Online advertising spending has a downward trend and some believe it will continue

As internet users evolve, they stop clicking at the first thing that moves. I remember when the internet was this strange new thing (circa 1993) and most of the time I was just trying to find what to click. That certainly changed over time. The internet has become an every day tool for most of us. The internet has permeated the way we do business, make purchase decisions, share information, keep in touch and work.

Most kids now can’t even conceive a time when there was no internet. It’s not uncommon to hear, “Dad, what did you do before to find this or that when there was no internet?” or “Really? There was no Google?”. As users (and consumers) grow online and evolve, the internet changes with them. Along with users and the web, marketing has to constantly evolve and adapt.

On my previous post, I talked about brand awareness and how some businesses benefit from this effect online. Browsing today, I found two articles about how clicks on display ads* are dropping. This has happened before, and is repeating as the most recent wave of new online users is learning and avoiding unwanted ads. Internet makes users active evaluators of the information offered and rarely are we searching for a new ad, unless you work for marketing and want to check out the competition.

I have been telling my clients that more than the stats (Click Through Ratio’s, Clicks) that most online marketers focus on, we should look at exposure, brand awareness and what Dean Donaldson calls “Dwell”. What is Dwell? I’m not sure, but I can consider it as the effect of the user hovering around your ads, not necessarily clicking, but being marginally aware of the information contained in it, and by this effect, actually generating a print in their minds which can be considered a form of brand awareness. Hence, the term Dwell will fit right into this phenomenon.

If your online expert, internet marketer or even, web designer, talks only about clicks, their missing on the effect of a well managed brand presence as brand awareness. It does matter how you position your brand, the most innocuous and simple advertisement online can mean bad associations (eg. a flicking banner annoying the user, an ad popping up and bugging the prospect) and an unconscious negative perception of what your product or service is. This would make your prospect, of course, less likely to buy from you.

Some numbers from ComScore and Starcom “Natural Born Clickers” study:

• Click on display ads has dropped 50% in the last two years;
• Consumers exposed to display ads are 65% more likely to visit the advertisers site than those that had never seen an ad;
• Half of all clicks on display ads come from lower income young adults.

In summary, heavy paid ad clickers are young, male and with low income… hardly what most companies envision as their target audience.

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

*Display ads are usually ads inserted in webpages with images, text or a combination of both.

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

It is quite unbelievable that most companies and business owners still think that being online is just about creating a website and forgetting about it. As most people already know, creating a website is just the very first step of many, many more steps in creating a successful marketing strategy. In fact, nowadays, some marketing gurus do not even use a website to promote products or services.

OpenSource Analytics

All is good and great as far as creating a website and promoting it goes. But that is far from it. There are several tools to measure the marketing efforts. It is vitally important to measure every single thing done online, otherwise, there is a big possibility that our efforts may go in vane.

Some people focus too much in the size of the marketing strategy (I’ve got 300 pages in my site! Where are the sales?…), and while that is still important, not optimizing every little bit of it, means that you may be wasting too much precious money.

Be sure to check out google analytics

It is a complex skill, that includes some common sense and a lot of experience and knowledge to develop. Yes, I’m talking about analytics. There are several analytics programs available, open source and paid. Google Analytics is still the tool of choice for most webmasters, nonetheless, it sometimes necessary to have more than one method and cross reference everything is not an overstatement. Most tools are imprecise, therefore, they must be used with a bit of care and a lot of smarts. Google is one of the best in the market and it is absolutely free! It even has a huge instruction booklet that you may read to learn about proper usage. I do recommend you read it, as this tool can provide countless possibilities if used properly.

Lastly, a real marketing campaign should always consider research. This research is done through analytics. Perform minor changes, and verify the results. Works… keep it. Doesn’t work… go back ASAP.

In short, a couple of tools highly recommended are Piwik and of course, Google Analytics. Check them out, and if you get lost, give me a shout or leave your comments or questions below.

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.