Should I Be Paying to Advertise?

It seems like paid advertising has become commonplace; it's a given that if you want to attract more customers and increase your visibility, running advertisements on websites is a good way to do it. With the emergence of Google AdWords and Facebook advertising, it's incredibly easy to create an account and start paying for clicks. But the salient question is this: Are paid advertisements an effective way to bring in new customers and increase revenue or is it a money dump?

Tim Footdale, an ecommerce specialist and blogger, gets down to the underlying root of the issue and explains how tools like SumAll are vital in making the right decisions for your business. First, the two most important metrics you need – which SumAll provides – are Sales for New Customers and Transaction Count for New Customers. Once you have these two numbers you can divide them to see what the average is for each new customer sale. By knowing the conversion rate for new customers, you can figure out how much money you have available to spend on advertising while still making a profit. For a more in depth explanation, read the whole post here.

You may even find that you don't need to spend money on advertising altogether. Our friends at Diamond Candles don't spend a dollar on paid advertising by taking advantage of the free marketing that social media provides. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are instrumental marketing resources that have largely been untapped by small businesses.    

Tim Footdale's post illustrates our larger philosophy of data democratization and making smarter, better decisions by using SumAll. Everyone deserves data and to be more informed by the world surrounding them, it's up to you if you want to be apart of it.