Are You Guilty of “Meat Grinder” Marketing? - Conversions vs. Traffic
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So many times I’m asked by clients “How many hits will this get me?” or “What position will I get in the search engines?” I always reply “If this campaign gets you the number one position in all the search engines and a billion hits a day, yet your sales don’t increase, will you care?”
The point of this question is that the client generally first asks about traffic and later complains about sales. This is perfectly understandable as it is the expert’s job (me and you) to educate site owners about the purpose of search marketing. Our job is to set reasonable objectives using proven tactics as part of an orchestrated strategy. This often means being part coder, part strategist, part cheerleader, and part accountant. There are many ways to go about defining the objectives of a particular campaign, and we’ll explore some of them later in this article.
Conversion Measurement and “Meat Grinder” Marketing
In his book “Your Marketing Sucks”, Mark Stevens really brings the point home when referring to his concept of “extreme marketing” – a quotation from the book states: “Scrutinize everything you are, and are not doing. Put it all under a microscope. Be a skeptical S.O.B. about every dollar you are spending. Keep those programs generating the highest returns; eliminate everything else, no matter what” (Reprinted with persmission from the author). His point is that so many companies buy into marketing campaigns that do not generate a positive return for the investment, and sadly, don’t bother to measure whether the campaign is working at all.
Marketing must be measured. I don’t take on a project without “baking in” the performance tools necessary to measure the effectiveness of the campaign. Measuring hits and traffic can usually be accomplished with a fairly simple set of tools, but again, we’re not that interested in hits and traffic, we’re interested in conversions. Phrases like “raised awareness” and “increased visibility” mean nothing to the small business owner who just spent what seems to them like a small fortune on something they can’t touch or see. Any time a campaign is based on non-measurable objectives, I call this “Meat Grinder Marketing” – money goes in, and you’re not quite sure what will come out, but it generally doesn’t look good. This is a horrible way for any business to spend their marketing dollars – especially for small businesses who cannot afford to fritter away money on campaigns that do not produce measurable results (i.e. sales).
Next: Measuring the Immeasurable >>
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