Where Should You Invest Your Internet Marketing Resources?
By Anna Johnson on June 22nd, 2010When it comes to allocating money, time or other resources to Internet marketing campaigns – whether it’s investing in pay-per-click advertising (a.k.a. search engine marketing or SEM), hiring article writers, or even spending TIME on such activities as social networking or search engine optimization (SEO) – you’ll no doubt want to make the best use of your money and/or time.
While you’ll hear plenty of ‘experts’ telling you to invest in SEM, SEO, social media, email marketing, article marketing and a ton of other activities, the best thing you can do is NOT to buy into someone else’s agenda. The best use of your time, money, skills, etc is unlikely to be the same as that of someone else.
Instead, it’s wise to consider what you have in terms of resources – money, time, people, etc – and how to deploy them in a way that delivers the best possible results for you. You see, success in business – as with any other kind of investment – is not based on how profitable something is… it’s based on what is the MOST profitable for YOU.
So while investing $1,000 in a PPC advertising campaign may generate $1,500 in sales within a month… investing that same $1,000 in SEO may deliver $2,000 during that same month. Then again, keep in mind the time factor.
If it takes one month to make a $500 in profit from PPC and 6 months to make $1,000 from SEO, you’ll be way better off reinvesting the original investment and profits in PPC each month for 6 months than simply spending $1,000 on SEO and waiting 6 months for it to pay off. That’s because, at the end of 6 months, you’ll have $11,390.63 from your PPC campaign (since your rate of return from PPC is 50 percent per month)!
You get the picture: wisely investing your Internet marketing resources is about choosing the activity or activities that deliver you the biggest ROI in the shortest period of time.
While it may not be obvious as to what those activities are – it may take some trial and error – your goal as an Internet marketer is to work this out… or risk leaving money on the table.
June 25th, 2010 at 2:38 am
It is rare that I read an article or post that is so blatantly wrong on so many different levels as the nonsense in this one.
Here is an “expert” talking about what not to utilize the expertise of legitimate experts to accomplish. The statement is that you will hear many methods thrown at you regarding how to best market on the Internet. Yet, you don’t tell your readers how to measure what methods to employ. You lambast everything, yet offer a solution that is NO solution.
How is someone to determine what to do with their advertising dollars if they don’t TEST? You would like your readers to believe that there is on “magic bullet”, yet you fail to point out that the methods recommended to them should be tested in their respective markets.
It is arbitrary information like this that makes using any specialist for anything useless, because you made a blanket statement that is, in effect, a condemnation of all avenues of online marketing for offline businesses.
This is truly a pseudo intellectual view, at best. Why didn’t you do the simple thing and advise readers to TEST! The only thing you are correct about is that all venues do not work for all kinds of businesses.
However, they must be tested to make the determination as to what works the best and is the most cost-effective. All businesses must use a metric to measure the ROI of their marketing efforts. That is simply sound business.
However, you merely made a blanket statement that condemned all marketing avenues without talking about what to do and how to do it.
in that respect, your article or post was an exercise in scaring the wits out of your online readers. I am one of those marketers you spoke about. Every client is treated as an individual and allow me to let you in on some a,b,c type information.
Testing, specifically testing online marketing is the difference between life and death on the Internet. i strongly suggest you learn that “experts” like me are the very reason many businesses are enjoying great success online.
Testing all methods before deciding on a course of action is the way to maximize ROI, not scaring the wits out of people that are grasping for legitimate information to maximize online earnings for their businesses- both online and offline.
June 25th, 2010 at 3:00 am
Wow J.L. I’m surprised you find my post so offensive. It certainly wasn’t my intention to scare anyone or to lambast anyone. You’re obviously passionate about helping your clients and I couldn’t agree with you more about the need to test. In terms of offering specific advice (apart from ‘testing’ which I wholeheartedly agree with) this blog is full of specific strategies and tactics, as well as more general articles, news, research, statistics, etc. As with this article, I’ve written plenty of articles that focus on how to approach things rather than talk about specific solutions. That’s because thinking strategically and being resourceful are so important to entrepreneurship. Thanks for the taking the time to comment – even if it’s critical, it shows you care.
February 16th, 2011 at 2:31 pm
I would just like to add that when looking at options in marketing (whether direct mail or online) it’s NOT useful to just take some flashy magazine or sales pitch at face value and run with the “latest greatest”.
You have to test, and you need to keep in mind that your particular business or charity will not garner identical or necessarily better (or even same ball park) results as the profiles or promises in sales pitches. Political campaigns rolling out in October don’t even compare with the same campaign’s results in June. The Red Cross results are dramatically higher the week of a disaster….and much lower a month later… same charity, same campaign, but drop in response. Reason: factors beyond the charity/campaign…. time, saturation, other distractions all play a roll and must be factored in with any results.
For the above reasons usually one or two tests in a given medium are not enough. There are seasonal differences, other national/international events that may distract your target audience (as we all remember who tried advertising/fundraising after 9/11, Katrina, Tsunami, and Haiti…or the month before Presidential elections).
On the other hand, on-line and other mediums for marketing DOES have a cumulative effect on a target audience even if the initial results are low…. especially among people who start seeing your name/business from different types of media (print and online, or on-line and radio, or radio and billboards….)
So the key in my opinion is to have a long term strategy, diversified medium usage, and leadership buy in so low initial returns don’t spook them or make them overly emotional/impatient. An instant hit doesn’t NECESSARILY mean you ought to lump all eggs into that particular basket.
Marketing is normally not like winning the lotto. Occasionally we stumble on a winning piece or method, message, or angle – but that’s a confluence of many factors some of which are beyond any marketing professional or vendor’s control. Not that they won’t take full credit! But don’t buy their own hype. Test, analyse data, test again. What’s going on in the wider world? Survey. Test again. Take your time and don’t panic.