Targets in no man's land
«How much does an AdWords campaign cost?» «We’re building a new website, and after that we want 25 percent more visitors.» Statements like these come up time and time again.
It is still common practice to conduct online marketing without real targets. This is why companies are more or less consciously missing out on using online marketing profitably.
What is going wrong? The client does not link the budget allocation to measurable targets, such as the maximum investment in a sales transaction or a newsletter subscription. The main reason for this is that they do not know how much the profitable acquisition of a new customer, fan or visitor may cost or how much can be earned from a customer during their lifetime. If there are no corresponding specifications, the effect of a campaign or the performance of the agency or the online marketing manager cannot be measured and the online marketing budget is wasted without gaining important empirical values for campaign management.
If the company does not control its campaign via the costs per order or lead, hardly anyone will question and rethink the user guidance and the order process on the landing page. It can happen that a campaign refers enough visitors to the landing page, but they abandon their visit without converting because they are not guided enough through the interaction process. This is another way in which an investment in online marketing can go down the drain.
Ultimately, a large part of the online marketing budget flows into AdWords. Here, too, you need to do your homework beforehand. In particular, it is important to analyze the competitive environment. The stronger this is, the more influence brand awareness and brand perception have on click behavior. If competitors have sufficient financial resources for a broad, continuous AdWords presence and for high-reach image advertising, companies with modest budgets are at a disadvantage, as their visibility and therefore also their brand awareness are limited. As consumers prefer familiar brands, these will receive the clicks.
In order not to go under alongside strong competitors, companies with a limited budget have no choice but to develop a sophisticated AdWords strategy and reduce the trust deficit through level-appropriate, creative communication.
Imre Sinka
