Mastering the Art of Online Marketing

Online Marketing is multi-dimensional

Bluntly: There is no marketing silver bullet and you have to do your homework—and there are no shortcuts

It’s the message, not the medium. If your message can entice one out of every 100 people to click on it as opposed to one out of every 1,000, your sales cost falls from, say, $1,600 to $160.

But it is also your website: If you can convert two out of every 100 who fall there, your cost/sale can drop from $1,600 to $40. Much better.

And it’s also your negotiation skills: If you lower your cost from $8 CPM to $6 CPM, your $40 cost of sales drops to $30. Much better.

And it is also your sales ability: If you increase your average sale to $150 from $130, your $30 is now right on target.

So you just saw the need to look at every aspect of the business in a critical, quantitative way:

• Your creative execution to attract more potential customers to click on and follow through the ad
• Your website to make it easier to complete the sale
• Your negotiation skills when dealing with the media
• Your sales packaging to increase average sales

As a final note, considering that we are dealing with visitors and that Google provides a limited number of clicks per day, we might want to consider the following directions:

• Advertising on sites dealing with Miami as a tourist destination (e.g., www.miamiandbeaches.com)
• Advertising on sites where visitors make reservations for flights, hotels, cars in their country of origin (see example below)
• Advertising on motorcycle and motorcycle-related sites geo-targeted for their country or city of origin

Geo-targetting: It’s easy to geo-target on the web. Both B&H and Tire Rack (where I’ve made recent purchases) tracked my visit to “Jornal do Brasil” while I was researching this article:

Click to enlarge

In this case, we would recommend that Erick’s House of Custom Bikes advertise pretty much the same way: geographically and then probably contextually, where visitors who had researched, say, Miami, from Brazil, get served an ad.

Much like an artist’s palette, marketing can look like a confusing mess. But by carefully exploring and understanding your options—including marketing media, price for play and result metrics—you can begin to make sense of it—and create your own marketing work of art.

Next time we will be addressing inline marketing:

Step 4 – Developing creative executions

Step 5 – Sequencing

Step 6 – Controls

Other articles by Marcelo:

Is Social Media Good For Business?

The Washington Post Morphs To The Amazon Post?

Social Media Lessons Learned From MTV

A Messaging Strategy To Reach 3 Consumer States

Advertising? Why Three Creative Executions Are Essential

It’s All About Persuasion, Isn’t It?