E-Marketing
Tips From the Front Lines It seems obvious to many of us, but marketing experts says they’re continually amazed at how few Web pages and banner ads they come across include the advertiser’s toll free phone number. Apparently no one keeps a phone by their computers any more … NOT! Web service company Magnify360.com suggests adding a toll-free number near an online registration form or an important link for conversions to boost results. The company told Internet Marketing Report recently that it always gets higher completion rates and conversions when the toll-free number is included. Why? The toll free number makes prospects feel secure that they can reach real people with a real phone number. Here at AICPA Media, our own research confirms this fact. Including a toll-free number in your banner ads was one of 12 important online marketing tips that we cited in our Beyond the Click case study. We recently made a YouTube video about this research report and created separate vignettes for each of the 12 tips. Guess which tip got the most downloads by far? You guessed it — “include a toll-free number in your banner ads.” How Heavy Clickers May Distort Your Results A new report from Natural Born Clickers found that 70 percent of the Web community doesn’t click on things they see online. That’s yet another reason why focusing on exclusively on clicks may distort your results. Researchers found that heavy clickers — defined as those who clicked on ads at least four times per month, accounted for six percent of the online population but about half of all clicks. Moderate clickers — those who clicked on ads two to three times per month accounted for 10 percent of the online population and 30 percent of the clicks. While heavy clickers purchased five times as much as non-clickers, they didn’t buy in direct proportion to amount of times they clicked, the researchers found.
Source: Natural Born Clickers Do You Know Your Vistors’ Return on Time Spent? Most marketers track conversions, click-throughs and the ROI for their major campaigns, but not many track the return on their time. Only 20 percent of online marketers track the return on time spent, according to Business.com’s Ben Hanna in a recent Internet Marketing Report interview. By contrast, two in five (40%) track their return on ad spending. One tip: Try jotting down how much time you spend on each marketing task during the day — look at it as your billable time the way lawyers and accountants track their time. Search Engines Penalize Sites With Slow Loading Pages Web gurus have been warning clients for years that the major search engines don’t look kindly at sites with slow loading pages and now Internet Marketing Report among others says it’s true. Google recently confirmed that load times will be taken into account when it rates the quality of a landing page under the pay per click (PPC) program. Things to look out for? Bad links, too much script, heavy images and flash. |