Category: Tips

Posted on

Cost Per Acquisition CPA – Bidding Strategies

Some businesses that sell services on Google AdWords may find Cost per Acquisition (CPA) a helpful metric to determine if a Google AdWords program is working for them. In the case of CPA you will evaluate a number of metrics to determine what will be profitable for bidding in AdWords.

“Each time a user who clicks on your ad completes one of these goals, they’ve given you a new conversion. You should be able to attribute a value to each of these conversions. For example, you may sell digital cameras on your site for US$300. Let’s assume that each camera has an additional wholesale cost of US$200 to you. Therefore, a conversion for a user who buys a camera on your site generates US$100 of revenue for you. This amount is the price the user paid (US$300) minus the cost to you (US$200). The US$100 revenue is your maximum profitable cost-per-acquisition, or CPA. You can pay up to US$100 for each conversion and still make a profit on the sale.”

Understanding your conversion rate is the next step to be able to extrapolate on the average what you should bid per click to stay within your goal cost per acquisition to maintain profitability. If your conversion rate is 2.0% that means that for every 100 clicks 2 people will actually buy your product. If each sale generated $100 of profit each or a total of $200 in profit, you need to be spending under $2 a click to show a profit in your AdWords program.

If instead each acquisition you make is for a new client who will typically spend $30,000 over the effective lifetime of their use of your services, then your investment in Google AdWords takes on whole new approach. You will be willing to spend more to advertise to earn that client who will in turn spend more with you over the course of several years.

Posted on

Pinterest Changes Policies to Move Copyright Onus Onto You

I just got this notice in my inbox on Saturday from Pinterest:

You agree not to post User Content that:

  • infringes any third party’s Intellectual Property Rights, privacy rights, publicity rights, or other personal or proprietary rights;
  • contains any information or content that you do not have a right to make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships
  • To third parties.  Pinterest values and respects the rights of third party creators and content owners, and expects you to do the same.  You therefore agree that any User Content that you post to the Service does not and will not violate any law or infringe the rights of any third party, including without limitation any Intellectual Property Rights (defined below), publicity rights or rights of privacy.  We reserve the right, but are not obligated, to remove User Content from the Service for any reason, including User Content that we believe violates these Terms or the Pinterest Acceptable Use Policy.  It is important that you understand that you are in the best position to know if the materials you post are legally allowed.  We therefore ask that you please be careful when deciding whether to make User Content available on our Service, including whether you can pin or re-pin User Content on your boards.  To learn more about copyright and fair use, please click here for some links to useful third party resources.

With every image you find on a website, or for that matter anywhere on the web, having some kind of copyright, you are potentially infringing on a copyright when you right click any image and stick it to your Pinterest board. With the concerns appearing on the web that Pinterest may go the way of Napster, it appears that Pinterest is taking action to mitigate potential copyright problems aggressively by moving the onus of infringement issues directly onto you the user.

Only you the website owner really knows where you have gotten their images. Even if you buy them from iStockPhoto, did you buy a one time use image or a multi-use image? If someone grabs your one-time use image and puts it on their Pinterest board pointing to you, it creates a copyright issue and potentially could have ramifications further down the road. Remember how Getty images sued website owners about their images being in website templates created by third parties?

Be careful with Pinterest, it may be a great place to get noticed but maybe a ticking time bomb.

Posted on

Lead Conversions – Metrics Part Three

I’ve saved the best and most important metric for the last post this week. Lead conversions or requests for information coming from your website (from organic search placement) are typically the top metric that top level executives watch to determine if their website is successful. Website design is important but what really drives lead conversions is the content, communicated transparency, and culture of the business.

What you say, how you say it, and the depth of experience in your field that you show on your website works to communicate that you care about your potential customers and effectively explains how you can help them. By communicating your business culture in your content, you differentiate yourself from others in your industry and create a position of authority that search engines typically will reward with organic placement.

It’s great to have a pretty website, but if that website does not make your phone ring and you don’t get regular information requests from your contact form, it is key to take a very close look at your website content.

  • It may be that you simply do not have enough content to make an impact on your potential customers.
  • Your content may be too technical or too simplistic to resonate with your audience.
  • There may be no call to action to encourage a reader to take further action.
  • You may communicate too many specifics that really should be detailed later in a contract and not in the initial interaction.
  • Your message may not be clear as to what you offer and can do.
  • Features and benefits may not be clearly detailed setting your product or service apart from similar offerings.

Periodic review should additionally be done on your website content. What was great and resonated with your audience five years ago may need updating to reflect new services, interests, and trends. There is simply no reason why your website should not be working hard for you. If your’s is not, it may be time to check with us for a website review.

Posted on

Reviewing Website Activity – Metrics Part Two

In my series on website metrics, today I want to talk about website activity. The tool I like to use to measure website activity is Google Analytics. By installing a small snippet of code on your website you can track visitor traffic. Although you will only be able to see aggregate information, the data can be used to revise your website to generate strong returns.

I will typically monitor where traffic comes from (paid versus organic), the keywords used in search engine search queries that drive traffic to a website, the location including country and state for traffic, and even popular pages. In the new version of Google Analytics you can even monitor visitor traffic in real time on your website. I particularly like the page funnel views that show navigation paths from and to popular pages.

I feel that by analyzing your website traffic you can identify whether your website is working as a lead generation engine for you. By carefully monitoring your bounce rate, page traffic, and keywords and then revising your website to cater to your desired visitor you can improve your reader’s online experience plus drive sales.

If you are not using Google Analytics and believe it or not there are still some websites out there with no analytics tracking installed, it is time to quickly implement the code. Accounts and tracking are free.