Developing a Successful Online Advertising Campaign
Recorded on September 29, 2016 @ 3:00 p.m. MST with Jason Marsh
Online advertising is a powerful marketing channel for expanding your client base and increasing sales. What makes online advertising so effective is that it is highly targeted, measurable and scalable. But picking the right mediums and properly implementing online ad campaigns is critical. In the webinar you’ll learn what makes online advertising so effective, the difference between branding and direct response advertising channels. The most important online advertising channels to consider, the unique benefits offered by different online advertising channels, how to identify your ideal prospects and develop a plan to attract them How to super-charge your content strategy with digital advertising, the importance of identifying your client acquisition costs, how to manage advertising like a high-return investment, how to effectively measure the ROI of your advertising spend down to the dollar, how to build a repeatable, profitable, and scalable online marketing machine to grow your business.
Jason Marsh, founder of digital marketing agency MARSH8, has been working in the trenches of internet marketing since 2008, driving new business for companies spanning from Broadway to Silicon Valley. When it comes to acquiring new clients online, Jason Marsh is a nationally-known digital marketer knows how to get results. In an ever-changing digital landscape, he knows what is working right now. With an approach that is part art and part science, Jason and his team at MARSH8 develop scalable and data-driven online strategies for clients that consistently generate significant returns on investment. Jason has chaired the Legal Marketing Interest Group for the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Division, and was recently appointed to chair the brand-new Client Development & Marketing Committee. He is frequently invited to speak at conferences and legal associations across the country, and is a contributing editor for Law Practice Today.
Watch the Webinar
This webinar was presented as a part of the ServeNowEDU Webinar series. To watch other previously recorded webinars and to register for upcoming webinars, visit ServeNowEDU.
Resources and Summary
Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.
John Wanamaker
The biggest thing that’s changed is digital advertising (advertising on the internet). Digital advertising is highly targeted, highly measurable, and highly scalable.
Highly Targeted
The goal is to show the right ad to the right person at the right time. It doesn’t do us any good to show our products and services to people who aren’t going to be interested in what we’re selling. Targeting in traditional print media is challenging unless you’re advertising in an industry-specific magazine, but that doesn’t have to be the case today with digital advertising.
Highly Measurable
Once you’ve got the ads in front of the right people, you want to know what’s working and what isn’t, as well as where to shift your money to get the best return. If you can’t measure it, you can’t measure it, but with digital advertising you have access to precise measurements.
Highly Scalable
You’re able to target the right people and measure them to be effective, but how do we scale those? Scalability is about building a model that can be utilized over time that has repeatable and predictable outcomes.
Very little of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; and I know exactly what I’m getting out of it.
Digital advertiser
The Difference Between Branding and Direct Response Advertising
Each of these types of advertising will play a different role in your campaigns, so it’s important to understand each of them.
Branding
Branding is about building awareness and customer preference around your business and your specific products and, ultimately, influencing your customer’s buying patterns. The main goal is making sure people know who you are and what you do, and that they have a feeling that you are good at what you do and will reach out to you when they need your services. Be THE process server within your city, not just A process server.
In some cases, with identical products the customers are often times willing to pay more money when the perception is that the product is better.
You want to be the first process server a person thinks of when they need a process server.
Direct Response
Direct response is about driving a prospect, or a viewer of your ad, to take a very specific action. Think of a call to action, like “Call Now for a Free Consultation” or “Subscribe to Our Mailing List.”
Types of Online Advertising
There are five key types of online advertising:
Paid search
Paid social
Banner
Remarketing
Directory
The top two channels for process servers are paid search and organic search.
Paid Search
The primary form of paid search is buying ad space in Google. Paid search is “High Intent,” meaning that they are able to type in what they’re looking for and get a set of results. It’s very effective, which makes it very popular, which in turn makes it very expensive.
Paid search includes targeting by keywords and pay-per-click (PPC). The cost for these is based on demand and the price is auction-based.
Paid Social
Paid social is about branding and awareness, and it’s becoming increasingly popular and relatively inexpensive. The key benefit of paid social is that it highly targeted, specifically through demographic and interest.
When you’re thinking about advertising through social media, think about the audience you want to reach. The foundation of paid social strategy is to understand who your target audience is. Think about your customers and break them out into different profiles, or personas. When you break your customers into profiles, you can cater your advertising and what you’re saying to what will be most impactful for each group. Facebook is the biggest avenue for paid social when it comes to process servers. One of the most powerful components of Facebook is audience targeting capabilities.
Think about the person you are targeting, and ask yourself…
Where do they live?
Do they have children?
What products do they buy?
What books do they read?
What is their income level?
What is their education level?
What are their interests?
For branding purposes, you also want to share content and free resources that your clients will find helpful and associate with your brand. Social media is native (in-feed advertising). It’s not high intent, but it offers unmatched reach, targeting, frequency, and cost opportunities for branding and lead generation.
Banner
Banners are about branding and awareness. These are traditional graphic ads you see on websites. They are relatively inexpensive and both geographically and contextually (the type of content on the page) targeted.
Remarketing
Remarketing, or retargeting, is banner ads with a unique twist. Remarketing ads target only previous visitors to the website. This intends to stay on top of the mind of the people who have visited your site, to bring visitors back, and increase ROI on other campaigns. If you’ve ever noticed an ad for a product or website appearing on other sites after you’ve visited their site, you are seeing that company’s remarketing.
Advertising As Investment
When you think about investing, you think stocks, real estate, or other avenues that will bring more money in. Advertising is an investment in the future of your company.
A good return is 10-15% annually, but what about returns of 100-200%? Where do you get those kinds of returns. The entire goal of your advertising strategy is to generate a return on that investment.
Here’s how to make sure you’re making a good investment:
Understand Customer Acquisition
Understand what you can invest in order to acquire a new customer. First you need to understand the VALUE of a new customer. What is your customer worth in revenue over the lifetime of the business relationship?
You can use an ROI calculator to see how all of the costs of new customer acquisition (client value, direct costs, indirect costs, profit, etc.) and the potential for ROI.
Scaling Your Company
Scaling is about building a repeatable, profitable model. This means tweaking your ROI calculations to find out how your program scales over time.