Online Marketing – The Goal Sets the Course
Are clicks, visits or likes the right currency to measure the success of online marketing activities? No, they are not. What counts are interactions and visitor behavior after the click. How do you define the right goals and metrics before setting up a campaign?
Because their competitors are doing it, companies place display advertising, AdWords or Facebook ads. However, they often do so without clear objectives and meaningful test systems. The first step to a successful campaign is to define the metrics for assessing success. For example, if you are planning a performance campaign that is intended to generate additional sales, you need to make considerations such as these: What was the turnover of a comparable period? What additional sales must the campaign achieve in order to at least cover the campaign costs? How high should the CTR (click-through rate) be so that enough visitors click on your offer? What conversion rate (visitors vs. buyers) must be achieved in order to reach the sales target? What is the average order value? How much can an order cost? A plausibility check with good common sense and gut feeling quickly shows whether the targets are realistic. If there are no empirical values, a test system is essential to verify the assumptions. The goals of search engine optimization can be derived from Google Analytics. Here is an example: If the majority of visitors reach the website via the company or brand name via the search engines, the visibility under the "non-branded long tail keywords" should be increased. These have no connection to the brand name and are related to the application. Corresponding keywords can be evaluated and a few months after the search engine optimization it is clear whether the campaign is effective and attracts the right visitors.
An AdWords campaign is only efficient if it is based on clear conversion goals. A click on an ad is one thing. What happens after the click is another! If, for example, the visitor leaves immediately after the click without interacting, they will only stay on the website for a short time; if they do not interact, the money has been badly invested. For this reason, you should also determine in advance for the AdWords campaign how much an interaction (order, minimum visit time, quote request) may cost. This is the only way to assess whether you are investing your money correctly.
The most popular metrics for a Facebook campaign are likes, shares and fans. These can be gained quickly and easily with appropriate approaches and incentives. Before the campaign is launched, it must be clear why shares, likes and fans are being gained and how their quality is to be assessed. For example, should they spread your brand or its features? If so, what measures and budget should be used to achieve this? What distribution rate should be achieved?
The definition of objectives and clear metrics and descriptions are the be-all and end-all of online marketing measures. More clicks, likes or fans are false successes. What counts is the direct and indirect interaction after the click.
Imre Sinka
