Omniture Articles

How Can I Get More Traffic?

anticipointment(än-tïs’-æ-point-mænt)
n. the sensation of a crushing failure to meet heightened expectations.

My competitor outranks me, while I am at my spending limit. How can I pay more for keywords without losing profit?

The answers lie in testing and optimization to improve conversions and average order value. By our numbers, you could increase your bid by 75% or more profitably.

As keyword marketing gets more competitive, the cost of driving traffic to a site increases -- advertisers, spending the same dollar amount on CPC campaigns, are seeing decreased traffic. So even when that traffic converts well, ROI continues to drop. In order to stop that downward spiral, agencies must help their clients improve conversions and/or average order value.

Let's run the numbers. Imagine this:

You’re running a CPC campaign. Your keywords generate 200,000 impressions, and they get a 2.5 percent click-through rate (5,000 clicks). Those clicks convert 2.8 percent of the time, for 140 orders.

At an average order value of $150, you’re seeing daily revenue of $21,000, for a net revenue of $8,400 (at a 40 percent margin).

In order to reach a profit per day of, say, $3,400, you can’t afford to spend more than $1.00 per click (or $5,000).

Now imagine three alternate scenarios:

Scenario #1. You improve AOV

By testing cross-promotions and upsells at the shopping cart, you are able to increase average order value from $150 to $165.

Result: Now, you can afford to spend up to $1.17 per keyword.

Scenario #2. You improve conversions

You test tying the ad creative/message from the ad to the landing page and throughout the site as the visitor shops, and improve conversions, from 2.5 percent to 3.6 percent.

Result: Now, you can afford to spend up to $1.50 per keyword.

Scenario #3. You improve both conversions and AOV

You test a variety of tactics and improve average order value to $165 and conversion rate to 3.6 percent.

Result: Now, you can afford to spend up to $1.72 per keyword.

By increasing conversion and average order value, you can affordably increase your spend on both CPC and CPM marketing, thus driving more traffic. Rather than fighting in vain to increase the field of available, affordable traffic, advertisers outbid competitors, reaching the existing traffic more easily and winning both the battle and the war.