Yes, that is right. You don’t need to have a PhD to use a little bit of statistics to optimize your digital campaigns. As an online media analyst, I have found that there are a few simple advertising data analysis tricks you can do to predict online conversions, measure mobile publishers, and compile all of your media reports into one simple Dashboard. Sure you need a little bit of Excel skills, but not to worry, if you can follow simple tutorials, then you can use these data analysis tricks to make smarter media planning decisions.

To measure the performance of mobile publishers across multiple metrics, I found that a z-score is most helpful. You can even apply this standard of measurement to your other digital campaigns besides mobile. Free tutorial on how to use the z-score is downloadable at SmartDigitalSpending.com.

Want to forecast digital conversions? A little regression model will do the trick. Download free tutorial here. Want to see how you can put together a Media Dashboard that shows all of your media activity (online display, search, TV, website activity, social media activity, qr code scans, media spend) here.

Thanks!

Eric Melchor, founder – SmartDigitalSpending

How you can see all of your marketing efforts in one media dashboard

As a Marketing Manager, CMO, or Account Director, it would be convenient to see all of your media activity in one report right? That probably sounds impossible given that there is so much information coming from so many different sources. For instance, your Search team might send you a weekly search report, your website analyst probably sends you a site traffic report, your traditional media buying team might send you a monthly report, and so on and so on….

Who has time to look at and review all these reports? If only you could see things from a top-level view and see how much you are spending, what media channels are in the mix, the volume of visitors that are going to your website, social media results and QR Code downloads all in one report. Is it possible? Yes!

The best part of this is that everyone working on your account can get a holistic view of the campaign. It can be distributed to every department, agency (creative and media), and anyone else who has a hand in promoting your brand. You can download such a Dashboard here.

The most important thing is to not track and include everything in this report – that is a waste of time. Rather, you should just focus on the essentials. Eight basic charts that show:

Website Activity:

• Visitors
• Unique Visitors
• Average Time on Site
• Page Views
• Pages per visit

Website Referrals:

• Direct Traffic
• Referring Sites
• Search Engine
• Other

Offline Activity:

• Monthly volume of TV GRPs including Competition

Media Spend

• Monthly spend for TV, Print, Online Display, Paid Search, In-game advertising, Social Media

Monthly Media Mix

• Percentage of spend allocated to each Media Channel

Digital Activity:

• Display Impressions
• Display Clicks
• Search Impressions
• Search Clicks

QR Code Activity

• Total Scans
• Unique Scans
• New Scans

Social Media Activity

• Facebook Fans
• Twitter Followers
• YouTube Video views

How do you show that in 8 simple charts? Well the Dashboard is interactive! Anyone who has basic Excel skills can setup a Dashboard that includes all of this information. To make things simple, you can download an Excel version of this Dashboad at SmartDigitalSpending.com.

As you can see, this is not only a great report that can be passed along to everyone, it is a great business tool that provides great insight. Immediately, you can get a general idea on what’s going on with your campaign and what kind of results are being generated. Why keep wasting time looking at 5, 10, 15 different reports when all you need is one?

Download the sample Media Dashboard that incorporates social media and QR Code activity along with other advertising data analysis tutorials (How to forecast online orders, how to measure ad copy, how to rank mobile ad networks, how to calculate TRPs for digital media, and more) at SmartDigitalSpending.com!

Thank you,

Eric Melchor, Founder of Smart Digital Spending

Free Digital Marketing Data Analysis Tutorials available for download:

Beyond CTR and CPC Tutorial (download here)

Identify which publishers are driving your target market to key pages on your website (something that CTR, CPA, and CPC cannot do).

Search Volume / Efficiency Tutorial

Quickly evaluate paid keywords, reduce spend and increase paid search ROI. Read more here.

How to forecast online conversions tutorial

Forecast Online conversions or orders using historical spend and campaign results.Can be used with paid search or online display activity. Read more here.

Profit Maximizing Analysis

How much should you charge for a product you’ve never sold before? Read more here.

Paid Search Keyword Position Tutorial

Does it make sense for your top keywords to be in position #1 or in lower positions? Read more here.

Determine which ‘call to action’ works best tutorial

Determine which ‘call to action’ actually influences orders placed on your website. Read more here.

Complete Directory of Mobile Advertising Networks

Full list of mobile ad networks constantly refreshed and includes 20+ networks. Read more here.

Complete Directory of In-Game Advertising Networks

Full list of In-game ad networks constantly refreshed. Read more here.

Forecasting online sales is quite easy if there is historical data available. If all of sudden you were given extra budget for your search or online display campaign, performing a diminishing returns model will help predict the amount of conversions you can expect to generate with this increased budget. Likewise, if you have to cut online spend, a diminishing returns model will show you the expected conversion volume loss as a result.

Let’s suppose we want to predict the increase in search conversions (dependent variable) based on an increase in paid search spend (independent variable). Would we use a linear or logarithmic-scale to determine our forecast equation?

To view and download free step-by-step instructions on how to predict online sales, go to Smart Digital Spending.com.

Free Internet Marketing Data Analysis Tutorials available for download:

Beyond CTR and CPC Tutorial (download here)

Identify which publishers are driving your target market to key pages on your website (something that CTR, CPA, and CPC cannot do). Read more here.

Search Volume / Efficiency Tutorial

Quickly evaluate paid keywords, reduce spend and increase paid search ROI. Read more here.

How to forecast online conversions tutorial

Forecast Online conversions or orders using historical spend and campaign results.Can be used with paid search or online display activity. Read more here.

Determine which ‘call to action’ works best tutorial

Determine which ‘call to action’ actually influences orders placed on your website. Read more here.

Paid Search Keyword Position Tutorial

Does it make sense for your top keywords to be in position #1 or in lower positions? Read more here.

Profit Maximizing Analysis

How much should you charge for a product you’ve never sold before? Read more here.

Complete Directory of Mobile Advertising Networks

Full list of mobile ad networks constantly refreshed and includes 20+ networks. Read more here.

Rank Mobile Ad Networks from Best to Worst (coming soon read more here.)

How to perform a Diminishing Returns Model..

Creating a Diminishing Returns Model is quite easy if there is historical data available. If all of sudden you were given extra budget for your advertising campaign, performing a diminishing returns model will help predict the amount of sales you can expect to generate with this increased budget. Likewise, if you have to cut advertising spend, a diminishing returns model will show you the expected sales volume loss as a result.

The free step-by-step tutorial on how to perform a Diminishing Returns Model can be downloaded here.

Is there a way to optimize a SEM campaign without using Google Analytics or Adword tools?

Google Adwords, Yahoo and MSN provide some cool tools that show you how to optimize your SEM campaign. You can set up your search ads to show during certain days of the week, time of day and regions. If you have the time to play with all these tools, that is great. However, if you are looking for an easy and effective way to optimize a search campaign without wasting hours diving into these tools, you should perform a volume/efficiency keyword analysis.

Performing a Volume/Efficiency Matrix can save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars in your paid search campaign. A volume/efficiency analysis will tell you whether certain keywords are performing poorly in efficiency and volume in relation to other keywords.

So how do we perform this analysis?

All that is required is a basic keyword report from your search engine that shows name of keyword, clicks and spend. By following along with the free tutorial that can be downloaded here, I will show you step-by-step how to set up a volume/efficiency keyword analysis.

The best part about performing a Volume / Efficiency Matrix is the findings. This analysis will give you a rough estimate on how much money you would save if you were to remove a certain group of keywords and show you how much click activity would be lost. It is a fantastic way to optimize a search campaign on an ad hoc, quarterly, semi-annual, or yearly basis. More importantly, your clients will be pleased that you are monitoring their search campaign wisely.

Who else wants to start evaluating publishers beyond CTR and CPC? The best Online Marketing Metric – ‘Cost-per-weighted-point’.

Discover which publishers are driving people to key pages on your website with the Cost-per-weight metric. I consider this the best online metric as it’s so simple to implement and will allow you to make smarter media planning decisions which will increase your online display ROI and make your client happy.

What is the maximum weekly or monthly amount you can spend in order to maintain your cost per acquisition goal? Learn how to predict online orders using the free step-by-step tutorial provided.

Creating a diminishing returns model will allow you to determine the maximum level of weekly spend allocation to maintain the cost-per-acquisition goal for either the online display media channel, paid search channel, or both. It can also be used to determine the essential trade-off between sales order volume and cost-per-acquisition efficiency. Most importantly, it can help you predict online orders.

Do you have to cut paid search spend? If so, here is an effective way to decrease spend without sacrificing too much return by performing a paid search position test.

Reduce paid search spend by 40% and only lose 18% in click volume? Is that possible?

The goal of performing a paid search position test is to analyze core keyword performance in position 1 versus lower positions 2-5 based on total click volume and CPC efficiency in your paid search engine. If you have to reduce paid search budget, this is an effective way to optimize.