Whether you’re selling Porsches or air-conditioning services, you need optimal creative and make sure everyone is aware of your online metrics.
Editor’s note: marketing case study 1.
No matter which types of products or services you’re offering online, you need to be aware that everyone within your organization has a stake, as well as something to contribute. So, when you’re launching an online campaign, make sure to tap into all of your resources. This will help you focus your efforts to create a successful and fruitful promotion.
Working on the Porsche account years ago was a dream come true. So, when I launched the Cayenne in Latin America, I was thrilled and scared. Scared because no one knew what the Cayenne really was.
Is it a “chick” car? Most of the ones in Latam were bought by men for their wives. Is it a “sports” car? The Cayenne GT-S, with around 525 HP, will almost match a GT3rs in 0-60 (4.5 v 3.8 seconds). Is it a “luxury” car? After all, it is a $100,000 Porsche. So, what’s a Cayenne?
In real life, there’s only two ways to find out, none of them palatable to a business owner: do research (which can get slow and expensive) or guess. What we did has practical, real-world answers for small business owners.
We ran a teaser campaign featuring the three different elements we knew from talking to Porsche owners were important to them: power, luxury and size. We created a dozen or so banners, ran them in sites that we knew Porsche owners frequented, analyzed which one gathered the most clicks, generated the most visits to the site and, in two weeks, we had our answer. (Power, by the way.)
These are some of the screen grabs:
Please click to enlarge
We tried several creative executions:
- Black cars
- Red cars
- Cars with a Porsche brand header
- Cars without a Porsche brand header
Our results were simple: The black Cayenne, with the Porsche header and highlighting power, won handily.
Presto, we had the answer: That’s what potential Porsche buyers were looking for. The campaign was very successful, and we met 75% of our unit goals by July 31, 50% of the year.
How This Applies to a Small and Medium-Sized Business Owner
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you have an air-conditioning company specializing in single-family homes and that a lot of your contacts come from the web.
There are two different approaches you can take: Google search (pay per click) and regular “classic” web advertising (e.g., in local sites like your hometown newspaper).
Keeping the holy trinity in mind (ratios, creative and strategy), your reasoning could be as follows:
- Your average sale per customer is $3,700
- For every 15 people who click on your website and fill out the contact information you make one sale.
- For every eight people who land on your site, one will fill out the information form.
Assume that your sales ratio will remain the same (one out of every 15 people who fill the form). But what would happen if you could, through better creative incentives, increase the number of people who fill out the form? (Remember, you’re paying per click, so everyone who clicks visits the site.)
So, if you can convince just one or two more people out of 120 to fill out the form, all things being equal, you’ll reduce your cost/sale by about $90 per person. Not bad.
With Regular CPM Buys, the Importance of Fine-Tuning the Creative Becomes Even More Crucial
Just getting a thousand people out of one million to click on the banner, all things being equal, will decrease your cost of sales substantially.
The bottom line:
- There are no isolated factors: creative strategy, metrics and messaging work in unison.
- Creatives should be brought into the strategic process so that they, too, are aware of what works and what doesn’t.
- For small and medium-sized business especially, understanding your metrics are crucial.
You may not be selling Porsches, but the methods are very similar. You need to rev up your online presence to make a mark.
Related content:
The Difference Between Short and Long-term Marketing Strategies
