When you go to an ad agency’s web site, you’re going there because you want to learn about that agency’s work, their capabilities and who they are, right? Well, we provide answers to all those questions throughout the site and when you read the team bios, you’ll learn about the professional achievements of the team. But, who we are at work is strongly influenced by who we are at play. And, the things that distinguish hmc2 from other agencies are tied to who the directors are as people, as well as to the work we do. Plus, the simple fact of the matter is when you pay to work with someone, you should enjoy that relationship. This insight into who we are helps establish that relationship even before you make the first contact.

So, what does how we play say about the team here? It says that we are confident, strong, and capable. It says that we aren’t afraid of taking calculated risks because we’ve developed a strong set of skills that mitigate those risks. It says we’re passionate about life and we like to have fun at what we do. It says we care about life-work balance. It says we’re competitive and like to win. Isn’t that the kind of team you want working for you?

But say you are selling $10,000 diamond engagement rings, or a $1,000,000 real estate offering, or a product or service that requires a longer sales process (and likely will not be purchased online.) CPM may be the ticket. CPM means Cost-Per-Milli (Thousand) Impressions of the ad – and used strategically, it’s a great tool for building brand awareness. CPM is at its most effective when used to attract a particular consumer profile vs. someone who has shown interest in a certain keyword. Often, the trick with CPM is to use softer, “non-threatening” calls to action, such as “learn more” or “get details” that allow users to explore product details on their own terms.

The CPM model does have some drawbacks – in particular, it places the risk firmly on the shoulders of the advertiser. The website or portal need only serve your ad until your budget is exhausted. And the benefits you reap are inextricably tied to both the strength of the message and the strength of the site where it is served. Tricky. CPC is a much simpler formula. You pay for every click on your ad – and know quickly, what creative performs, what sites perform, what spend performs. This incredible transparency is ultimately what has made CPC so wildly popular.

Ultimately deciding between CPC and CPM comes down to knowing which produces ROI based on your marketing goals. Before diving in, take a moment to think about what constitutes success for your product or service. Our brand evaluation tool can help! Often a combination of the CPC and CPM used in varying ways can yield the best results.

The first step in determining how much to spend on anything is to clearly identifying your goal. Are you trying to introduce a new product, start a customer retention program or increase sales? And, how much are you willing to spend to accomplish your goal. Some businesses are willing to spend as much as 1/3 the lifetime value of a customer to acquire that customer, but even that depends on your product or service. Answering these questions will help determine an appropriate overall budget and influence where you’ll allocate those dollars.

To get closer to the right ratio, though, you need to understand your audience. And the more you know about them, the more likely you are to make smart decisions about what type of media to use to reach them. You of course need to start with the basics … your audience demographics. But if you can create a profile and really get to know your audience—what are their other interests and habits, who do they turn to for their information—you can more effectively target your communication.

So you know what your goal is and who you are talking to, but to reach your goal, what does your audience need to do? And, how quickly do they need to act? If you just want more people to know who you are, well, that will indicate a different type of media spend than if you want them to buy something today, right?

Finally, what type of new media are we talking about? The more ‘traditional’ new media, say banner ads or adwords, will have a very different placement to execution ratio than the ‘newer’ new media—specifically social media and the advertising opportunities available there. Generally, true social media has comparatively low placement costs, but if you’ve spent any time in this media, you know you can get completely lost in the execution of it. Making an intelligent decision of how to allocate your budget will require an accurate assessment of your (or your staff’s) skill set in this media—and in your industry specialty. I mean, if your time is more valuable doing what you’re supposed to, then you’ll likely want to pay a specialist to manage this. But if you love it, don’t require much sleep and can do it all, go for it.

Look, tomes have been written to this topic because there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer that will work for everyone. But, if you ask yourself these questions, it’ll get you a long way toward the best answer for your business. Let us know how it goes.

How much time should I allocate to using social marketing tools?

Without knowing the contribution Facebook (and other social media) are making to your bottom line this can be an impossible question to answer. It will likely be impossible to know exactly what Facebook is doing for your business (and even harder to tell what it could be doing if you invested more time into it…) but here are a few ideas to begin measuring the impact:

1. Create a Facebook page for your business. If you haven’t already done this, do it now! Facebook pages are an easy, front facing way to create a measurable presence on facebook.

2. Begin monitoring your Facebook page stats using the “insights” that are available to any page administrator. This will give you a sense of views, fans, posts, engagement levels etc. Compare this traffic to your existing web site – and you can get a sense of the percentage of traffic to each. If your website has 9x the traffic of your facebook page – common sense would say that the majority of time and money you invest should go into your existing site.

3. Create “tagged” links in your facebook page. When you make a promotional post (and these shouldn’t be too frequent lest you be perceived as a spammer) tag these links using the google URL builder (assuming that you already have google on your website). This will let you view the conversions, engagement and value of your facebook generated traffic. Compare this value to that of a PPC sourced visit and you can begin monetizing your facebook traffic and investing the appropriate amount of time.

It is never easy to measure the value of a marketing program and with the exploding number of options for reaching your customers it is getting even harder. Luckily there are also ever expanding options for measuring traffic and customer behavior that make valuing your online effort possible. With some careful planning and practice they are well worth it.