Hi there!

If one of your New Year Resolutions is to get a website up and running for your business or service, upgrade your existing website to one that actually works (!) or to stop your website being a well kept secret……then read on for some interesting info - and resources - about Google!

You may know that one of the things we do here at AutomatedMarketingMachine.com  for our clients is drive traffic to their new sites using Google adwords.  This is an essential step because we need to find out how the site is working - how well it converts visitors to ezine readers or mailing list subscribers.

Sometimes we drive traffic to a holding page which asks those visitors a market research question or two, which helps our clients hone their product offering before we build the site - or their automated marketing machine, as I like to call them.

(FYI:  I learnt how to use Google adwords first from a couple of places (see below) and I’ve gone on to join perry marshall’s intensive mentoring programme which is brilliant because it not only covers adwords but all manner of useful stuff about direct marketing, both on and offline)

While the setup and monitoring of the Adwords campaign is included in the set up fee we charge clients, the cost per click is not, and clients need to think about how much they are willing to spend to get traffic, to test their automated marketing machine (AMM) and hone their product offering.

Having spent £6000.00 - £9000.00 on a fully integrated AMM, I would advise budgeting for at least $200 / £120 a month to get some traffic initially.  Once your campaign is running efficiently, and you are making sales, you can decide to "up" your budget to get more traffic.

More traffic = more sales.

One of my AutomatedMarketingMachine.com clients (lets call her Case Study #A) emailed me yesterday and expressed concern that her Google Adwords campaign had cost her $139 / £81.00 last month - the first month of her campaign.

I was able to explain to her that for that expenditure, she had received 464 unique visitors to her AMM and had captured 72 ezine signups (a conversion of 15.5% which is very good and shows the site is working well).

Furthermore, I was able to tell her that, for a projected expenditure of $155 / £90 in January, she was on target to enjoy 558 unique new visitors in January and 83 ezine signups - an even better conversion of 16.6%.  This is because we often go live with a site before it’s completely finished, we are always tweaking the AMM’s to improve them and this often results in better conversion rates.

She was paying £1.37 to attract a visitor in December and is now paying 97p per visitor.

The icing on the cake though was to tell her that she had made a sale of her lowest price, automated product, of $75 or approximately £43.  So on one sale, her visitor value has jumped from £0.00 on initial visit, to 47p.  If she makes one more sale of £43 this month, her visitor value will jump from 47p to 94p and if she makes two more sales, her visitor value will be £1.41.  A profit of around 50p per visitor.

perry marshall describes it as a money gumball machine.  You feed money in, and money comes out.  It could be that you feed in $1 to get a $1, or you feed in $1 to get $2.  It might even be that you feed in $1 to get $10 or even $100.  The point is, that once your AMM is set up, you can play with it, optimise it’s performance with things like audio or video messages, professional copywriting, for example.

Popular wisdom says that, if you have a service orientated product in a fairly in-demand market, then you will need 1000 ezine subscribers, with whom you stay in regular contact, to attract clients on a regular basis.  You can choose to get there quickly and spend a bit more money on it, or you can choose to get there slowly and set a lower budget.

If I was a client of mine, I would be asking myself, if I have a AMM that’s converting clients to ezine readers at 15% of visitors, and I know I need 1000 ezine readers before I sell my product or service, how much do I need to spend to get those visitors and to get to that 1000 readers? 

The other question I would be asking is, say it takes me 6 months longer because I want to set a lower budget, how much will I lose in sales during that six months?

This prompted me to have a look at the other clients statistics - all of whom are sellig different products at different price points….and I found some interesting statistics there. 

Case Study B:

This is the longest running client, but it’s a low price point.  In December Client B attracted 6728 new visitors and converted 1643 of them to subscribers - a whopping 24.4%!  Each visitor cost $0.49 (we were experimenting with dominating the market) the site sold an average of 1.1 product a day at $45. 

So the visitor value was $0.93 - a substantial gross profit after marketing costs. In January we have cut the cost per click we are prepared to pay, in order to bring us down from No 1 in Google to Number 2 or 3, and are on course to earn $1.09 per visitor for a cost of $0.37.

Am I the only one who finds this fascinating?  The saying goes that traditional businesses know that 50% of their marketing spend is wasted, but no-one knew which half!  I love the fact that the numbers tell the story here.

Case Study C:

One of the newer clients only finished their product offering at Christmas,and in December (the first month of the campaign) they achieved 1060 visitors at an average cost of $4.71 each, with a conversion rate of 31 ezines signups (2.32%).  We have been tweaking the site and the pages we send the traffic to, and January is on course for 1416 visitors and 134 signups, at a cost of $1.62 per visitor.

Now this client has a product worth $5768 over the year.  Just one sale a year would put the visitor value at $42.92.  One a month would make each visitor worth $515 each.  How much would this client be willing to spend to aquire a visitor?

This is why the banks and credit card companies are willing to spend up to $10 sometimes to get you to visit their site.

The higher the price point, or the heavier the competition, the longer the follow-up process should be, and this is where you need to start thinking about the value of those people you have just won the right to contact again and again.  I would recommend giving information away, stuff of value, things your subscribers are interested in. 

Because your subscribers have a second value, beyond that of the initial sales on first visit.  They have what’s called a "back end" value.  This is where you can make a sale one month, six months, one year, two years down the line.  Some companies even acquire subscribers at a loss, because they know that each visitor will be worth something to them right down the line.

So, what does all this mean to you, as a self employed person or small business?

Well there are a number of questions to ask yourself….

1.  Do you even know how many unique visitors to your site you get per month?

2.  Do you know what you are paying to acquire those visitors?  If nothing, then I suspect you are not getting many visitors…..or are you paying for expensive advertising that you can’t track to see if it’s working. 

To get an idea, look on your website stats, then add up the amount you spend each year on advertising, divide by 12 and then divide by the number of visitors your site gets.  This will give you the cost per visitor.

3.  Does your website make you money?

4.  If so, how much do you sell per month?

5.  Divide by the number of visitors to find out what each visitor  is worth to you?

Then consider, does all this happen by automated methods?  While I was typing this article, an email came in that told me I had made another £500 / $1000.  This was for a product where I did the work once, and I’m making money from it over and over again.

Marvellous!

There are a number of resources to recommend and I’ll put a little teeny tiny link in so that you can find out more about how we can help you with all this.

1.  "Google Cash" by chris carpenter

2.  "Definitive Guide To Google Adwords" perry marshall

3.  Guy Levine now offers a standalone Google Adwords service I understand (we only do it as part of our Gold or Platinum package) and you can find him at guy@levineit.com

4.  We offer both a DIY home study course, an intensive weekend and an option where we do it all for you (including Google Adwords) and you can find out more about all of them here at AutomatedMarketingMachine.com

Hope you found this useful!

Cheers
Nicola

Nicola Cairncross
Wealth Coach & Internet Strategist.

http://www.TheMoneyGym.com
AutomatedMarketingMachine.com