KPIs must be EOD.
Profit and loss declarations must be generated.
Budget status updates have been requested.
Juggling multiple marketing campaigns is stressful. But more importantly, it's also incredibly risky.
Quite quickly, you have exhausted your budget for the last few cents, and you have nothing to show for it.
Or worse, you have not spotted the good trends in a successful tactic before spending too much for the underperforming.
And now you do not have enough money to reallocate high – level psychics.
Curiously, adopting the same methodical mindset of a financial currency trader can help you better manage the results.
Here's how.
Let's start with a monetary arbitrage mentality
Here is the problem of digital marketing.
It changes every day. Old things give way to new things.
And you never really know how a campaign will run until you've tried it.
This saying (1) is not useful and (2) requires additional funds to experiment with potentially exhausting activities.
But that's true.
You really do not know which playbook, what game plan or trick you will use until you experience it. The things that worked last year will almost certainly not work the same way this year.
Not to mention that each company is structured differently. Each address is addressed to various audiences. So, copying your competitors or this awesome tactic that you are reading is also available.
What works for company X could ruin company Z.
If there were stone-making tactics that produced millionaire businesses overnight, every guy on GrowthHackers.org would be rich.
PPC could be amazing for your friend's business. But that does not mean that investment in PPC will instantly turn you into Zuckerberg.
So where do people turn when they reach this realization? A / B test
You all know of these case studies that promise a mythical gold pot at the end of a rainbow.
I made X and generated an increase of 400000000% conversions!
Okay, that's maybe a slight exaggeration, but it's not that far.
Most A / B tests fail, however.
They take too long to get results. More than anything "biased". And of course, the size of the sample.
You need a minimum of 1,000 monthly conversions for statistical significance.
So, what should you do instead?
Implement a state of mind of currency arbitrage.
Currency arbitrage is a strategy in which the trader takes advantage of the different spreads offered by the brokers for a particular currency pair by making trades.
Different spreads imply a spread between bid and ask prices. Meaning, they can buy and sell pairs to earn more money.
What does it mean in English?
Place a lot of small bets on different tactics, channels, platforms and mediums to be able to evaluate their effectiveness in real time.
Once you see specific trends develop (positive or negative), you double the winners and reduce your losses on the rest.
In this way, you can test multiple experiments at once without the bias and lack of statistical significance that accompanies A / B testing.
You enter and exit quickly. And you come out on the other side with specific campaigns that you can focus on rather than a mixed bag.
For example, you can not always control the end result. But you can control the inputs that will eventually take you there. And you can monitor, predict or predict where they will fall based on a few days of performance.
Then you can adjust and adjust each "level" accordingly to get the best results.
Adjustment of your budget according to the movement of the market
The first banner appeared on HotWired in 1994.
Look at this gem:
Source of image
According to the standards of today, it sounds like a joke, right?
Is it tie-dye? Yes yes that's it.
But it's getting worse:
See this subliminal message "DO YOU WANT" on the right ???
Super subtle. Lord, have mercy on us all.
But guess what?
This banner started with a click rate of 78% .
Yes, you read correctly. Seventy. Eight. Percent.
If you told a distributor today that your banner ads are getting a 78% clickthrough rate, you might get out of the room.
Why? It is inconceivable. It is probably impossible in the world today.
Today, the average CTR advertising display is 0.05%.
Source of image
All this brings me back to a concept invented by Andrew Chen:
The Law of Shitty Clicks:
All marketing strategies over time will result in crappy clatter rates.
As more and more people use these tactics, the market becomes saturated.
Users are fed up and they do not click. Or they go blind banner.
You can see the trends that follow this concept with almost all marketing activities.
Remember the good old days when Facebook's organic reach was crazy?
You have not paid anything and you have reached thousands or millions of greedy users.
Now the organic reach is almost nothing:
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As more and more marketers use the concepts put in place, the result is fewer and fewer results.
This is a perfect example of market movement and active management in currency trading.
You can not hold certain transactions forever and expect exponential performance.
Just because something generates a foolish return on investment now, does not mean that you can ride it at sunset.
Markets are constantly changing, as are marketing tactics.
What was hot one day (banner ads) is not now.
If you do not adjust your strategy based on analytics and forecasting, you may see decreased performance associated with passive management.
Passive management is when you sit idle and you try to reach the finish line on your current strategy.
Active management relies on analytical performance data over time to identify trends and make informed decisions about what needs to change.
If you notice a drop in organic reach on Facebook, you probably should not throw away your campaign dollars.
Unfortunately, marketers (me included) are more likely to fall into this trap than we would like.
You are connecting to Google AdWords or Google Analytics and you see some excellent conversion data:
Your plans work as you hoped.
But that does not mean you can sit and let the good times roll.
Of course, you can do it a little bit. But over time, as markets, tactics, and consumers change, you must play an active role in campaign management.
Adjust according to trends.
A great way to do this is to analyze specific topics on Google Trends:
Or even keep abreast of the latest studies on popular marketing tactics by performing a basic Google search:
Keep abreast of market movements and observe underlying trends or trends. Because when people talk about it, tweet it, favor it or like it, it is already too late.
Be careful in a bull market
When everything works well, we talk about a bull market.
Investor confidence and financial optimism are at their highest level.
On the surface, everything turns like a well-oiled machine.
Unemployment is low. The GDP of the economy is rising steadily. Inventories are up.
And your marketing tactics are gaining popularity.
But with all this surface optimism, there are serious potential side effects:
It is now difficult to predict changes and possible trends or tactics that could change.
The organic reach of Facebook was booming a few years ago. Until, of course, this is not the case.
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Now? Good luck. We hunted.
There is actually a fairly simple explanation. Simple offer in relation to the request.
User growth slows as the number of pieces of content explodes exponentially. Too much offer, not enough demand.
Guess what will be repeated now on Instagram?
Right now, it's the perfect place for your content. Give it just a minute.
And do not get carried away by the bull market.
Find your own Big Short
Have you ever seen The Big Short?
Otherwise, I highly recommend it. It's a great movie.
Not only because it is an incredible and intense account of the housing crisis of 2005.
Mainly because it features Steve Carell:
via GIPHY
Inspiring as always, prison Mike.
In all honesty, it's an awesome movie that strongly relates to digital marketing.
The main concept of the film was based on the true story of Michael Burry, a hedge fund manager who bypassed the housing crisis of 2005.
He believed that there was a real estate bubble, causing him to sell short and to bet against the banks that thought he was a chick, taking his stuff like sweets.
The idea of short selling is motivated by the belief that the price of a security will decline, which will allow it to be redeemed at a lower price for maximum profit.
And people thought Michael (Burry, not Prison) was crazy.
Who, in his good sense, is betting against the housing market when prices are doubling almost year after year?
But Burry noticed some troubling trends. He saw that subprime mortgages were in danger of default. In addition, many variable rate mortgages with lump sum payments all adjusted at about the same time.
He decided to inject more than a billion dollars into credit default swaps.
It can be said that the banks were not very happy at the end.
Here is the moral of the story:
Very few people believed it. But Burry has discovered the mystical unicorn that most traders strive to find.
The main point regarding marketing campaigns is as follows:
You have to find your own great short film.
Your own diamond in the rough state that you can exploit before anyone else.
Your own invention of graphic ads that generates a CTR of 78%.
Find the tactic that increases your conversions by 10x.
That sounds wonderful. But you know it's not easy. Because it has not been blogged or shared at conferences yet.
But examples already exist in the marketing world today.
For example, Brian Dean of Backlinko raised the link building bar with his skyscraper technique.
He chose a classic link building tactic that increased his search traffic by 110% in just two weeks.
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In addition to a massive increase in traffic, it has generated countless backlinks from thousands of different referring domains:
<img src="https://businessdigit.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/1513007661_146_how-to-manage-marketing-campaigns-as-a-financial-currency-trader.png" alt=" referent domains of the blog backlink "class =" alignnone full-size wp-image-33599 "/> Source of the image
He actually took his strategy of strengthening links to the next level by going against the grain.
He did not sit down and did not follow the wave of guest blogs or other declining strategies.
He found his own big shorts.
While small marketing tactics like A / B testing and creating new ads or creatives for your campaigns are a step in the right direction, it's not the end-all-being- all. Small bets do not move the needle.
They simply help you determine if you are on the right track (or not). And help show yourself when it's time to go carpet.
Conclusion
Managing marketing campaigns is a stressful task.
Big budget campaigns have high expectations. Bosses and customers expect great and high performance to accompany them.
Money can escape you if you are not careful.
Worse yet, you can be so caught up in the data that you miss the right trends.
Trends that tell you which aspects of your campaign are winning and which ones are losing.
Instead of flying blind or crossing your fingers, think of it as a financial money trader.
Analyze the data with a state of mind of currency arbitrage. Stay abreast of the market by taking an active management role in your campaigns. Be careful in a bull market when everyone says the same thing.
And do not be afraid to bet big when the time comes.
About the author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.