BUS572-3 Banner Ads and Page Content

Week 3 Blog Report

In the past two weeks, I’m not sure if localization or personalization of a website is a skillset or a concept.  For now, I’ll call it a concept because of the way it can be defined.  Let’s call it an idea.  The idea is to collect personal information on the person’s demographic to personalize the type of information the individual receives through marketing or other means of communication.  With a trend of more people accepting their personal information being used, they in turn will receive more relevant feedback from a website informing them of activities, sales and news from where they are or geared toward their interests.  It is a way to help a person feel more in touch with the pages in which they interact.  Even though this could be a good idea, at what point are we going too far in collecting data on people.  Can this information cause damage to those using a particular website?  If there is an information breach, what will happen to the end user?  Is there a liability and upon whom does it land?  I like the idea, but if I’m going to use it to personalize information delivered to the end user, sort of how Facebook works now, I’m going to want to make sure I cover my bases legally before venturing into something this volatile.

I believe I’ve learned the concept of content being one of the most, if not the most, important part of a website.  Inside I knew this the whole time.  To read it and see how content needs to interact with key phrases we have within our campaign, it really drives it home.  I think one of our most challenging tasks is to make sure that the information we use as content in our blogs and in our ads is to keep it relevant.  We want the search engine to find us.  The research that is needed can be intense.  Knowing how to use the tools is one of the greatest challenges.  I don’t have a good grasp on how these tools work or how our ads will react if we use the criteria we have at the moment.  But content will help drive what we have home with web search engines.  Using keywords and phrases consistent and accurate to what The Thrifty Wargamer is all about is important.  We want people to find the site and to find it without much effort.  We also want our visitors to intend to visit the site.  In other words, we want to stay away from accidental visits.  Traffic should be intentional, and that’s the challenge we have were content can help.  Good content should drive people to the locations we want and get them to do what we want.  So how do we keep content interesting and engaging when we don’t know much about the business of wargaming?  There’s a special language specific to this type of business and society that is unique.  It isn’t something we’re going to be able to pick up in such a short amount of time.  A bit challenge will be to answer this question: How do we to stay relevant and engaging and not know how to speak the language?

I think one of the skills I picked up these last couple of weeks was knowing or learning the differences in the four types of display ads – banner, video, rich media and sponsorship.  I had no idea there were all four types. In fact, I thought that banner and rich media were the same.  Little did I know!  A banner add can look like this.  Simple, right? 

I like that there are several ways to reach a target audience and each of the four have a specific target audience type in mind.  I’d like to learn how to make a display add.  If I’m going to want to drive an idea home or move a customer through an online store or even to the store homepage, I’m going to have to gain a better understanding of this skill.  Who knew rich media was for gamers like me? 

Well, I’ve already alluded to this, but I’d like to see if I could create some banner or other type of display add that will move people from somewhere on the internet to The Thrifty Wargamer website.  It may not be easy now, but I can see this being a lot of fun.  It’s the time that’ll be a killer.  The threat of this goal is also challenged by the direction our class is going.  I’m not really sure if that’s an acceptable goal for the weeks to come given the content our class has in the next half of the semester.  That we will have to wait and see.

BUS572-2

Second Two Week Session

These past two weeks I've learned more about Click Through Rate (CTR).  I've always had a concept of what this was, just not a term to go along with it.  But along with that, I wasn't aware that there was a charge to clicking on a link assuming the link was better positioned by higher paying venders for their keyword search results in search engines.  Truthfully, I may have said that all wrong concerning the keywords and search results, but I think the point is made.  Click Through Rate is the ratio of clicks divided by the number of times the link or button was seen (some resources would say served, but seen is the correct terminology according to our text).  For example: if a search for clothing was to render Target as a vender for the particular clothing being searched, it would be considered an impression (a link to Target's site that was seen).  Once the link is clicked, it is considered a "click" and the click ratio is calculated as clicks divided by impressions. This is important because we, the vender, want to know what success we are having with our ads and can be very important in helping evaluate what keywords are and are not working well. What I want to know is what a good rate is.  Will a good rate differ from business to business?  Does a department store have a lower acceptable click through rate compared to a specific hobby or resource website?  When we are working toward helping The Thrifty Wargamer, should I hope for a 1% click through rate or work toward something over 20% depending on the line of business that is conducted?  Because of its specific nature, I would tend to think it should have a higher CTR and we should strive toward that end.

My initial idea of what a conversion is was not exactly what I expected.  A conversion is what happens when a person visits your website and ultimately meets the goal of what you intended the site to do.  For most, this would be to make a purchase or book a flight or perform a transaction of some type.  I simply thought a conversion was clicking on a website link that got you from a search engine to an actual visit to your site.  That's more like a click or an event that moves a person closer to the desired goal.  Getting to the goal is the conversion.  This is important because those who analyze traffic want to know what happened between the time someone saw the link, visited the site, looked at products, and made a purchase.  There may be more steps in that process, but it's all about how the customer was funneled through the events before the conversion happened, or didn't happen.

If a conversion didn't happen, what happened that prevented the potential customer to pull away?  Where did they go?  At what point did they pull away.  Analysis of these events will help to determine how to make the website more effective.  Should conversions hold more weight than CTRs?  Why or why not.  What makes one more important than another if at all?

Although I have not completely understood every aspect of analysis, mainly because there are so many elements of analysis, this is a skill that I've been able to increase over the past couple of weeks.  We've only begun our initial intent of what we'd like to do and proposal of ideas using Google's resources.  However, even in the preliminary stages, I can see where showing our add at certain times of the day for our client will have more of an effect than others. Because gamers "tend" to have a more late night trend to their activity levels, we believe that running adds after 3 PM and before 2 AM will have a greater return on our efforts than running adds at other times of the day.  Analysis will help bring that out once the ads we have are run. We will also need to see what words and phrases will work better than those with which we initially started.

In the next couple of weeks, I look forward to diving more into the analytical side of things. I don't want to just post something or go through the motions of the course.  I'd like to really take what I've learned, use it to the fullest, and alter what we've done. The issue here is that we only have an add campaign outstanding for three weeks.  A longer period would allow us to really look into the how and why of the success of our ad campaign. When we starting working toward wargaming and miniature figures being the focus of the ads, it'll be interesting how it all comes together and what Google's tools will show as a result of our efforts.  I'm really looking forward to the weeks to come. 

REFERENCES

Stokes, Rob. (2013). eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Online Marketing, v. 1.0.  

     Flat World Knowledge, Inc.