A few things along the lines of the Little Black Dress

Given the current economy companies are pulling in their marketing horns, getting cautious all around, and looking for safe and reliable methods. Cost-per-lead and cost-per-click programs have become The Little Black Dress of marketing. Good in all kinds of circumstances- product launches, keeping the sales force cranking, keeping the pipeline predictably full, even in trying times.

Marketing can be done cost effectively, and media can be purchased on a cost per click or cost per action model. But if you have not been working that way in the past, it may be a bit confusing. Do you even know what you can afford to pay on a per click or per action basis? The classics might be a better fit.

So, a few things along the lines of the Little Black Dress/classics to consider with your media mix in the current economy

1. Do you know what you can afford to pay per lead, or per click? The corollary to that is: do you know what your lifetime value, or return on media dollars, or contribution to profit is? Any of those metrics will help you assess what you can truly afford.

2. Be very clear on your objectives for each campaign. Looking for leads? Branding and recognition? Reach? Sales of a particular product? Testing one offer against another? These are all valid, but decide first and publicly. If you can’t define the objective (and by the way, be sure everyone is in agreement, the sales team, marketing folks, agencies et al) then how can you figure out if you have been successful or not?

3. After you have decided on the objective, be sure you can measure it. And then do so, and report results to all who need to know. We are frequently stunned by the amount of money and effort spent to construct a campaign, only to see the back-end analytics get garbled or ignored in the race to the next quarter or campaign. Figure all that out before giving the green light.

4. Save some budget for testing. Even a little. If you don’t, you won’t be ready to grow when the economy eases up a bit. And it will. Really.

5. Optimize what ever you are doing, even a/b splits of the most basic variety. Always have two landing pages, two banners, several lists, or various offers so you learn something from each marketing effort and can optimize it next time around. If you stake everything on one creative platform, one list, one landing page, you won’t know what to do if the ROI is not there. Build in the mechanism to learn from your mistakes, or successes.

Classics are classics for a reason, whether the perfect black dress, or marketing methods. They never go out of style, but just keep creating success.

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