Getting More Sales from a Smaller Online Advertising Budget

As the global economy continues to struggle, many of us are left in that unenviable position of facing cuts to our online advertising budgets but not our sales targets. That’s a tall order but is it really possible to cut our spending yet still hit those growth numbers for sales? Almost inevitably I’m going to say it is, otherwise why write the article, but let’s get into the meat of how it’s possible.

As a market we know that it’s much easier to generate more sales by pushing more customers through the door than it is to increase our conversion rates. All we need to do to increase sales is spend more. Because of this incontrovertible truth there’s no online advertising budget in the world that doesn’t have some room for manoeuvre in spending cuts.

The first stage in the process is to understand how profitable our current traffic sources are so that we can prioritise our efforts and remove any dross that’s been hanging around unnoticed for a while. Some quick analysis of sales by traffic source should quickly highlight any areas where the traffic quality is low.

 If you don’t regularly monitor this metric you could be in for a few surprises here as it’s not uncommon to have a traffic source or two that delivers high volumes of poor quality traffic. Removing these from the mix early on should provide a couple of quick wins, saving a fair amount of money without hugely impacting sales.

Once any low hanging fruit has been removed it’s time to look at the remaining traffic sources and root out the shining stars. There will almost certainly be at least one source that is delivering conversion rates way above average. Ask yourself, can you divert any additional budget into this channel away from somewhere less profitable.

Take the time to really analyse this source as it should become your internal benchmark as the new standard for conversion rate. Yes, you heard that right, standard, not best practice. Don’t forget all we’ve done so far is a bit of analysis. Just because it’s converting well in comparison to other sources doesn’t mean there isn’t more you could possible get here too. By setting the highest converting traffic source as the new standard you’re refocusing your budget on profit.

Is your best traffic source converting so well because the audience profile is unique, or is there something different in your ads/landing pages from this source that you could apply in other areas? Whatever it may be, try to find out what’s different about this source.

If it’s the audience, can you divert more of your budget this way? Are they other opportunities to reach similar audience profiles from traffic sources you don’t currently use? Is it possible to reach this audience profile within your other traffic sources?

If it’s the process, can this approach be used with other traffic sources? Try sampling anything unique through other routes, as well as testing seemingly worse processes in your best source (with caution of course) to work out what works best.

Investigating your traffic sources in this way and modifying the way you spend your advertising budget will certainly get you moving in the right direction, trimming on waste and refocusing on what works best should save you lots and improve conversion, but that’s not the end of the story.

The next stage is to look in more depth at the customer’s journey, from first clicking on the ad, right through the buying process. The purpose of this is to drill down to a detailed level so we can start to analyse where we’re most effective, what products convert better, what landing pages work, what ad configurations are more likely to yield buyers as opposed to browsers, and all those things that don’t work so well too.

Armed with this analysis we can start to make changes to the content, test new landing page configurations, change routes through the buying process, all depending on our findings. This work can also lead us back to the business to explain how, for no extra advertising budget we could sell more “Blue Widgets” if they were available in the same pack sizes as the yellow ones, for example.

 Once all that work is done you should be sitting on a much more efficient, smaller online advertising budget that’s delivering you more sales. Don’t stop there though. Having gone through this process once and realising the benefits you should work this into your overall planning process. New campaigns should be tested with the same vigour. Seasonal adjustments need to be worked in. New opportunities will arise as old ones may falter. Getting on top of your online ad spend is one thing, but you’re going to have to keep at it if you want to stay there.