Wednesday, February 15, 2012

5 Tips for Analyzing and Optimizing Campaigns – Part III

This is part III of my post on Analyzing and Optimizing Campaigns. In part I I talked about why your campaign analysis is probably is wrong. In part II I showed an example of how obsessing over reducing bounce rate might not get you anywhere.

In this post I am going to provide you 5 tips for analyzing and optimizing your campaign. Here those 5 tips:
  1. Optimize Cost of Advertising
    Cost is dependent on how much you pay per click or pay per 1000 impressions (CPC and CPM). You have control over these cost factors. Those who are running Paid Search campaigns should already be familiar with and should be working hard to reduce the cost (CPC). Those dealing with CPM display ads should know that those rates are highly negotiable. Do you research about pricing etc., play with these numbers and see what will yield the optimal result,. Take your analysis and recommendation to your media buying team.
  2. Improve Click-Through-Rate (CTR )
    CTR depends on several factors such placement, creative, unique value proposition, time of the ad, targeting criteria. Analyzes those factors and see where you are falling short and where are the opportunities for improvement. You can pretty much test all of these and improve them.
  3. Reduce Landing Page Bounce Rate
    We looked at improving the Bounce Rate in the last post. You can reduce the bounce rate by optimizing the messages on your ads, better targeting techniques and optimizing your landing page. If your value proposition and messages are aligned on the ads and the landing pages, you will see a reduction in bounce rate. Conduct A/B and MVT on your landing pages to see what works.
  4. Optimize Conversion Funnel
    Make sure the conversion path steps are optimized and any obstacles are removed. Remove any fields that are not needed e.g. if you don’t have a use for phone number then don’t ask fo it. Streamline the process. Conduct A/B and MVT to improve the conversion funnel. Use personalization, if possible.
  5. Improve Average Order Value (AOV)
    Yes, you can influence the amount a customer pays per transaction. Use on-site recommendations to up-sell and cross-sell to drive up the average basket size and the value. Use customer data to figure out what might interest a particular customer and put those in your recommendations. I have also found that some segment of visitors just won’t convert online, they are not comfortable. If you are able to spot those customers on time and engage them via sales call center then not only the chances of conversion will go up but the AOV will go up as well. In my experience, those customers, who deal with a live person, tend to buy more versus those who complete orders online.

Just optimizing for one of the above variables might not yield the desired improvement; optimize all of them to achieve the maximum ROI.

Comments? Questions?

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