In order to truly maximize your marketing spend, finding the best ad channel for your business is the first step. Of course, every business presents a unique challenge and avoiding channels that are irrelevant to your goals is imperative to your success.

That’s because millions of marketing dollars are flushed down the wrong ad channels daily. In fact, a survey by research firm Experian found that five percent to 30 percent of marketing budgets are wasted as a result of bad data alone.

That’s a pretty significant portion of any budget.

And from there it only gets worse: add more marketing dollars wasted on business lunches, trade shows, and other sales tactics that are never going to directly lead to revenue.  The reality is that most small businesses don’t know how to track return on investment (ROI) per ad channel because it can be a rather complex affair.

However, fear not. There is a three step process to help you determine the best places for your marketing budget, but first ROI must be tracked.

But before you begin, check our video here on the importance of RIO tracking.

Step 1: Research & Discovery

Determine the strengths and weaknesses of your business: What advantages does your product or service have over competitors?  Do you have any unique selling points like free shipping, free consultation, money back guarantee, 30 day warranty or similar aspects?

Research competitors’ tactics: What channels are your top competitors using?  Contact their marketing agency and request a similar proposal.  If they are publically traded you may be able to get highly specific insights into their tactics.  If not, there are a number of free and cheap tools online which can give you great competitive insights.

Research new tactics relevant to your customers/targeted demographic groups: Your competitors might be doing well but are they leveraging cutting-edge tactics like Social Media Marketing or Viral Content Development?

Start preparing your platform (website or CRM tool) to track ROI: Can your website determine what traffic sources delivered the most sales for the least amount of money?  Check if your sales staff can attribute each sale to a specific lead source  Can your retail locations determine if increases in foot traffic were due to specific promotions/advertisements?

Step 2: Planning & Strategic Development

Determine ad channels to test based on competitors and past successes: Refine your list of tactics to the top five to 10 channels and be sure to record the results in a centralized location (spreadsheet, database or analytics platform) so you can make a quick comparison as to which results in the most sales for the least amount of money.

Customized messaging: Refine your sales pitch and Calls to Action per ad channel in order to address each specific audience and then create multiple variations because the way you say things can have a massive effect on conversion rates and sales.  And it is nearly impossible to determine what combination of words will work the best without testing on your actual customers.

Custom images and creatives: Similar to sales language, your creatives (banner ads, TV commercials, product photos etc.) should be catered to each channel and have a number of variations.  You may find that loud and distracting ads work well on Facebook but not on the Google Display Network.  Larger ads always perform better than smaller ones and video ads perform even better.  Some experts even recommend making up to 10 variations per ad.

Step 3: Initial Testing & Implementation

Initial testing: Use a small portion of your overall budget to determine what messaging and creatives are delivering the best results.  Which ones have the highest click-through rates, highest conversion rates and lowest cost per acquisition rate.  Most importantly, what is the ROI per channel? What geographic regions and times of ad delivery impacted these numbers most?

Implementation: Once you have the previous questions answered there should be a clear winner, but don’t focus your entire budget on this specific channel yet.  There are still a number of important questions that need to be addressed.  Are you tracking your customer’s progress throughout the entire sales cycle? If not you will miss important stages costing you sales and making customers leave like shopping carts requiring way too much information or not functioning properly.  Getting relevant customers to your “point of sale” (website/store location) is only half the battle; from there you need to focus on conversions or closing the sale.  This process is called Conversion Rate Optimization which includes things like speeding up the checkout process & conveying credibility to the customer more effectively.

Conclusion

I wish there were a magic bullet that would find the best place for you to spend your marketing dollars in order to generate the most revenue but it does not exist yet. Extensive research and testing must be done in order to make an informed decision based on solid data for your unique situation. These three steps should give you a good understanding about finding the best advertising channels for your business but it definitely gets more complex.

If you would like a free consultation on this process and what it can do for your bottom line just drop us a line.

There are so many platforms, so many choices and so many misconceptions.

Companies that are smart and disciplined in all other areas of their business sometimes act irrationally due to their lack of expertise in this area.

Common mistakes include:

• Ignoring social media marketing because it is so foreign to them. Social networks and blogs are the 4th most popular online activities online, including beating personal email. 67% of global users visit member communities and 10% of all time spent on the internet is on social media sites. On a daily basis, individuals are talking about your brand, so companies better listen.

• Assuming social media is a cheap and fast “miracle pill.” Entrepreneurs want everything (brand awareness, recall, more word of mouth, more business) and they want it fast. Digital market takes patience and timing. You can’t join an online social network and derive any value from it unless you take the time to meet the right people, connect, share, build, and grow.

• Assuming that any kid who grew up with the Internet is capable of devising, executing and maintaining a social media campaign. It’s not about technology or if you grew up in the digital age (even though you may have an upper-hand) but about effective strategy. There is no one size fits all, and ultimately it’s not about “What are we doing in XXX social media network?” but about why should you be in that social media network. It’s about choosing YouTube over Facebook or focusing on a blog instead of Twitter. It’s about adding value to your consumer and where they “reside” digitally.

The fact of the matter is, social media marketing works and it can work very effectively if done strategically. Virtually every major corporation is devoting significant resources to creating and monitoring social media campaigns for opportunities and what individuals say about their brand.

Smaller businesses and start-up businesses are also jumping on the wagon.

Social media campaigns improve your standing on search engines like Google, they enhance your brand, they sell your products, they drive traffic to your website and they can help you gain new customers and serve current customers.

A good social media campaign will cost you time, money and effort. It can take months, even a year for a campaign to pay off… but the payoffs are usually worth the wait.

Forrester Research did some research and have come up with figures that indicate that not only is it working for companies, but there will be explosive growth in the use of social media marketing in the next five years:

What Forrester is saying is that businesses are expected to spend 3.1 billion in social media marketing in 2014 and another $3.16 billion on search engine marketing.

Before embarking on a social media marketing plan, it is important to ask a number of key questions. Some of the questions you’ll be able to answer for yourself, others you’ll need the guidance of social media experts.

1. Is social media marketing right for my business?

1. Is my target audience using social media? If so, where?

2. Will I get a better ROI (return on investment) from social media and internet marketing, rather than traditional advertising and other marketing platforms?

2. What are your social media marketing goals?

1. Businesses often make the mistake of diving into their social media campaigns without sufficient thought or planning. Make a list of what you want to accomplish:

1. More sales leads
2. More direct sales (for ecommerce web sites)
3. Greater brand awareness
4. Brand engagement

3. Which social media platforms are best suited for achieving my business’ goals?

1. Blogs

1. Can I create valuable insightful content to potential and current customers about my business/services/products/industry that can delivered in blog format?

2. News and Content

1. Once I’ve created compelling content, how can I distribute it to the world?

An easy way to distribute your ideas is through social news sites where the content speaks for itself. Users are given the opportunity to vote on news stories, links, and content:

1. Digg.com
2. Reddit.com
3. Stumbleupon.com
4. Propeller.com
5. Delicious.com

3. Review sites

1. Am I so confident in my products and services that I want to promote them to sites that publish independently written user reviews?

1. Yelp.com
2. Epinions.com

4. Networking sites

1. The great social communities of the web present remarkable opportunities to market, promote and even create direct sales for your company.

1. Linkedin.com
2. Twitter.com
3. Facebook.com

4. Do you fully understand the “social” aspects of social marketing?

1. There is a reason they call it social media marketing. When you enter this world, you are entering a very real community. Unlike advertising, which is a one-way-street method (push marketing) of delivering your message, social media demands that you enter into a conversation with your current and potential clients and customers (push and pull marketing).

Your success in social media will depend on your ability to make valuable engaging contributions, beyond simply promoting your brand, to a community which may be challenging, questioning or even hostile towards your brand.
1. Do you have the time, resources and confidence to enter into such a conversation?

5. Time and personnel commitment

1. The company must commit to training an individual or team who will have personal responsibility for maintaining social media channels. It can’t be considered an add-on. Take the time devoted to social media as seriously as the time devoted to any other kind of project. In other words, do it well or don’t do it at all.

6. Cross-Pollination

1. Are your social media effort integrated and designed to support each channel’s efforts? What will you use to drive people to your Twitter account? Your Blog? Your Facebook fan page?

7. Budgeting for the long haul

1. Social media campaign results rarely happen overnight. Have you thought about your budget going forward? Will this work be handled in-house or will you outsource this to a company with social media experience and expertise?

8. Metrics

1. How will you measure the success of your overall social media campaign and the individual elements? What are the key milestones you are looking for?

9. Triage

1. Marketing budgets are finite. The money invested in social media campaigns must come from somewhere. Where are the sacrifices to be made?

Unless you are a social media expert, you will not immediately have the answers to all of these questions. You need to find to find experts who will discuss your current business, your business goals, and your current marketing and advertising efforts. Until a company understands all of these aspects of your business, they will be in no position to map out a social media marketing campaign that’s exactly right for you and your business.

Blue Fountain Media counsels clients on a daily basis on how to use social media marketing to achieve their business goals. We offer a wide variety of services including consulting, online campaign architecture and ongoing social media campaign maintenance plans.

If you are interested in learning more, please give us a call at 212.260.1978 so we get can you on the road to social media success.