marketing solutions. The opportunity to provide quality consulting services has never been greater!
Here is what I mean; I looked at a recent local Newspaper. What I found was, when it comes to combining offline advertising with the web advertising, eighty seven percent of the ads in issue were either wasted or doing a poor job of communicating an Online presence for the advertiser's business.
Advertising is a tool. Advertising communicates benefits and simulates action. When an advertisement pulls a consumer to a website, the opportunity to present targeted information is huge. Motivated visitors are buyers. That means that your sales message and your website offer must work together. The marketing lures a potential client in and the website must give the visitor value to convert to sales.
Some people are will argue that advertising is a branding vehicle, and that you can not gauge an ads true success by its immediate pull. Simply stated, that's not accurate. When looking at all the advertisements I reviewed for this article, one hundred and twelve contained direct calls to action; visit, call, learn, contact, and so forth. Seventeen did not. Half were clearly suggesting that a visit to the business was a logical next step. When a call to action is presented, the ad's success must be based on the action being taken. From this point, the branding concept becomes an excuse if the ad does not perform as expected.
Logically, the next big question is "What should we do if the ad actually drives new visitors?" What happens if a visitor responds to the message and decides to take that highly desired next step of following the URL? What should happen is that these visitors should be sent to a high focused sales page. They should be presented with an offer that relates directly to the ad message they responded too. The offer should mention the referring publication for continuity and communicate an understanding of the visitors expectations. The offer should talk more specifically about the offer presented (solution, benefit, social proof... whatever). The offer should itself contain further calls to action or a clear process to purchase a product or service.
Online marketing is not a fore and forget media. Truth is, most visitors from the ads are dumped into a general pool of all visitors and left find the information they desired. This occurs without any focused content visible that relates to the ad they responded to.
From the ads reviewed I found that; 1. Sixty-six percent of the ads in our sample issue use a home page as the URL linked to. These ads cost a fair amount of money to deliver a message, and drove the visitor to a general page that had no specific next step (either graphically or textually). 2. Nine percent have no URL at all. 3. Twelve percent have unique URLs, but were wasted since the visitor was drive to a hit counter to determine pull.
These are simple errors that are easy to fix. Businesses everywhere are in dire need of cost-effective marketing solutions. The opportunity to provide quality consulting services has never been greater!
No comments:
Post a Comment