Podcast Summary: Planning a digital marketing campaign

Our podcast guest James Hume discusses the benefits of digital marketing and how he got started in the field. He provides tips for setting targets and running effective digital marketing campaigns. Key topics included the accountability and measurability of digital marketing, strategies for driving website traffic and converting visitors, and the importance of aligning goals and testing different approaches.

Key Points

  • Digital marketing is highly accountable, with every penny spent and click tracked, allowing for data-driven optimisation.
  • When setting targets, it's important to understand the lifetime value or profit margin of the product/service being sold, and work backwards to determine cost-per-click and conversion rate goals.
  • Effective digital campaigns focus visitors on a single, clear call-to-action rather than providing multiple options.
  • Search engine advertising can be useful for reaching both people actively searching for a product/service, as well as raising awareness among those who may not know they need it.
  • Testing different targeting approaches and creative is crucial, as assumptions can often be proven wrong.

Podcast Transcript

Transcripts are auto-generated

Announcer (00:01):
The Cambridge Marketing Podcast with Kiiran Kapur brought to you by Cambridge Marketing College. See their range of courses and apprenticeships@marketingcollege.com.

Kiran Kapur (host) (00:13):
Hello, I'm Kiran Kapur, and this week on the Cambridge Marketing Podcast, we're focusing in on digital marketing.

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (00:18):
There's no fuzzy, fuzzy metrics. It's all accountable. Every penny you spend, every click, you get the visits to the website. You can track, measure, and monitor all of it.

Kiran Kapur (host) (00:29):
My guest is James Hume with some handy tips for planning your marketing on digital platforms.

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (00:33):
You bring them to a product page or a webinar sign up, get 'em to focus on one thing,

Announcer (00:39):
The Cambridge Marketing podcast from Cambridge Marketing College.

Kiran Kapur (host) (00:44):
So as I've just said, I'm joined by James Hume, founder of James Hume, Your Digital Marketing Ally, a Cambridge here based marketing consultancy. James, welcome. What do you find so exciting about digital marketing?

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (00:56):
Hi. Yeah, there's so many things, but the main one for me is the accountability. And there's no fuzzy metrics. It's all accountable. Like every penny you spend every click, you get the visits to the website, you can track, measure, and monitor all of it. There's no hiding places for fuzzy marketing results as such, and that means you can just build on what you're creating.

Kiran Kapur (host) (01:26):
So tell me a little bit about what got you started in digital marketing.

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (01:29):
Well, I didn't really know what I wanted to get into digital marketing. I just knew I wanted to do something with the internet. So I went off and studied internet computing as you do. And it is not until you finish university and you start building websites or doing a bit of photography work and then someone contacts you and goes, have you ever heard of Google ads? And I look into it, I'm like, oh no, this isn't something I was aware of. I didn't know you could advertise on Google and you dig deeper and see you can bid on keywords and you have to come up with ad text and creative and essentially send people to a website where you can get them to do something you want to. And so I joined a marketing agency that specialised in that and the rest is history. I've gone on to work in tech companies and now working for myself this last year.

Kiran Kapur (host) (02:16):
And I know when we've spoken before you that you are very, very passionate about setting targets and you've just used that lovely phrase, no fuzzy metrics. So how do you go about setting targets?

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (02:28):
Yeah, sure. I think it starts from a background of in the marketing agency we did a lot around lead generation and that was sold on a cost per lead as such. And it's true for most businesses that inquiries or selling a product cost you something and it can't cost more than what you're selling it for. So to go and set metrics, you need to understand, well, what's the value of what I'm selling? Is there a lifetime value? If it's a business to business product that you expect someone to be with you for five years or three years, or if it's just a retail product, what's my margin? How much margin have I got after I've sold it and produced the product to use to spend on marketing? And when you work backwards from that and you say, right, I'm selling a widget, I sell it for a hundred pounds, but I'm prepared to spend 10 pounds on marketing to get a customer to buy it, right? I know now that my marketer needs to generate me a purchase at 10 pounds each. But then you can step that backwards with digital and say, well, how many clicks does it take to get a purchase? And as such, how much should I be paying per click to get that purchase? And you can work those metrics all the way back from how much revenue, how many products I want to sell to, how much I should be paying per click, or how efficient I should be, my conversion rate at converting a browser into a purchaser.

Kiran Kapur (host) (03:55):
There's a lot there that I want to explore so much there that's so important to digital marketing. So you talked about a browser. Do you mean just somebody who's looking?

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (04:04):
I guess what I mean by browser, is someone a visitor to your website, someone who's come on and is now aware of your product and browsing through the website and looking at what you have to offer and they haven't quite become your customer yet.

Kiran Kapur (host) (04:17):
And so then I want those obviously to then go to actually purchasing. So how do I encourage them to do that?

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (04:25):
Yeah, there's a few different ways and tactics that can be deployed. And a common one that I find is good is only getting them to do one thing. So when you bring them to a product page or a webinar sign up or an inquiry page is get 'em to focus on one thing, no distractions, no newsletters or browse this and do that. You've brought them over an ad or an email or some kind of marketing creative and get them to continue that journey and do that one thing you want them to do. That's probably a very efficient way to move them closer to becoming your customer and purchasing the items you want to.

Kiran Kapur (host) (05:08):
That's quite a brave thing to do, isn't it? I think it's very easy when we sort of think, well, they're on our website, so let's try and attract their attention to do this or do that. If they don't want to purchase, maybe they'll take a newsletter. So your advice would be absolutely strict about this is what you want them to do and make it very simple that that's what they should then do.

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (05:27):
I think especially when coming from an advert, so take for example a search ad where someone has got that intent to buy and you're paying money to appear for that search phrase and they put in widget, I want this widget, and they come to the page in their mind they just want to get on and buy. And if you are distracting them with popups or giving them lots of options to go off and do things, then that can distract. Sometimes there will other scenarios where your marketing has got a slightly different goal and popups or lower hanging fruit call to actions and softer things that people can do on your site would be more applicable. But with the kind of campaigns I run with the direct response and trying to drive people to take action, help them take that action.

Kiran Kapur (host) (06:20):
Okay, that's great. So let's go back one stage further. We talked about visitors when they've got to your website. So can I go back a stage and talk about how do I get people to get to my website? So I know you are an expert in PPC and how do you encourage people literally to come to the site?

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (06:39):
There's kind of two scenarios. There's the scenario where, as I just mentioned, with a product where someone's got that intent and they're searching for it. It's about creating adverts that will entice people to click and you are answering their need. They've got a question when they search in Google or other search engines and you need to answer it and make them feel confident that you've got the solution they're looking for. But the other side is when people, if you're selling a product or service, people are totally unaware that they need it. You need to be showing up in the places that your target audience will be showing up in and making them aware because there may be products or services that they're not going to know to search for because you need to make them aware of that. And tools like social media marketing on Facebook or LinkedIn or Pinterest, if that's where your audience lives, you can appear there with your offering to the right people.

Kiran Kapur (host) (07:39):
Okay. So actually needed in their life was the marketing qualification. The organisation would want to be in places where marketers congregated, would that be right?

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (07:50):
Exactly. Yeah. So there may be communities online you could show up in or specific demographics and trends about your users that you could go out and target. And of course there's going to be that percentage of people who are very much aware they want a marketing qualification, they've come to that decision already and maybe searching in a search engine and it'd be good to make sure you're appearing there as well.

Kiran Kapur (host) (08:13):
And that's all about search ending advertising. Is that what you would recommend?

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (08:17):
Yes. That's what I specialise in is paying the search engines for your ad to appear at the top. And it's useful in competitive places where you can't guarantee being there organically in the listings underneath the ads, or if you've got specific kind of goals and terms and things you want to try and appear for.

Kiran Kapur (host) (08:42):
Can you give me an example?

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (08:43):
Sure. So let's take the marketing qualification you're talking about there. If we were trying to target and advertise for that, maybe if we were targeting in the United States for a Cambridge based business, we might not appear organically very well. They've got their own local solutions, but we could pay to appear there and customise our message as such in the advert. And that's one of the key benefits of these Google ads versus letting Google organically choose what your listing looks like. You can craft a message that's specific to that audience and make sure it's going to resonate well with them.

Kiran Kapur (host) (09:21):
That's great. Thank you. Very helpful advice there. As I said, I was asking for a friend, we started off talking about setting targets for campaigns. So how would I go about working out how much to spend on a search ad in order to generate a sale at the end?

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (09:37):
Sure. So to start with, you can do some rough research around how much it's going to cost you to get a click on Google. There's tools like the keyword tool where you can put in your search queries and your key phrases you're looking to target, and it'll give you a rough idea of the cost per click. You're looking to pay for those and that'll give you a good base point as to how competitive and expensive those kind of phrases you're looking to target are. But what you want to do is work it backwards and understand and set good targets with your stakeholders as to what we're prepared to pay for a sale or conversion or whatever the important metric is to you, and then work it backwards. And also set quantity goals as well. So you want to be understanding how much you're prepared to cost for a sale and what volume you want to achieve.

(10:34):
So if we were happy to spend 10 pounds to achieve a sale on an item and we wanted 10 of those in the week, then that would be a marketing budget of a hundred pounds. So now you've know what your budget to work for is. You can then go back and look at your options within Google or other platforms and how can you spend that a hundred pounds and does that stack up with the cost per clicks or the cost per thousand impressions if it's maybe a social network in terms of is that enough budget to spend on these terms? And let's say for example, it's a one pound per click, okay, we can get a hundred clicks for that a hundred pounds. Does that then make sense with being able to achieve our goal of selling 10 of the items?

Kiran Kapur (host) (11:27):
Would you work that bit out about how many clicks do I have to have in order for the person to purchase? Does that just come through from trial and error?

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (11:34):
There's some industry and average kind of benchmarks. I think one naysay a lot is that e-commerce conversion rates is around the 2% mark. And there's lots of things you can do to influence how efficient you will convert, be it how good your product is, how interesting, and how much the demand is for it, but also around the website. So take that last example. If we were looking to sell 10 items and it costing 10 pounds each per sale, and we discovered that the cost per clicks are likely going to be around a pound each, we're going to need to convert at 10%, we're going to need to turn 10 of those a hundred clicks into sales. That's quite a high conversion rate maybe, but then it's all relevant per industry, per product. And what your goal is, for example, selling an expensive car versus selling toothpaste that people need, there's going to be different rates at which people are going to want to purchase those items and the demand that will affect that.

Kiran Kapur (host) (12:44):
Okay. But a rule of thumb is around about 2%

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (12:47):
For e-commerce, maybe for lead generation where you've got a form for a webinar or something like that, it can be higher maybe around the 5% mark. And then I've seen for comparison sites where you're offering multiple options or maybe something in return or to compare prices, maybe that's even higher because that's of even more value to someone. And that might be around the 10% mark. But it depends. You've got to be comparing like for like, and that's just a broad spectrum of some examples there.

Kiran Kapur (host) (13:20):
You mentioned a keyword tool in Google. Where would I find that?

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (13:23):
Sure. So when you log into your Google Ads account, there's under tools and settings, I believe there's something called the keyword tool there. And it basically feeds back the historic search trends for keywords, the expected cost per clicks, and also serves up some other examples of keywords that are relevant and related to the one you've put in. And you can even start by putting your website in. So you can put your website into the tool and it'll spit back all the keywords that it thinks you should be bidding for. I believe there needs to be a human input to kind of sense check what they're coming up with. But it's a great starting place to understand what people might be searching about for your products and services.

Kiran Kapur (host) (14:11):
James, you're being a mine of information. Just as we come to the end, do you have any top tips for somebody looking to start a campaign?

James Hume, Digital Marketing Ally (14:20):
Sure. I think it's really important to understand who your audience is and why they want to buy your product. Where they live online, what do they look like, what they might be searching for. So as you can craft a campaign that's going to be targeted at them, I think it's important to understand the goals and the metrics you're working towards. If everyone's not on the same page and driving for the same goals, be that the VP of marketing, the other stakeholders in the business or the marketing executive who's working on the campaign. If you're not all aligned on what the goal and the vision or where you're heading is and what the expectations are, then it's not going to work. So you need to have that crystal clear amongst everyone. A great way to do that is with some kind of dashboard or report that you track your progress in.

(15:15):
And lastly, I'd say test, always be testing because you can make so many assumptions about your target audience or what ads or creative or might work, but you need to test because you can be proven wrong so many times, and I know I have and what I like to do, especially with social media campaigns, is set a few different targeting types. I have a gut instinct as what might work well, but sometimes, especially with things like lookalike audiences or interest and demographic targeting, you can be proven wrong so many times. So just always test, even if it's just setting 10%, 20% of your budget aside for testing. When you find something that works, you can then scale it up.

Kiran Kapur (host) (16:01):
James, that was absolutely wonderful. Thank you very much for coming on and being our digital marketing ally. That was James Hume,

Announcer (16:07):
The Cambridge Marketing podcast from Cambridge Marketing College - training, marketing and PR professionals across the globe.

Kiran Kapur (host) (16:15):
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