Answers From Dayton Internet Marketing Consultants

Introduction

Do you have questions about internet marketing? Below are some Frequently Asked Questions that were put to a leading internet marketing firm in Dayton, Ohio.

1. If there was one piece of advice that you could give, what would it be?.

Our advice would be "always be testing". No internet marketing intiative is perfect. There is always some room for improvement somewhere. We as internet marketers or business owners don't always know where those improvements can be made. So our only option is to try new things and see if they work.

The philosophy behind "always be testing" is one of continous improvement. Most likely, you are never going to find that one marketing technique that makes a huge impact on your business over night. Instead, it is more likely that you will discover small things that will gradually improve your business's bottom line. Over time, those small things can add up, making a big impact on your business.

Your experiments don't have to be huge and costly. Concentrate on small changes. See if performing SEO on a couple of keywords helps you out. Maybe change some of the text on one of your website's pages and see if that improves conversions. Or slightly change the heading on one of your Pay Per Click ads. You get the picture.

2. What do you think about marketing through Facebook and Twitter?

It can be helpful. But, although many have jumped on the social media bandwagon, we believe that it is not for every business.

First, a lot of businesses engage in using social media because they think its "free". However, we submit that for a business, nothing is really "free" when somebody has to spend time on it. We know this is a cliche, but, for businesses, time really is money. Developing a sustained social media campaign does take up time, and, accordingly, it does impose cost on businesses that choose to do it.

When we think about marketing for businesses, we often think in terms of the economic concepts of utility curves and budget constraints. As you know, in economics, a utility curve represents how much "satisfaction" a consumer gets when purchasing a bundle of goods. The more utility or satisfaction a consumer gets, the better. Of course, as we all know, nobody has a infinite amount of money. In economics, the fact that all consumers have a finite sum of money is known as a budget constraint. A budget contstraint, as you can imagine, limits the amount of utility that a consumer can get. So under a budget constraint, a consumer gets the most utility that he can afford.

Now lets apply the concepts of utility and budget constraints to internet advertising. In the context of a business looking to spend resources on marketing, utility is pretty much a return on the resources spent on marketing. Now all businesses have limited resources that they can spend on marketing. Naturally, a rational business will look to get the most utility it can get, given a finite amount of resources.

Whether social media marketing will maximize a business's utility depends on many factors. It depends on the business's marketing resources, its customers, and so forth. Therefore, social media marketing may be beneficial for some businesses, but not for others.

3. What do think business owners need to know about their online marketing?

We think the biggest thing that business's need to know about their online marketing efforts is the economic impact of those efforts.

They need to have a good feel for how much profit is being generated by different online channels, like Google, You Tube, Facebook, etc. They also need to have a good feel for the economic impact of doing things like Search Engine Optimization, landing page optimization, and so forth.

By understanding the economic impact of their online efforts, business can better evaluate their options and make better decisions.

4. How Important Is Data Analysis In Assesing Online Marketing Efforts?

We believe that is hugely important. Of course, we know that our views are probably shared by most internet marketing professionals.

However, many businesses often don't appreciate the importance of data in online marketing. Or they understand it, but then don't act on it.

5. How does Web Analytics figure in online marketing?

It is also hugely important. For many businesses, it may be the only possible source of quality data with which to judge marketing intiatives, whether those marketing intiatives be online or offline.

6. How has Web Analytics changed the marketing landscape?

Well, just fifteen or twenty years ago, collecting quality data was out of reach for most businesses. Collecting marketing data was hugely expensive, so only really large businesses could afford it.

Web Analytics software has changed that. Now even the smallest business can collect quality data about their marketing efforts. Web Analytics software has changed quality data collection from being the preserve of the few to being available to all.

In short, web analytics software has brought us into an era of what we call "Data Democracy".

7. What do you think is the biggest misconception about Web Analytics?

Probably the biggest misconception is that web analytics is only relevant if you sell products online.

The fact is that consumers still make most purchases offline. But, what has changed is that now consumers use the internet to research products or services before they buy. So, if you're a business with a website, then it is likely that many of your customers have looked at your website, before they ever came into your business and bought something. In short, your website, at least to some extent, is pre-selling your product or service. In addition, the very reason many consumers even know about your business is because they found it while doing a search for something.

Also, web analytics software is very relevant when businesses seek to integrate their offline and online marketing activities. Such integration is often very easy to do. For instance, placing a website url in a print ad, or mentioning a website url in a televison adverstisement.

8. How Do You Think Web Analytics Needs To Improve?

At Envision Analytics, we think the biggest area of improvement is not so much on the software side as it is on the human side. We think that web analytics software will not realize its true power, until the people who use it are proficient at applying statistical and econometric analysis to the data it provides. Accordingly, at Envision Analytics, we place a big value on the statistical and econometric analysis of web analytics data.