You Mean Someone Else Manages Your Homepage - BAH HUMBUG

I had a meeting a few weeks back with a fellow internet advertising executive and she told me that she had no control over the promotion on her company's homepage. I was completely surprised that she would allow this to happen. In fact, not only did she not have control over her homepage, she also had no involvement in retention of her clients.

Before we tackle organizational design and retention marketing on the web, let's talk about how NO internet advertising executive should allow someone else to manage the sales from their own website.

I read a while back on emarketer that 15% of marketing executives listed their homepage as having the highest ROI. 15% doesn't sound like much, but it was the third highest ROI and 2 notches ahead of advertising (direct sales was #1). So, why would you let someone else in the marketing organization manage your homepage sales?

When I first joined Harrisdirect back in 2001 when it was known as CSFBdirect, the homepage acquisition box consisted of a text ad with a $75 offer in it. Sales you can imagine, were dismal from this unit. However, I was able to convince the executives in the company that this should be replaced with a photo and graphic promoting our latest acquisition offers; this image was also closely aligned with the rest of our online campaign. Now, I can't report the actual number because my friends at the company actually read this blog (will you please drop me a message here), but let's just say that the sales turned out to be our 2nd highest internet advertising channel. Plus, if you actually understood how many hoops we had to jump through to get the image changed, you'd guard that placement with a couple of hungry pitbulls.

You know the other great aspect to owning the homepage sales is that they don't come with any media expenses. Sure, you might have some miniscule creative charges for designing the page and people hour to change/host. However, any media buys you are conducting will have media and ad servering expenses layered in with the respective buys.

Do you still need convincing? Ok, well now take a look at your weighted average cost per acquisition. If you have ownership over the homepage sales then you would be counting any sales from that channel with a next to zero cost while the remainder of your internet sales buy will have media and ad serving cost. No matter how efficient your media buy is, including the homepage sales with a next to zero cost will make you look that much smarter. And after all, making your numbers will make you look smart and that's what this is all about anyway, right?

So, go out and grab ownership of the homepage or promotional box. Do what ever you need to (of course within reason) to convince the powers that be that it is good for the company to have everything synched up on the internet. You know, drop a buzz word like "branding" (hah) and message consistency, and perhaps the owner of the promotional box will be happy to off load some of their work. Once that happens, watch your sales go up and your CPA go down.

That's my early Christmas gift to you. You can thank me later with a little

PardonMyFrench,

Eric