Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

What are people searching for? Where are people going on your website? What's the bounce rate for these pages?

I notice that many of your images take a bit to load (esp. your banner page). I'd suggest optimizing the images for load speed. Also, you haven't focused on the alt text for your images at all. That can likewise help your SEO efforts.

Dear [name removed by request of the poster],

First of all, your site took almost 45 seconds to load, and I'm using a high speed link.

For anyone using a slower connection, your site will take minutes to load, which will seriously hit your page abandonment rate.

Revisit your image file sizes and adjust accordingly to see what works better across a range of browsers. Huge pain I know, but put yourself in the boots of your shopper.

I agree with Jay on the ALT TAGS issue, a point I've made on numerous other e-marketing and website posts on MarketingProfs. Those little tags seem so pointless, but my, how they help SEO.

As to your question, I'd do all the things you suggested, but I'd be less inclined to invest time in banners unless they're on really high traffic sites with great click through rates. Banner blindness seems to be getting worse, and to really engage people, I'd consider authority sites: postings on relevant sites and in forums.

So often overlooked but HUGE because they are pretty much permanent slices of Internet real estate, and if they're on pages with great SEO rankings in their own right, and if your articles are keyword optimized, your message gets out on other people's sites AND it gains the weight of the credibility associated with the authority site in question.

You're getting roughly 21.2K visitors per month? Great. Now, consider partnering with the other sites your site visitors frequent.

For a list, visit this site and look to the bottom right of the screen:
https://www.quantcast.com/gamousa.com under "Audience Also Visits".

How many of those sites accept advertising? How many will partner with you? (your ad on their site, their ad on yours). How many of these sites have blogs, forums, or open discussion pages? What about memberships, associations, and affiliations?

Think out, beyond your regular zone. What else do your primary site visitors spend their money on? How often have you surveyed them? The information and the answers to increased profits are all out there. All you have to do is open your eyes to the possibilities.

I hope this helps you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Hi Jonas,

Sticking with the original question, you'd like to know what % of the marketing budget you should allocate to each activity. Unfortunately, I can't give you a hard answer because it depends. Every industry, and company finds these tactics return different results based on their customers' preferences and the abilities of the person(s)/agency running the program.

Fortunately, each of these online marketing methods is trackable and refinable. So depending on your time and budget constraints, it'd probably be beneficial to test each with a limited budget, and increase spend on those with the best return. Instead of a set amount of spend for the year, you should be updating allocations quarterly, even monthly. Everything moves faster online, as a result, budgets aren't set in stone.

Finally, in creating your budget allocation, you should also be considering larger marketing objectives. For example, maybe you're increasing the focus on retaining existing customers rather than getting new customers to convert. To support that objective you'd be better off shifting resources to a medium better suited to this goal, like email marketing, and toning down ppc spend.

Hope this helps. Cheers,

- Jesse Kanclerz

Dear Jonas,

I surfed onto this question with the idea of helping you out with some information. However following Jesse's reply there is really nothing much I can add.

The only reason I am even posting this is because we normally tend to overlook advice that is seemingly so 'obvious'; and I want to make sure I draw to your attention that this answer has hit the nail right on the head.

Jesse, your blog just got itself a new subscriber.

Regards,
Clive Fernandes
Clive Fernandes Consulting