Scaling Up Marketing

[Jimmy Tootime]

Hey you great people, hope your doing well.

I was playing around with buying paid banner ads for my website, one site i spent £500 on advertising and it converted me £725 in sales. I wanted to know the best way to scale this up is. Do i now spend £1000 on banner ads on the same site or could this fail? I really need some advice on how to scale up my marketing to increase profits and continually increase them.

Any advice you can give i would be very thankful for please, as i always get stuck with this. No books or online research can help as i suppose it is all trial and error. I do not really want to buy banner ads on a different site just yet, as i would need to track how each site is performing to avoid wasting any money.

Many thanks for reading.

 

[fisicx]

one site i spent £500 on advertising and it converted me £725 in sales.

That's a very poor ROI. How much of that £725 was profit?

It is very trial and error. You often reach a point where the banners are no longer effective. This is especially true on websites where there are a high percentage of returning visitors. It's possible you have reached the sales limit of your product or service on that site.

 

[AllUpHere]

As @fisicx points out, that's a rediculously low return. I've mentioned on here before that when considering working for a new client I usually make sure I can find ways that will be likely to return 15 to 20 times the promotional spend. Obviously in your case I'd want 500 quid to generate between £7500 and £10 000 in sales.

It does depend on the industry though. What are you selling?

 

[mattk]

As others have said, no need to be focusing on profit not sales. There are countless places to advertise. I would try small amounts (£100 each) on different sites and platforms and then scale up the ones that give you the best results.

You will also find huge variation in results based on the text, images, target audience and even time of day. You need to experiment with all of these in order to maximise your investment.

A hint at your produce/service might help people give you more specific advice.

 

[olivermason99]

If You are using social media platforms for advertising i will suggest to increase the budget and you will automatically get triple results.

 

[fisicx]

If You are using social media platforms for advertising i will suggest to increase the budget and you will automatically get triple results.

Does this win the prize for the most wrong post of the day?

 

[HarrisH]

Hi @Jimmy Tootime,

I really need some advice on how to scale up my marketing to increase profits and continually increase them.

A great way to increase profits is by implementing (automated) systems that encourage repeat purchases since you're now working with people who are familiar with your brand, have interacted with you, and above all, trusted you enough to let go of their hard-earned money to you once before

Since they've given you their email address, reaching out to them is completely free and retargeting campaigns are much cheaper.

In regards to scaling up marketing efforts, to quote @mattk the below is incredibly valuable advice for someone just starting off:

I would try small amounts (£100 each) on different sites and platforms and then scale up the ones that give you the best results.

You will also find huge variation in results based on the text, images, target audience and even time of day. You need to experiment with all of these in order to maximise your investment.

The key is to test, test, and test again. Google has a range of great free tools to measure conversion metrics like Google Analytics and Google Optimise to help you out.

Let us know how you get on

 

[Joshua Boast]

You definitely want a better ROI on that, what industry are you operating in?

 

[WeddingsInWales]

In our business people window shop and enquire either when they are ready to book (we are a wedding venue) or ages before they are ready to buy. We advertise all over the place and have little idea which adverts work and which do not! Different landing pages is an option of course, for any banner ads that you feel are doing very well.

Google Analytics can track source of direct clicks through to your site, so that sort of helps, though I have no idea how to track sales to originating source of enquiry, as whenever I ask customers how they found out about us, they can only say 'internet'. As they will enquire off multiple pages of my site, I have no idea of source of enquiry at the point of enquiry.

My business is not like a shop where you have an enquiry, convert to sale, and can track sales to source. If yours can do this, then you have a chance of making your ad spend count better by focusing on identifying source (click throughs from each banner ad at least can be tracked on Analytics).

Another suggestion which HarrisH above referenced, was to repeat email the enquiries you generate. I use AWeber for this. We upload our wedding enqiries, ghost hunting enquiries, accommodation enquiries and send them a sequence of marketing follow up letters at niche intervals dependent on their 'buying window'. The frequency of mailings needs to fit each niche's 'buying window'. Also your enquiry forms need to be designed to get their permission for repeat mailings, given all the new Data Protection rules.

With weddings, we know an enquirer will either book a viewing within a month, or sit forever window shopping. So we mail them daily for the first month, then weekly thereafter for another year (until they unsubscribe or book a viewing).

With B&B enquiries, we know they are repeat customers, but may not come back for a year or two, so we mail them monthly over a 2 - 3 year period (different buying window therefore different mailing sequence). With the Ghost Hunters, they get mailed monthly but really should be mailed seasonally (ghost hunting tends to be more popular on dark winters evenings!).

Building up a mailing list (and tracking source of enquiry) will eventually yield returns and may help you link eventual sales to source of enquiry.

Then of course there is all that social media end of things which is of no great passion of mine but essential to the hospitality business, so I have my wedding planners and a business manager build up all the followers on facebook etc. If you cannot personally be bothered with social media, you need a young person who is 'into' that side of things. I know it definitely works because when we get a late wedding cancellation, we can facebook post our 'dog friendly B&B followers' with an 'offer' on the short notice empty weekend, and fill it instantly. Similarly when one of our Ghost Hunting nights was not selling, a single boosted post on our Ghost Hunting facebook page filled the ghost hunt date I needed to sell, within a few hours.