Let’s Fix your Conversion Process and Web Site Output
We are pleased to announce the availability of high level marketing infrastructure & operational support services. Our operations chief Becky brings over 20 years of proven talents with optimizing the digital end user experience to drive sales. She was a co-founder at ARS, one of the first and largest subscription content eCommerce site portfolios & affiliate networks online.
Becky and the Buoyancy Digital team will strategize and build optimized digital marketing infrastructure that blends content with user intelligence, personalization and automation to develop & nurture relationships via digital communication channels until they become profitable.
This offering is agnostic of how the client is sourcing their digital visitors, as well as their specific eCommerce business models & product/service offerings, markets served, etc. For tangible deliverables, they break down into these buckets:
This includes assessment of current website setup and associated technology & service provider integrations, with a comparison to company goals.
Proposed integrations & changes to sites, systems or landing pages for clients will allow for major client gains in the following areas: improved data and actionable intelligence gathering; greater use of personalization in all client digital touchpoints; expanded use of marketing automation tools, systems and strategy; implementation and/or deployment of conversational interfaces are also included as necessary, to help brands better develop one-to-one relationships with all website & social media page visitors, regardless of which marketing channel drove the user, and thus improve the lifetime value of your customer relationships.
Proposal and implementation of CTA (call to action) supporting mechanisms: dependent on campaign objectives (lead collection, point of sale, click to call, etc.). It includes bespoke marketing tech stack to measure and optimize campaigns.
Automated relationship nurturing to move users closer to finding value worth paying for whatever you are selling.
Funnel steps and transitions are guided by company sales process, strategies, and goals.
Talk to us. We’ve built, managed and/or improved upon site performance for clients across the Internet since it’s commercial inception in the 1990’s. We are no-bull, get into the weeds operators with over 60 years experience in the field. We can recommend, implement, optimize and report on the success of conversion and customer engagement solutions tailored to your specific brand situation and driven by data & experience.
For more information, contact us online or write Becky via convmar@bdllc.org
Looking to boost revenue and sales for your retail business? Come join local agency Buoyancy Digital for a Google Partners Livestream on June 20 at the @EpiCentral office in Colorado Springs.
Register now at https://partnersconnect.withgoogle.com/event/buoyancy-digital-llc
We are a Google AdWords accredited agency with over 60 years of combined experience in digital marketing, SEM, eCommerce operations, SEO & affiliate & influencer program management.
#SEM is not optional for marketing.
Buoyancy Digital is proud to become a Google partner with certifications for the management of #AdWords & #mobileadvertising
The Attribution Question
Like many of you, I look at traffic and conversion reports every day for various ad campaigns from different digital traffic sources for various advertised offers.
Accordingly, the ads placed, whether SEM/paid search, display, social, or otherwise get optimized both manually and systematically on a regular basis to extract the best possible results.
There are typically target CPA or ROAS goals baked into every campaign purchased, with pixels, tracking URL’s, cookies and various other technical methodologies to generate reports showing tangible results which validate success or show where improvements can be made….or both.
Simple enough, right? Attribution for digital media buys in your bag of marketing tricks (aka layers of the funnel) comes down to assigning credit where credit is due, in terms of which impressions, clicks and resulting actions such as sales conversions were generated by which ad/source/campaign/ad creative used/audience/platform/media vendor, and even by which person or agency handles that conversion generating media buy for you.
But, I have to say it, this notion of attribution and some of the existing standard practices related to measurement, is a very subjective piece of the science of cost accountable digital media. Especially now, in an era where attribution judgments (did the campaign work? Was it profitable?) are being made by media buyers with ad sources driving view throughs, a measured event viewing of ads, such as display & video ads, but which did not yield a click/conversion immediately, yet did so within a defined window of time afterwards).
Here is a (very common) scenario and thus my beef with how the digital media industry standards for this can be biased: a user who visited your eCommerce site on Monday but does not convert, then sees (views) one of your retargeted display ads on a major news site on Tuesday, creating the view through which can be attributed to the retargeting campaign, yet does not click through and visit your eCommerce site or take any other actions at that moment. The same user ultimately comes back to your site and converts to sale on Thursday (always a beautiful thing if profitable), two days later. Many retargeting colleagues have said that this view through on Tuesday from the retargeting campaign should get the attribution credit for the sale.
But…between that Tuesday view through and a purchase completed on Thursday by that user, was that user exposed to any other media/campaigns related to your site, brand or product, whether the additional media or ads were earned, owned or paid for? Perhaps the user eyeballed some information elsewhere in the vastness of the Web and Social networking about your brand, your product lines, specific products, etc? Maybe you got unexpected and positive news coverage on Wednesday that impacted the user’s viewpoint?
Further, how about the cloud or CDN network enhancements that kicked in in this scenario Tuesday night or Wednesday, which made the UX on your site on Thursday faster, better or otherwise more enjoyable for your user to complete the purchase.
Did one of your brilliant design artisans adjust the shade of blue in the background on the product page that this user saw, between visit 2 and visit 3 to the site?
Perhaps your merchandisers tweaked the category and PDP (product) pages a bit to reflect more product information than had been previously known, or added a product bundle for purchase which made our user want to convert even more on their Thursday visit.
Why do these variables matter for trying to cost account the success of a given digital ad buy or campaign? Plain and simple. If we are to be truly transparent and even holistic in approach to understanding true cost of a customer acquisition from digital media campaigns, then we need to get real in terms of factoring in the wide range of other elements, changes, nuances or events which impacted that user’s behavior, aka customer/consumer journey.
I believe strongly that digital media attribution standards should allow for shared credit, perhaps via a points system or some other method that a great mathematician can help devise. Not just shared credit among the 3-5 digital media sources and ads potentially seen by the user before they converted to sale, but also shared credit for site or vendor-internal changes made during the user’s view through window after their first ad exposure on Monday which may not always get accounted for, unless they were part of an intentional A/B test.
Even the subtlest events which could impact the user from Monday’s visit to your site turning into a conversion on Thursday deserve credit for their part in the process of making a sale happen; adopting at least some elements of this view can allow all of us involved in the digital media and eCommerce ecosystem to have ultimate transparency with factoring how much it really cost to generate the conversion as well as deeper understanding of what actually caused the conversion to happen.
Rant completed. Have a great weekend!
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Scott Rabinowitz doesn't get many calls from business reporters who want to write serious stories. He understands, "They tend to focus more on the controversial rather than our business practices. It's more fun and amusing than asking me to provide analytical feedback."
But we suspect mainstream content marketers could learn a lot from the adult world. After all, it's a massive, intensely competitive, industry selling millions of subscriptions across every demographic over 18. As Rabinowitz points out, "It's relevant to all humanity; and one third of searches across search engines are adult on everyone's network, not just one part."
Also, VCs and banks won't touch the industry for the most part - so adult subscription marketers have to make at least a dollar back for every single dollar they spend.
As the head of one of the only online advertising agencies and affiliate networks specializing in adult content sites, Rabinowitz is in the heart of the action. "Our affiliate network handles three times the financial output of eBay's affiliate network," he says.
We asked Rabinowitz who admits, ""I spend more of my time looking at spreadsheets and contracts than I do looking at content", to reveal what he's discovered from these spreadsheets that might apply to the mainstream content world...
Quick Data - Pricing and Lifetime Value
The average adult marketer's "pain threshold" to acquire a new subscriber is $35.
Subscription prices range from $7-10 per month for lower-value sites with static image galleries; to $29-49 month for general "mass interest" sites with a wide range of broadband content that's updated frequently.
So, if you do the math, it's obvious that average subscription lifetimes are often only two-three months. There's high churn, which makes sense given the impulse buy factor and competitive marketplace.
Although mainstream publishers tend to price niche content more highly than general-interest content, pricing for niche adult sites is often fairly low at $9.95-$14.95. However, the average account lifetime for a special interest adult site offering lots of exclusive content can be six-nine months. (We know plenty of mainstream sub sites that yearn for that month-to-month lifetime.)
Lesson #1. Raising Profits with Cross-sales Interstitials Between Competitors
"Even if you're generating 4-5 conversions for every 500 clicks, you could get the other 455 to buy something from a competitor or peer," explains Rabinowitz.
"It's reasonable to assume that consumers coming to the site from a relevant search are willing to plunk down a credit card. You can effectively reallocate that consumer as an asset by making a qualified recommendation for other sites."
On other words, adult subscription sites often run exit pop-ups and interstitial ads promoting direct competitors to all the traffic that comes to their marketing pages but doesn't convert.
Makes sense, after all mainstream print subscription marketers have been bartering and renting each other's expire lists for years.
Does it work? "I can tell you some adult merchants generate upwards of 10% of their gross return on investment of any tangible conversion activities through it."
So, 10% of your online ad costs can be covered by simply promoting competing offers to all the traffic that doesn't convert on your offer.
Lesson #2. Improve Search Marketing Conversion Rates With Targeted Landing Pages
Rabinowitz agrees with search marketing experts around the world when he says, the more you customize your search marketing landing pages to match individual search terms, the higher your subscription conversion rates will be.
So, if someone searches for "heart health advice", a general health site will get far more subscribers if the initial clickthrough page that focuses on that specific topic. "The likelihood of people buying increases three times to tenfold, when a well-created landing page emphasizes the exact item they were looking for."
Also, "landing pages do need to be short and sweet in the world of adult merchants. You have roughly a couple of seconds to make an impression to make the user consider going forward."
Lesson #3. Mass Portal Sites Can Use Boutique-style Niche Offerings to Raise Conversions & Lifetime Value
Rabinowitz says even mass portals and general interest content sites should take advantage of the proven fact that niche offers convert better and have longer lifetime subscriptions.
His advice - create a series of boutique-areas in your site.
This idea, pioneered with huge success by large department stores 30 years ago, works just as well for adult subscription sites now. In fact, Rabinowitz thinks it would work especially well for family-oriented sites, because everyone in the family gets a site targeted specifically to their interests with the convenience of one monthly fee.
So your newsletters, community functionality, content archives, etc., should be available in niche-branded areas within the general site. If subscribers want to take advantage of the rest of the site, they know it's there, but they don't have to wade through generic content to get what they're looking for every time they visit.
Lesson #4. Lifetime Retention Starts With Your Banners
The adult industry has tested everything it can to increase lifetime subscription retention, because that way lies more profitability.
One winning tactic that may startle you -- include your subscription price, or text indicating a credit card is required, in your advertising banners and search marketing copy.
You are in effect pre-qualifying the traffic that comes to you (especially important if you're paying per click.)
"You start building retention even before the point of sale," explains Rabinowitz.
Next, he advises sites to tweak their order form pages to eliminate "buyer's remorse" by stating month-to-month billing terms extremely clearly, and by telling people how great your customer service is in case of lost passwords, tech support, and even cancels.
After conversion, sites should contact subscribers on a regular basis (Rabinowitz suggests weekly) to let them know about both new and upcoming content. The more you can emphasize exclusivity, and "this is not available free elsewhere," the better.
Note: Got questions for Rabinowitz? He says he's going to try to make it to the ContentBiz Summit on Selling Subscriptions in New York this May, to network and learn even though, "I may be the only adult content guy there."
