The combination of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising has made online marketing one of the most effective ways for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to build a brand and generate new sales leads.Still in its infancy, and definitely more challenging,is measuring the success of those campaigns and defining return on investment of the activity. This is particularly important for small companies as they have to justify each and every cost to the business. As marketing directors becomemore data-savvy, they are increasingly demanding more detailed analysis from their marketing agencies. It is therefore up to the marketing agencies to step up to the plate or risk losing their clients to rivals offering more sophisticated analysis.
Traffic jam
Metrics for success in online marketing are traditionally driven by the volume of traffic going to a website. The problem with simply measuring volume of traffic is that it does not necessarily represent the number of new business leads. What companies really want to know is how many leads they are getting for their advertising spend.
Increasingly, online marketers use Google Analytics to track their SEO performance. Google Analytics gives great insight into website traffic volumes and the sources of that traffic, but it does not help companies to understand whether or not that traffic converts into real business.
Lost in translation
Companies spending money with GoogleAdWords or the Bing equivalent are able to gain slightly better insight. These tools allow businesses to track conversions. Conversions are tracked by putting some specific web code on a ‘check-out’ page or on a ‘thank-you’ page once a lead capture form has been completed. For companies actually selling products online, then conversion tracking is very effective because it can track real sales. However for those companies that don’t sell online, then all a conversion tells them is that someone completed a form on their website. They still don’t know if it is a quality lead, or if the visitor ultimately becomes a new customer.
According to a recent YouGov survey of more than 500 small business leaders across the UK, less than a fifth (18 per cent) of SMEs using Google AdWords recoup the cost of their investment. The remaining 82 per cent are either not recouping their cost in terms of online sales, or simply don’t know if they are, or not.
Smaller firms have limited marketing budgets and want to spend it in the way that will generate the greatest return. With just 10 per cent of survey respondents saying that Google AdWords had led directly to sales and new clients in the last 12 months, it is important that SMEs have access to tools that help them to make the best possible decisions about where to invest their funds.
Digital awakening
One of the benefits of digital marketing is the fact that it is so easy to track the numbers and work out return on investment. It is much easier than the traditional print, radio or TV advertisements. It is therefore up to marketing agencies to go beyond the metrics current analytics tools provide to offer their clients more insight into their data. This should also give them a competitive edge over other agencies who may not be offering the same service.
The typical lead capture process when a prospect visits a website involves a ‘call to action’; this is usually a form that the visitor is asked to complete, maybe in exchange for a free trial or a whitepaper.
It is worth remembering though that a new visitor isn’t always going to complete a form on their first visit. They may look around a site, before visiting a few minutes, or days later.In many cases the visitor will revisit the site using a different method. For example they might discover a site for the first time via AdWords and remember a company’s name. They may next visit several days later, having searched for the company name and arrived via search results.Understanding this concept is important for measuring marketing ROI. If companies want to measure the return on their Google AdWords spend, they really need to be tracking how their customers found their websites in the first place.
Google Analytics & CRM
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software enables the tracking of leads throughout the sales process and identifies exactly which ones convert into a sale – providing the type of qualitative analysis often missing from standard quantitative lead tracking.
By using CRM software you can capture leads from a website and, at the same time, capture the values contained inside the tracking cookie. A web form is created and hosted on the company’s website. It uses standard HTML form functionality and calls a specific action on the CRM tool which allows you to post the form, including various hidden fields. The action of posting a form creates a Sales Lead inside the CRM tool, which contains the displayed and hidden fields from the web form. By associating leads with campaigns, and in turn allocating budgets to campaigns, it is possible to measure the cost of a lead, as well as track which campaigns deliver the most effective results. It is therefore possible to track the original website visitor information across the entire life cycle. So at a very simple level companies can track which web marketing activity generates real sales opportunities, all the way through to which ones deliver real business.
Conclusion
Many SMEs are growing increasingly frustrated because they feel they need to be ‘seen’ on Google, but they just don’t have the tools to measure the effectiveness of their investment. With Google AdWords now well established as one of the world’s leading advertising media, offering enormous potential for a more level playing field between SMEs and their larger competitors, it is a real shame that many firms are still struggling to quantify the benefits.CRM software can help smaller firms to overcome this obstacle. Designed to track all customer interactions, it provides a clear and accurate overview of the return on investment of advertising and marketing spend.
