Posts Tagged ‘web traffic’

5 Tips for Saving Money on Online Advertising

Monday, November 24th, 2008

mason-wiley-headshotnew.jpg 1. Test your creative. Even great online media placement can produce poor results if your messaging is off. So before you go big, run split tests of different creative units to find the winner.

2. Leverage ad network pricing and tools. If you go direct to sites, you’ll get offered their premium display inventory at their premium CPM rates. Many ad networks, however, offer the inventory sites that can’t sell on their own at way better rates. Many also offer behavioral and/or contextual targeting to eliminate ad waste by limiting ad delivery to your best prospects.

3. Put CPA in the mix. Are you trying to drive sales or acquire leads? If so, cost-per-action ad networks charge only for results, so there is zero ad waste. They’re a great way to drive incremental sales or leads without risk.

4. Drive traffic to an optimized landing page. If you’re sending the people who click on your ad to your regular website, it’s an invitation to surf around and get lost. Keep this from happening by creating a landing page specifically tied to your ad campaign, and specifically designed to motivate ad clickers to take the desired action.

5. Track your results. One of the greatest advantages of the Internet medium is that it’s measurable. Use this fact to your advantage. Keep close tabs on the results each placement in your campaign generates so you can see what works and what doesn’t. Be sure to consider not just clicks, but also lead/traffic quality.

Mason Wiley is the senior vice president of hydra network.

Optimizing the Customer Interaction Experience

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

rolf-elmer.jpg There’s no denying that the main objective for any e-commerce sales or retail marketing executive is to maximize the total value of visitor traffic on their site, simply put— turning web browsers into buyers and clicks into cash. Search is certainly leveling the playing field as well, so how do companies stand out from the crowd? And why are some sites still failing to deliver compelling and relevant content to their customer base?

In today’s saturated marketplace, retailers can no longer rely on the traditional marketing techniques and media vehicles to manage customer interaction and drive home sales. In order to achieve greater web interaction optimization, e-commerce and retail sites must recognize the inherent value of social behavioral merchandising and effectively increase the relevance of communications by automatically promoting the most relevant products to each visitor, thereby maximizing conversion rates and average order values.

By making websites more customer-centric via these “recommendation engines,” retailers can essentially optimize customer interaction through improved content and messaging based on a customer’s specific needs and behavioral patterns.

We all know who Amazon.com is. Besides the millions of SKUs at Amazon.com, the site is easy to use and “steers” browsers in the right direction when they need help (recommendations, user reviews, etc.). The addition of recommendations from other customers can build a sense of trust and community between new and returning customers—and probably better than any 17-year old working the floor at Border’s Books.

Given the wide variety of tools available in the market, online retailers must familiarize themselves with the different points of customer contact and approaches towards reaching interaction optimization. The Customer Interaction Cycle, shown below, depicts the many different points—from initial landing page through transaction—where collective intelligence can be applied to maximize value.

lifecycle3.jpg

Rolf Elmer is CEO of Avail Intelligence