Recently, I was self-reflecting on my career in digital marketing. It’s phenomenal to see the growth and obstacles I have endured over the last decade to forge a career path. My career first started as a freelance social media expert in 2009, and I am using the word expert very loosely.
In reality, I managed social media accounts for a retailer from my cell phone while simultaneously cold-calling people to get them interested in enrolling in college classes. During my 100 daily calls, I would upload pictures of products, retweet users, and share business articles to my client’s social media accounts. These were the good old days before advertising became a billion-dollar business for Facebook. For three years, I learned the ins and outs of managing a corporate social media account, up until the company was sold and dissolved.
More than ten years, and nearly $30 million later, I find the key to my success was that first small account that paid me only $500 per month. Many prospective clients, and even some recruiters that reach out to me, are interested in my expertise because they want to generate immediate sales. The number one question I ask these potential clients is, “are you looking at the entire funnel, or are you looking at just direct sales?”
Since 2010, I have managed digital marketing campaigns that have generated a total of $28,217,923 in revenue with a return of 932%. In addition to these sales, these campaigns have generated 23,617 inbound leads for clients. Let’s examine how I did this.
My biggest revenue gain was my assisted conversion; 38% of these sales came from customers that clicked one of my ads did not purchase immediately but came back through another channel within 30 days. A total of $10.7 million in sales would not be on record if I only looked at immediate sales. I may have even cut my campaigns off, thinking that they were unsuccessful.
My next largest revenue source was paid search ads through Google and Bing (now Microsoft Ads). This channel accounted for $8.7 million of my marketing portfolio. Throughout my career, paid search ads have been more of a bottom-funnel channel, having a direct return on ad spend. The average return on my ad spend for paid search ads have been over 1,300%. The drawback has been, while very successful, paid search ads that charge on a cost-per-click basis has required the largest investment out of all of the marketing channels.
Finally, for retailers and e-commerce businesses, I must mention the concept of affiliate marketing. This rounds out the top-3 of my portfolio for a total of $7.3 million. Affiliate marketing consists of multiple opportunities to promote your products by utilizing other companies/personalities’ traffic. At first glance, this may cause concern you’re putting your trust in an outside entity to promote your brand and product with less creative control. However, trusting your affiliate vendor can provide a massive increase in traffic and sales, with some affiliates working on commissions. Additionally, affiliate platforms such as Commission Junction and Pepperjam have a diverse range of social media influencers in their network as well.
The key takeaway I want you to leave with is that marketing, like most things in life, is a process. You have channels that drive revenue, channels that drive users to your website or brick and mortar location, and you have channels that keep customers engaged with your brand. Don’t be quick to disregard a channel solely off of the immediate return.
