Customer Acquisition: Dont Skimp
| Category: Traffic and Tracking | Date: 2001-03-27 |
I recently completed a series of articles about search engines, and it got me to thinking.
Everyone knows search engine placement is right up there when it comes to marketing your web site, product, or service. What makes it doubly important is that it is generally free, which makes this avenue of promotion vital for the smaller entrepreneur.
I'm not a marketing expert. My articles on web search trends tend to focus on things like whether search engines offer relevant results, or whether they are easy to use for average consumers. But the research for my most recent article http://www.traffick.com/story.asp?StoryID=65" Target="_BLANK">http://www.traffick.com/story.asp?StoryID=65">http://www.traffick.com/story.asp?StoryID=65 - on pay-for-placement search engine Goto.com - convinced me that this is one of those vastly underrated marketing tools that all businesspeople need to find out about and begin deploying to their advantage.
Of course, you should optimize your site and work on submissions to get those "free" listings in the major search engines and directories first. But if youre like most, after youve done that, you are looking for means of attracting targeted (eager to buy) and incremental (not the same folks who are already finding you) traffic to your site.
In weighing various alternatives - banner ads and expensive marketing campaigns - larger businesses ask the following question all the time: whats a new customer worth? Many have determined that a customer is worth a lot! Thats why established e-commerce giants will spend $20, $100, $500 or more on customer acquisition. They know that on average, each new customer will spend a certain amount with them, once acquired. The quintessential example is AOL. They dont wait around for people to figure out that they are the best Internet Service Provider. They send out as many CDs as humanly possible, and blitz us with television advertising telling us that AOL is easy to use. So what if a lot of other services are easy to use? Generally speaking, after the customer is signed up with AOL, it doesnt matter what the others are doing.
Youre not AOL, but shouldnt you learn from them? If a new customer is worth $20 or $50 to you, or even more, why are you content to spend zero on the acquisition? Even if there is a slight chance that someone may pay you $1,000 for your accounting services, or buy a $500 item from you with a $100 profit margin, wouldnt the chance to have that customer come straight to your web site be worth a few pennies, maybe even more than a few?
Existing search engine traffic is fine, but it may not be all that targeted. Whats more, you dont always have time to optimize your site for all the engines, and some past attempts may have actually hurt you more than they helped. So you decide to spend a few dollars to attract qualified leads rather than spending your precious staff resources or staying up nights working all those "free promotion" angles.
Many entrepreneurs have figured this out, but theyre too slow to deploy their strategy. All things being equal, many businesses will want to acquire a new customer sooner rather than later. In the world of e-commerce, however, the need to attract some new traffic to a web site THIS MONTH rather than next month is magnified tenfold. Due to the newness of many of these markets, even smaller businesses need to think about how much better off they will be if they set the stage earlier and grab peoples attention right away. And depending on what you offer, the "viral" effect can be very real. Getting attention now only means that the multiplication of links to your site, and all the other good things that come with popularity, will happen sooner.
In effect, every week is "sweeps week" for the entrepreneur doing business on the Internet. You need to think NOW about how to get to the next level, rather than planning for a marketing push some time in the future.
If youre considering alternatives, buying targeted traffic at Goto.com is a potential lifesaver. If you have sufficient content on your site or a sufficiently popular niche that can be described using several different keywords and descriptions, you can very quickly add ten, fifty, 200, or 1,000 highly targeted visits to your traffic count each and every day. The average cost per click at Goto.com is in the neighborhood of 14 cents. Thats not bad - and you only pay for clickthroughs. Ive experimented with different bid levels and found that my average varies from 5 to 11 cents per click. Thats not free, but compared to most forms of promotion, its rock bottom!
Sure, there are a few secrets to getting the customers you want for a minimal cost per click. But do this for yourself right now. Set aside a mere $50, teach yourself how to use the Goto.com system, and find out for yourself what works for you. Dont wait around forever: try to blow through the $50 in one month! That means you need to focus on getting some of your listings into the top three, or even #1, position on Goto.coms ranking on a given keyword. Heres a tip: the reason youll get a lot more traffic by purchasing a #1 ranking for a Goto.com keyword is due to the fact that youll also be showing up in meta-search engines like Mamma, Ixquick, Dogpile, and Metacrawler.
Because these avenues are going to be a bit different from the other pathways web surfers take to find you through search engines, for the first few months you will be getting a lot of incremental traffic. That is to say, new, highly targeted customers.
Most hot Internet startups have built their businesses up by buying traffic. One I know well is set to IPO, and a lot of its early buzz is thanks to heavy spending on paid keyword rankings at Goto.com. Now you may not be a well-funded startup. But you CAN find $50, and on Goto, $50 can go a long way.
If your business isnt worth $50 to you, then why would it be worth a penny to anyone else? Go ahead, buy a few search engine rankings and see if it doesnt pay off.
About the author
Andrew Goodman is Editor of Traffick, a site offering regular coverage of the world of online portals. For the latest tips, perspectives, and updates on new economy trends, subscribe to the Traffick Newsletters at: http://www.traffick.com/newsletters.asp
This article extracted from the InfoZone Archives at: http://www.makingprofit.com/
editor@traffick.com
http://www.traffick.com/
Everyone knows search engine placement is right up there when it comes to marketing your web site, product, or service. What makes it doubly important is that it is generally free, which makes this avenue of promotion vital for the smaller entrepreneur.
I'm not a marketing expert. My articles on web search trends tend to focus on things like whether search engines offer relevant results, or whether they are easy to use for average consumers. But the research for my most recent article http://www.traffick.com/story.asp?StoryID=65" Target="_BLANK">http://www.traffick.com/story.asp?StoryID=65">http://www.traffick.com/story.asp?StoryID=65 - on pay-for-placement search engine Goto.com - convinced me that this is one of those vastly underrated marketing tools that all businesspeople need to find out about and begin deploying to their advantage.
Of course, you should optimize your site and work on submissions to get those "free" listings in the major search engines and directories first. But if youre like most, after youve done that, you are looking for means of attracting targeted (eager to buy) and incremental (not the same folks who are already finding you) traffic to your site.
In weighing various alternatives - banner ads and expensive marketing campaigns - larger businesses ask the following question all the time: whats a new customer worth? Many have determined that a customer is worth a lot! Thats why established e-commerce giants will spend $20, $100, $500 or more on customer acquisition. They know that on average, each new customer will spend a certain amount with them, once acquired. The quintessential example is AOL. They dont wait around for people to figure out that they are the best Internet Service Provider. They send out as many CDs as humanly possible, and blitz us with television advertising telling us that AOL is easy to use. So what if a lot of other services are easy to use? Generally speaking, after the customer is signed up with AOL, it doesnt matter what the others are doing.
Youre not AOL, but shouldnt you learn from them? If a new customer is worth $20 or $50 to you, or even more, why are you content to spend zero on the acquisition? Even if there is a slight chance that someone may pay you $1,000 for your accounting services, or buy a $500 item from you with a $100 profit margin, wouldnt the chance to have that customer come straight to your web site be worth a few pennies, maybe even more than a few?
Existing search engine traffic is fine, but it may not be all that targeted. Whats more, you dont always have time to optimize your site for all the engines, and some past attempts may have actually hurt you more than they helped. So you decide to spend a few dollars to attract qualified leads rather than spending your precious staff resources or staying up nights working all those "free promotion" angles.
Many entrepreneurs have figured this out, but theyre too slow to deploy their strategy. All things being equal, many businesses will want to acquire a new customer sooner rather than later. In the world of e-commerce, however, the need to attract some new traffic to a web site THIS MONTH rather than next month is magnified tenfold. Due to the newness of many of these markets, even smaller businesses need to think about how much better off they will be if they set the stage earlier and grab peoples attention right away. And depending on what you offer, the "viral" effect can be very real. Getting attention now only means that the multiplication of links to your site, and all the other good things that come with popularity, will happen sooner.
In effect, every week is "sweeps week" for the entrepreneur doing business on the Internet. You need to think NOW about how to get to the next level, rather than planning for a marketing push some time in the future.
If youre considering alternatives, buying targeted traffic at Goto.com is a potential lifesaver. If you have sufficient content on your site or a sufficiently popular niche that can be described using several different keywords and descriptions, you can very quickly add ten, fifty, 200, or 1,000 highly targeted visits to your traffic count each and every day. The average cost per click at Goto.com is in the neighborhood of 14 cents. Thats not bad - and you only pay for clickthroughs. Ive experimented with different bid levels and found that my average varies from 5 to 11 cents per click. Thats not free, but compared to most forms of promotion, its rock bottom!
Sure, there are a few secrets to getting the customers you want for a minimal cost per click. But do this for yourself right now. Set aside a mere $50, teach yourself how to use the Goto.com system, and find out for yourself what works for you. Dont wait around forever: try to blow through the $50 in one month! That means you need to focus on getting some of your listings into the top three, or even #1, position on Goto.coms ranking on a given keyword. Heres a tip: the reason youll get a lot more traffic by purchasing a #1 ranking for a Goto.com keyword is due to the fact that youll also be showing up in meta-search engines like Mamma, Ixquick, Dogpile, and Metacrawler.
Because these avenues are going to be a bit different from the other pathways web surfers take to find you through search engines, for the first few months you will be getting a lot of incremental traffic. That is to say, new, highly targeted customers.
Most hot Internet startups have built their businesses up by buying traffic. One I know well is set to IPO, and a lot of its early buzz is thanks to heavy spending on paid keyword rankings at Goto.com. Now you may not be a well-funded startup. But you CAN find $50, and on Goto, $50 can go a long way.
If your business isnt worth $50 to you, then why would it be worth a penny to anyone else? Go ahead, buy a few search engine rankings and see if it doesnt pay off.
About the author
Andrew Goodman is Editor of Traffick, a site offering regular coverage of the world of online portals. For the latest tips, perspectives, and updates on new economy trends, subscribe to the Traffick Newsletters at: http://www.traffick.com/newsletters.asp
This article extracted from the InfoZone Archives at: http://www.makingprofit.com/
editor@traffick.com
http://www.traffick.com/
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