Hopefully, at this point, he stops throwing money at the world, and learns a better way to advertise that stands a far better chance of resulting in positive ROI for every dollar he spends. If so, then at this point, he learns that his ads should be shown only to the group of people who are not only most interested in his products or services, but who are also most likely to respond to whatever offer he is presenting.

On this journey of discovery, he adds two new words to his marketing vocabulary — “targeted” and “qualified”.

What is targeted traffic? Users who are specifically interested in the products or services he provides are the users he wants to target. The chances of converting those users are much higher than the chances of converting a user who landed on his site accidentally and has no interest in what he has to offer. It suddenly becomes obvious to the entrepreneur that if he only spends money advertising to people who already have a strong interest in what he has to offer, then his conversion rate will likely be high, and the return on his investment will likewise be high.

What is qualified traffic? Qualified users are those who are not only interested in his products or services, but are able and ready to actually to to buy. It’s the difference between “looky-loos” and those who have a real need for the product, the budget to acquire the product, and the authority to approve the purchase of the product.

Now our entrepreneur can begin to shed his “newb” status and start launching marketing campaigns that are aimed at targeted, qualified individuals.

Let’s take a look at an example how our businessman can effectively accomplish this new goal.

Our fictional company owner has created a specialized dating service aimed at matching wealthy singles who are both into adventure and extreme sports, and wants to advertise his service on Facebook.

Before he understood the merits of showing ads only to targeted, qualified individuals, he probably would have designed an that sounded exciting or intriguing, but aimed it at everyone. What kind of traffic would he have shown that ad to?

Now that he is a little more savvy, he can begin to narrow that number down.

First, he chooses to only show ads to people interested in sports.

After thinking about it, he realizes that’s still way too general, so he narrows that down to people who enjoy extreme sports.

More thought, and he realizes that he forgot to only target singles, so he adds that to mix.

Finally, he knows his service is pricey, so he wants to pre-qualify his targeted audience as much as possible. Facebook doesn’t have an “I’m rich” category, but our now-savvy businessman can make some educated guesses on finding those people who are more likely to be qualified to pay his steep prices. So he’ll also target various interests, such as yachts, for example.

Now he’s narrowed his ad campaign down to a very targeted group of people who are more likely to be qualified as well. He can choose many different interests besides yachts, of course, honing his campaign until he finds the sweet spot of targeted, qualified users that are most likely to sign up for his specialized dating service.

Suddenly, our online entrepreneur has become a businessman who no longer empties his pockets while chasing everyone in the world. He now understands why the terms “targeted” and “qualified” matter, and is currently enjoying his own extreme adventure.

Related articles:

How To Use Facebook’s New Power Editor For Ads

How to run an effective Facebook campaign for $5

Original at Why The Terms Targeted and Qualified Matter BlitzLocal

Let’s say that you have an offer that converts at 1%. Then you’d expect to have 1 conversion in every 100 clicks. What if 200 clicks go by and there are no conversions? Is that a sign of something bad or is that just noise?

The math of calculating statistical significance can be complicated, so I’m going to show you a short cut that comes from probability theory. If you want to go straight to the formula skip to the bottom.

Switching examples, let’s say that you flipped a coin 100 times. What is the probability that you get at least 1 head? You might want to calculate the probability of getting just 1 head in 100 tosses, add that to the probability of getting 2 heads, and so forth– all the way up to 100 heads. This is lots of math.

But did you know that the opposite of at least one is none? If you didn’t get at least 1 head, you got none. Thus, the probability of not getting a head each time you flip is 50%, so the answer is just 50% to the 100th power.

Back to our offer that converts at 1%, the probability of a click NOT converting is 99%– 100 percent minus 1 percent. Thus, the probability of not getting a conversion in X clicks is just 99% to the Xth degree. If 200 clicks go by, you would expect to see 2 conversions– but if there are none, what is the probability it’s just random noise?

Plug those numbers in and you’ll see that if an offer should convert at 1% and you see 200 clicks go by, then it’s a 13.4% chance that something is wrong and therefore a 86.6% chance that things are fine. If you change the conversion rate and number of observations, then the probability changes, too– just plug in the numbers.

Now before you set up a script to alert you to changes in conversion rates, consider that if you set the thresholds for alerts too low, you’ll get inundated with false positives– the equivalent of “crying wolf”.

So in the above case, if there’s a 13.4% chance something is actually wrong– the URL being down, the offer sucking, the ad not performing, or otherwise– and you’re running 20,000 clicks a day, then you are evaluating this test 100 times a day (200 x 100 = 20,000). Thus, you’d get alerted, on average, 13 times a day to check if something is wrong. Is that too many times for you? You decide the balance of sensitivity that’s right for you.

If your expected conversion rate is 5%, for example on dating offer, then you’d expect to see a conversion every 20 clicks. Thus, the probability you don’t have any conversions after 200 clicks is far less than if you expect 1%. In fact, the probability is 0.004%.

If you’re not a math guy or somehow got lost in all the numbers here, just use this rule of thumb. If you don’t have a conversion in 3 times as many clicks as you’d expect to get one conversion, then something is probably wrong.

So if you expect to see 1 conversion every 25 clicks, then shut things down after 75 clicks.
If you expect 1 conversion in 100 clicks, then stop after 300 clicks.

That gives you a 95% confidence interval– another way of saying that you’re reasonably sure that it’s something worth looking at.

Set your confidence interval too low and you get false positives all day.

Set it too high and you’ll burn way more inventory than you should to detect differences in conversion.

See chart below– the percentages there are the chance that the alert is due to just statistical noise. 100% minus each number is, therefore, the chance that there’s a problem. For example, if you are looking at a 2% conversion rate and 200 clicks, then there’s a 1.76% chance nothing is wrong and a 98% chance that something is out of whack.

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If you want to discuss the formulas in more detail, just reply in the comments and I’ll do my best to get back to you.

Here’s to more profits to you!

Related Reading:

• How to use Google Conversion Optimizer in just 3 minutes
• Dennis Yu gives Facebook optimization tips for hosting companies
• GoogleAnalytics vs. Omniture: Independent Analysis
• Funeral marketing is no grave matter – Focus on conversion rates
• 11 Killer Ways to Increase Your Facebook CTR

Original at Want to Calculate the Best Conversions? BlitzLocal

Retargeting is a new buzzword that is quickly spreading through the marketing community. Many online business owners have heard the term recently but aren’t quite sure what it means. I spent some time researching this fast-growing marketing technique and wanted to share my findings with you.

Let’s start with a common definition of retargeting. Retargeting, also commonly known as “behavioral retargeting” or “behavioral remarketing”, essentially means targeting ads and marketing efforts at consumers and prospects who have previously visited your website, but did not convert.

The key here is that you target your ads only at users who have visited your site, have had some kind of experience with your brand, and who are now considered “lost” users. Retargeting aims to bring those lost users back to you, using ads that can skip the “introduction to your brand” phase.

Anyone who sells anything on the web understands that converting is the number one goal. Retargeting allows you to go after those lost conversions, and some studies show that retargeting can increase conversion rates by up to 125%.

Keys To Successful Retargeting Campaigns

1. Granular targeting: Being able to segment your visitors into small, tightly focused groups enables precise retargeting. For example, by knowing exactly which specific products and services your visitors engaged with on your site, you can later deliver those same product ad to that group of users.
2. Working with ad networks who have the technology to track and use the information obtained to present retargeted ads across a large network of sites is essential to making this work. When a user visits your site, a cookie is dropped to track that user’s interests on your site. You share that cookie with your ad network, who in turn, serves relevant ads to that same user as he or she lands on any other site that uses that ad network to serve ads.
3. Personalization of the ad is critical. You’ll set business rules to determine which ads get displayed (using dynamic content insertion) based on various factors, such as whether the user is a registered user of your site and has supplied you with an email address in the past, what phase of the buying cycle she is likely to be in, how many times she has visited and left without converting, etc.
4. Careful and continuous analysis of web analytics is a must to create successful retargeting campaigns. Knowing which ads work, and which ads the user has seen too many times are equally vital. A good campaign will provide a variety of ads aimed at promoting the same thing to measure success and frequency caps to avoid ad burnout.
5. Dynamic, customized landing pages work well. If a retargeted ad is successful in bring a user back to your site, acknowledging her return can welcome her and personalize the experience for her.
6. Once a retargeted user converts, the cookie is removed, and the user falls out of the retargeting group.
7. You can also use the same concept of retargeting in the social realm, though with admittedly less control, since you won’t be able to drop a cookie. You’ll also be limited to a narrow online world, but one which your users are likely spending most of their time. One of the big advantages of utilizing Facebook ads, for example, is that the ads can be targeted to highly specific groups. You can set up ads to target only Facebook users who have a relevant interest (or is a fan of a competitor), and who aren’t fans of you yet. Send them to a specific landing page. If they don’t convert (they don’t click the Like button), you can continue to show them a variety of different ads to remind them of your offer. You’ll also need to be careful to avoid ad burnout here, and may need to create shorter-term campaigns when retargeting within a social network. If your retargeting efforts succeed and a user converts, she’ll drop out of the user pool that you’re targeting with this group of ads.

Add Retargeting To The Marketing Mix

Marketers always want to supply the right ad to the right user at the right time. Sometimes, that means showing a generic display ad that introduces your brand to users who have never heard of you. Other times, you may show ads to search engine users with relevant PPC ads. Now, with retargeting, you can also show personalized ads to users who have already visited your site and failed to convert. Your brand is one they are already familiar with, so you can skip the introductions and move right to the phase of reminding them that they had considered one of your products in the recent past. Reminding “lost” users of your brand – and specific products – enables you to reach an audience that the other types of ads aren’t designed to reach.

Original at What’s Up With Retargeting? BlitzLocal

“After performing a Google search for ‘local blue widgets’, I found your sponsored ad toward the bottom of the first page. Your ad looked more professional and appealing than the others even though it wasn’t at the top. I clicked on the ad and it brought me to a page that had great information on blue widgets. It was exactly what I was looking for, as if you somehow knew what I wanted…”

In the past when print media was the primary marketing channel, asking your prospects was a much more viable way to track your leads. You would get answers like “The billboard near my house”, “Your ad in the local newspaper”, “The Yellowpages”, or “The flier I got in the mail”. These things are easy for a viewer to remember. Online Marketing is different: when you browse through 20 different pages in ten minutes, it’s difficult to remember how you stumbled upon a website.

Unfortunately, with Online Marketing your typical answers like “The Internet”, or “A Google search”, simply aren’t enough information. You have no way of knowing if it was an organic result or a sponsored ad that they clicked on, and you can’t tell which page on your website they first landed on, or what keywords they searched. The fact of matter is that you can’t depend on prospects to tell you how they heard about you. We’ve seen folks say they searched Yahoo! for “Denver liposuction”, when we don’t even advertise on Yahoo! for that client. They’re not lying– they just don’t remember.

Here are 5 ways to track your online leads, the first being least effective and last being most effective:

1. Ask them how they heard about you: Even if the client had proper recall, the folks at the front desk aren’t always consistent. Do it anyway, but don’t rely on this data alone.
2. Use a “click to call” technology: For example, Google Voice allows you to embed a widget that will connect both parties. However, folks over 30 (the ones with money to spend on professional services), prefer seeing a phone number and dialing it. Plus, not seeing the phone number on the website will hurt your SEO– the search engines won’t see it as necessarily being local. If you’re in NYC, use a NYC area code; if in San Francisco, use a San Fransisco are code etc. This method is great for tracking leads, but you’re going to miss out on some sales or conversions. People want to see a phone number.
3. Use rotating extensions: So maybe you want to buy only one phone number. To track the source, you can have each page be a different extension– Press “1″ for “Denver Hair Removal“, press “2″ for “Denver Smart Lipo“, and so fourth. This does have its drawbacks; putting clients through another step is going to cause some portion of the leads to drop out.
4. Use multiple phone numbers:  Buying a web-only phone number guarantees that if they called that number, then they were on the site.  You can forward that web-only number to your regular number, so it’s no extra work for your office.  There are a bunch of vendors that provide call tracking, charging from $10 per line per month to $35 per line per month.  If you have 10 numbers, one to track each type of traffic, it becomes a large expense for a small business.  However, if you have just ONE phone number on the site, how are you going to track what keyword they came in on? Though it may be expensive, this is an extremely accurate and easy way to track your leads. You also wont have to worry about prospects dropping calls out of confusion or frustration like you do with multiple extensions.
5. Use a coupon code: For example, when visitors are on a Botox landing page, tell them to mention “BOTOXDOCTOR” to get $50 off their next procedure. Have a different code for each of your different landing pages. Good old fashioned coupon codes that provide an incentive for customers don’t cost you a thing, and is a simple way to effectively track your leads.

I find it surprising that more people don’t use coupon codes. Google Local Business Center and MerchantCircle as well as a few other directories have begun integrating coupons into their advertisements, making it easy for business owners to determine whether a new lead came from Google Maps, MerchantCircle, or some other source.

Original at 5 Ways to Track Leads From Online Marketing BlitzLocal