Pittsburgh Online Marketing –Improving Methods of Measuring ROI

Develop a Clear Pittsburgh Online Marketing Message

When it comes to measuring your ROI from your website or PPC advertisements most businesses rely on analytics, however these are only one form of measurement.

If your goal is to convert sales via incoming phone calls directly generated through a website or PPC ad and you get 10,000 clicks per day to your site and no calls, how good is this metric as a measure of ROI? It’s almost worthless, but it’s a starting point. Everybody has heard of the phrase “statistics can be misleading”, this is a case in point when it comes to using analytics solely in regards to ROI.

Analytics can show a lot about your visitors.  They are a fine measure of how web traffic arrives to your site, what geographical locations visitors are viewing from, what their patterns are for finding your site, how they behave when navigating your site, and where they leave from. Analytics can also measure other metrics, but for final sale rates generated from your site or ads they are only half the measure.

Let’s use the same client from above for an example. Let’s say this client sells 100 units during this day. This would lead us to believe that our Conversion Rate is 1 in 100 or 10,000 clicks/ 100 sales. However, how many calls does our client have to take to get those 100 sales? I suspect it’s more than just 100. We need to measure clicks / calls and then calls / sales.

Let’s not forget that business does not exist in a vacuum like the analytics used to measure it. Most businesses have a Marketing Mix which is far more diverse. Social Media Campaigns, Print Advertising, other Online Marketing listings, word of mouth, and customer Brand Recognition awareness also play a part.

The need for business to measure the effectiveness of Social Media Marketing campaigns, Website traffic, and PPC conversion rates to justify continuation of Online Marketing Campaigns is impossible to quantify by analytics alone. If a company is looking to quantify sales we must look beyond analytics.

Conversion Tracking and Return on investment (ROI)

The following statement comes directly from Google Adwords Help, “ROI is the ratio of your costs to your profits. It's typically the most important metric for advertisers because it is based on your specific advertising goals and shows the real effect your advertising efforts have on your business. ROI revolves around conversions: customer actions that you deem valuable such as a purchase, sign-up, webpage visit, or lead.”

This is all well and good and provides further data for an effective lead generation stream but it has to go further if ROI is to be measured from it. We need a conversion rate for our conversion rates generated by the analytics and the Conversion Tracking we now use and a better way to measure them. Sales are the only way to measure return rates in the traditional sense. Without sales there is no ROI.

Blackball Online Marketing specializes in all forms of Internet Marketing and Website Promotion. We handle Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google Maps listings for Local Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing Campaigns as well as managing many traditional media delivery methods. Call us at (412) 377-7280 to discuss your Pittsburgh Online Marketing needs.

Twitter and the Follow Limit of 2000 Rule

Pittsburgh, PA - In the course of our Social Media Marketing Campaigns we, at Blackball Online have found that Twitter really drives traffic to our website. We used the tools we had read about in our research of this medium to boost and analyze our visitors we gained from Twitter. View our past blog posts on Twitter to read about these tools. We follow all of those who follow us.

Once we reached 2000 followers, Twitter would not allow us to follow any more people. So, we did some research. When we checked out the help button on Twitter’s Navigation Bar we found this:

“What are follow limits?”

Twitter recently added follow and update limits for stability and abuse control.  You can read more about this here.

I can understand Twitter’s need to protect the integrity of its API from spammers, Bots and auto-generating Tweet tools that place an extreme burden on the servers, but please let me know what the ratio is. It states,

“We've also placed limits on the number of people you can follow. The number is different for everyone, and is based on a ratio that changes as the account changes. If you hit a follow limit, you must balance your follower/following ratio in order to follow more people- basically, you can't follow 50,000 people if only 23 people follow you. Based on current behavior in the Twitter community, we've concluded that this is both fair and reasonable.”

I am not, however, a fan of the statement that the number is different for everyone. I have sent requests with no replies from Twitter as of yet. Maybe this post will help. I have noticed many of our followers have hit the same limits in their accounts. Possibly Twitter could be a little more transparent with their rules. By the same token Twitter is growing into their role like most of us.

If you are aware of the ratio of followers/following that allows users to follow over 2000 people, please let us know by commenting on this post for all to see. We at Blackball Online and the many other Twitter users who are affected would be greatly appreciative.

The first article below suggests that the number of followers to following is within 180 tweeps (people). So if I were to follow 2001 people, I would need at least 1821 followers. But to follow 1 more I would need to unfollow 1 – thus keeping the ratio within 180. If this is true, this is another hurdle to building a following. The article also offers some strategies for building a powerful and robust Twitter network. It is definitely worth the read.

Clearly Twitter is still going through many growing pains and this will all need to be worked out. I just wish they had a central source with definitive answers to this and other questions.

Other links to this topic:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/social-networking-sites/40745-twitter-2000-fix.html

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/12/twitters-2000-follow-limit-raises-a-ruckus-but-how-many-people-can-you-seriously-keep-track-of-anyway/trackback/

http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/what_happens_if_i_hit_a_twitter_limit

Pittsburgh is poised to host and experience a global event on par with the Olympics. That  means a lot of eyes, (including corporations) from all over the world will be getting a birds-eye-view of our Black and Gold, people, geography, businesses, and everything else, including, (and this is a big “including”) our technology.

When the G2 Summit happens here in Pittsburgh a more than usual amount of people are going to be craving hi-speed Internet access, reliable and instantaneous mobile access, as well as over-all general communications. So, will Pittsburgh’s digital infrastructure be up to the challenge? I believe so, and then some.

Well, New York might be the "City that never sleeps," but Pittsburgh is the "City that never quits." How could a business or enterprise not consider locating in Pittsburgh with the winner's temperament we have mirrored by our sports teams? Anyway, like the man said, "Read all about it." And have fun; take a peek at the links below. 
http://www.post-gazette.com/penguins/

http://www.post-gazette.com/multimedia/?videoid=101992

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbYMbO0wUDc

http://penguins.nhl.com/index.html

See what Detroit, (the losers) are saying:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbYMbO0wUDc

http://www.freep.com/article/20090612/COL01/90612091

Pittsburgh, PA - Blackball Online is a firm believer in sound SEO principles to advertise and market your enterprise Online. Our business is to help you succeed in getting the exposure your company needs and the business that goes with it. To this end, we work tirelessly on every avenue of Internet Advertising and Internet Marketing. Search Engine Advertising (SEA) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are becoming just as familiar as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in the marketplace.

An old saying in business is that there are the quick, and there are the dead. Meaning, failure to react to market trends and technologies can, and do, leave many a fine business in the dust wondering what happened. We are firm believers in the fact that a sense of entitlement is the kiss of death for any business. "We are NO. 1 and we'll always be NO. 1." This is a fallacy. Just look at GM. The wolf is always at the door.

The fundamental principles behind advertising and marketing, which are building your particular brand and connecting your product / services to consumers has not really changed. What have changed are the choices of delivery, and the Internet is now a major component along with the traditional. Our view at Blackball Online is that a successful campaign relies on leveraging the old and the new.

Combining a first class Website, sound Organic SEO, SEA, and SEM with Pay per Click only reaches one segment of the market. We still want to support and acquire customers that either don't have access to the Internet, or are unaware of the massive benefits our services can provide. A great site therefore is not enough.

So how do we help you reach the rest of your target market? We still believe in television, word of mouth, print, and good old fashioned elbow grease. That is what survives. We have formed strategic alliances with many businesses in all forms of advertising and marketing to help serve you better. We can help you craft a campaign that mixes the old and the new to cover all your bases. Let's get started. Contact Blackball Online today and while you're at it please sign up for our feeds through email or RSS on the right hand column of our Blackball Online Newsblog. Thank You as always for your support.