[O.T.] - Advertising ROI question

Sorry if this is off-topic, I'm putting an adverting question in a Marketing forum as both topics are not too far away!

Here's the deal. I have to advertise a business portal that is going to be launched by the end of the year. It is going to be available in 4 languages, and it is going to sell a service charged $250/year. The service is arguably very good because it helps companies organizing their sales, and increasing dramatically their productivity. Target audience are small/medium size companies.

The forecasted goals are 5,000 customers in one year. I have no idea how we can achieve it because I have never studied ROI for advertising (preferably online). I need to have at least an idea on how much the company should invest in banner ads, AdWords, etc...

To reach the goals. I'd like to have figures to base my study, for instance: Out of 10,000 banner prints, 2,000 will click, and out of these 2,000 clickers, 50 will buy your product. This is just an example, but if you have already an experience in the area, this would be great to tell how big is the ROI for every types of advertising (AdWords, Banner ads, magazine ads, etc...). I expect that we are going to target specifically executives, companies and bookkeepers only, whenever possible.

Any piece of information/lived experience is greately appreciated!
Thank you very much.

Charles.

 

Hi Calande,

One of the things that took me ages to realise in the begining is that you have to track everything properly to know which method is worth spending your money on. Especially when it comes to Google Adwords. Not all Keywords that have high click throughs result in a sale.

Buy a script that tracks it all for you like

www.knowyoursales.com (Has tutorial vids for free)
or
www.dynatracker.com

Ive bought both and prefer the first one. You can import and track 100's of keywords and figure out which ones are actually getting the sales.

To get the actual numbers, you will have to test and track the results.
You will get different numbers depending on the way you advertise eg Tageting keywords with bannners, may get a wildly different result when targeting those same keywords on Adwords and Overture etc.

With a tracking script you can see the ROI of each method side by side.

hope that helps

 

I think having 1 out of every 5 banners being clicked on is a lofty goal.

Advertising (maybe) brings people in, you still have to sell them a product.

I would do a competitive analysis. See what your competitors are paying for online advertising. It's not that difficult - with adwords, you can at least estimate what their PPCs are and you could even run a brief campaign to see how many impressions they are getting. (send traffic to an informative site or some sort of affiliate program you signed up with). With banner advertising - figure out where they are advertising and check out the rack rates. Try to get an understanding of the size of their user bases to help you figure out how much they are making vs. how much they are spending. Some companies will spend a year in the red just to gain name recognition. If you are up against someone like that, the best idea in my mind is to piggy back a few of their programs - but with smaller purchases. They've done the work to get buzz going, and people will be looking for alternatives. Also target keyword phrases like "competitor name alternatives" and "competitor name comparisons" - even if you just put a freebie page up somewhere.

The way I've run things (doesn't work in all markets) - but it does work in some - if you spend $200 to pick up 2 $100 customers, it was well worth it. You got your investment back, and you started building name recognition.

Launching in four languages is good to show that you are large, but you'll have to manage customers and pricing in four very different marketplaces. People in Mexico do business dramatically differently than in the US. The same is true all around the world. You'll have to cater to different needs and desires. You are going to have to figure out how to make everyone happy.

Good luck to you.

 

Thank you, I'll definetely follow your tips