Re: 1 million unique hits/month @ $80,000?

From: Robert Ross <rross_at_AdventuresMarketing.com>
Date: Wed 31 Mar 2004 07:27:04 -0600

> I am trying to figure out how to bring in 1 million unique hits
> per month to our site www.MakeYourMail.com .


Without analyzing your particular website and market, let me just
express a personal opinion based on lots of hard-earned
experience....for most of us, there is no $80,000 magic bullet! $80,000
a month, however, is a great budget to start developing and testing a
powerful marketing campaign, depending on your marketing plan and the
bids on keywords in that market.

In my own business model, much of my compensation comes from profit
participation, so I am highly motivated by the bottom line. Therefore,
to me (with some exceptions), the most important thing is not the total
traffic, but the quality of the traffic (as a function of the its cost)
and conversion rate of your website for that traffic. I can get you a
million visitors, but if they are not targeted enough you are wasting
more money than you realize, with not only the cost of the traffic
itself but possibly, for some sites, the added overhead to your server.
IMHO, you can't rely too much on SEO, banner ads or even emails for a
variety of reasons any more. SEO is labor intensive and costly, and you
don't control the results. I also think that banner ads don't work
except in very specific situations, so you may need to test
them...however, the response is unpredictable and varies a lot depending
on something too subjective, the creative. Emails have too many SPAM
hurdles to overcome, and people hate them - yet they still should be
tested but are also unreliable, plus decently targeted lists are
rediculously expensive. Some companies that use these media offer a Pay
Per Acquisition revenue model, which might make some sense to test, but
I personally haven't tried that yet since I like to control the campaign
myself.

In my experience, the only way I can fully control and accurately test
my marketing campaign and ROI is with Pay Per Click ads...but you need a
market with a good keyword inventory with bidding that isn't priced
beyond your budget for a top position. You also have to know how to
develop marketing-oriented web designs optimized to maximize conversions
(requiring a good marketing strategy) and how to accurately measure
conversion rates for every landing page and keyword you test. Then you
have to spend the time to develop and test various keyword, copywriting
and design strategies to maximize click throughs and conversions. I'd be
giving away some of my trade secrets here, but saying this (or reading
it) and actually doing it are very very different things :-)

Good luck,
Bob Ross
Adventures Marketing, LLC
www.AdventuresMarketing.com






Received on Wed Mar 31 2004 - 07:27:04 CST