Category: Articles

Coming up to the end of the financial year it’s a great time to analyse the past 12 months’ performance, to look for new growth opportunities, and identify any problem areas.

When conducting an annual performance review we like to look at overall performance across five key metrics (per channel).

Why these metrics? 

The recipe for generating revenue online is simple:

Increase any one metric by 10% and you make 10% more revenue.

First, we recommend conducting a Channel Analysis. 

A channel analysis is a simple table that enables us to measure performance year-on-year over each channel. The key here is to compare the percentage of users driven to a channel versus the percentage of revenue generated. 

It should be relatively similar, any vast differences may indicate a problem. 

For example, High Sessions but Low Revenue would indicate Low-Quality Traffic, a Conversion Problem, or a potential Tracking Issue.

Channel Performance Average Month (Past 12)

By extracting data by channel and month on month it can be presented visually over time in a variety of ways making it easier to analyse, absorb or identify complex information and data sets.

2.Identify other important eCommerce metrics & benchmarketing versus competitors.

Other Important eCommerce Metrics we analyse are:

New Vs Repeat Visitors / Revenue

An indication of how qualified traffic to the website is. 

For example: Attracting 10% more New Visitors should see Repeat Visitors grow by 10%, any less may indicate unqualified traffic or a problem with visitor retention.

Repeat Purchase Rate

Also an indication of how qualified traffic is, but in addition also provides insight into customer loyalty and/or performance of “post-sale” marketing activities, useful in understanding Customer Lifetime Value.

Days / Sessions to Purchase

Very simply, a measure of either how many sessions or days it takes from the first visit to purchase. This is useful for identifying potential re-engagement opportunities across Email, Social, or Display Remarketing.

Path to Purchase

Customers don’t purchase in a single visit, they often visit multiple times across a variety of channels. This is useful for identifying opportunities to re-engage or allocating budgets more efficiently. Particularly to channels that may be part of the conversion process but are not directly attributed revenue via a standard attribution model (e.g. a first or last click).

Channel Efficiency

Total Revenue generated online divided by Spend per Channel. This measure allows for channels to be analysed on a like-for-like basis, with channels that are more efficient having a greater score. For example, Email will have a lower spend, thus be more efficient at generating than channels like Paid Search for instance. This is extremely useful in allocating budgets and identifying channel performance on a like-for-like basis.

Overall analysing Annual Performance is critically important to eCommerce success, it allows an executive to identify opportunities, problems, accurately allocate resources, and plan for success. We create analytics experience on a different level, here at LION Digital called LION View. Once a client, you can have your personal DASHBOARD, that will collect all the data for you and make your EOFY easier. This completely customisable, all-in-one and simple-to-use platform will give you an overview of eCommerce channels and metrics, Keywords rankings, Google Search Console data, our 90 day activity plan and your marketing calendar all in one convenient location. Click here to find out more.

How do you know if you’re making the most out of your email marketing?

Are 20-30% of your overall sales come from this channel? Is your returning customer rate increasing? Do you know who your VIP customers are and what they’re spending so you can reward them?

Like a lot of marketers and business owners, you might be more focused on new customer acquisition through Facebook and Google. While these channels are amazing at acquiring new customers for a price, how do you encourage repeat purchases without eating away your margins on other channels? Email is the answer. 

Email is one of the most accessible channels to communicate with your customers, as the experience is not dependent on the device, operating system, or the latest iOS or Google update.

The Smile.io blog also echoes another fact about returning customers: after their 1st purchase, they are 27% more likely to return, after a 3rd, 54% more likely. Repeat customers also spend a LOT more than first-time customers. How do you get them back? Email is the answer. 

No one likes those companies that email you every 5-seconds! If you want to avoid this, advanced segmentation and automation is the answer. Klavyio is the platform that all the top eCommerce marketers use. Better segmentation = better relationships with your customers = more money in your pocket. We will do your research for you to see if making the switch to Klaviyo is the right move for your team (if you haven’t already).

Klaviyo’s advanced automation creates an experience for each customer, depending on the stage of the journey. There are endless possibilities here. Welcome series for awareness, browse, and cart abandonment for remarketing, replenishment reminders, referrals for repeat purchases. 

Curious about your email benchmarks? Read this report to see how you stack up against other companies in your niche. 

Are you making the most out of email? Are you looking for ways to increase customer retention and engagement? Book a call to see if ramping up your email marketing channel will be the right fit for your store.

SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, is the practice of using paid strategies to increase search visibility. SEM is a digital advertising model in which advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their online ads. Essentially this is a great tool to help a website increase traffic, conversion rates, and sales for an eCommerce store. But many eCommerce companies wonder how much they should spend on their SEM, and some even wonder whether they should invest in SEM at all. 

How would you describe your SEM results? Are they just “OK”? If yes, then it’s time to start changing your strategy to make the most of your marketing budget!

LION Digital is the agency that took the process of SEM to a new level that demonstrates proven results. We took the industry-standard model and revolutionised this new approach to work seamlessly and effectively for both – our clients and our business. While most agencies tend to focus on charging their clients based on spending every month regardless of the results, LION charges based on SEM performance. In fact, setting ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) and revenue KPIs helps us motivate our team members to achieve the most outstanding results possible in a much shorter period of time than any other agency. We lead SMEs to grow and scale their business even in the face of adversity and rapid change, adjusting the existing strategies and models to work best for our clients.

Focusing on our clients’ success and providing premium eCommerce services alongside a first-class customer experience is our top priority. Our fees relate directly to the success we generate for clients meaning we invoice based on ROAS rather than a set, inflexible sum every period. 

Besides revolutionising the model of SEM, LION also adopts a holistic service approach to provide the best outcomes possible for the clients. Our holistic approach is focused on creating mutual wins among multiple clients’ channels, creating overall success instead of narrowing services down to just one channel. We make sure to consider all areas of the client’s business by analysing and assessing all available channels.

Our process of SEM is easy and effective:

• Our holistic approach that doesn’t shoot down SEO &/or other channels but instead looks to create mutual wins for the client’s multiple channels, creating overall sustainable success.
• We identify clients’ current positions, goals and needs based on their industry and past results. 
• Laying out a 3-6-12 month roadmap to maximise the retail calendar and get the most out of every $ of ad spend.
• We optimise and adjust course day-to-day with fortnightly strategy meetings.
• Your dedicated account manager & channel specialist will learn your business from the inside-out to align with niches & demographics that are most likely to convert.

Let’s take a look at our processes a little closer.

We are dedicated to the holistic approach in our SEM performance, adopting the mindset of focusing on all channels and processes instead of focusing on specific components or areas. Creating mutual wins for the client is the top priority for our team. We move forward, understanding that our success directly depends on the success our clients achieve as a result of our overall performance. LION always finds ways to market and target success as a result and not only on achieving satisfactory statistics.

Once we onboard a new client, our priority is to look through all the currently available data and conduct market research to identify the client’s current positions across multiple online channels. As a result of this process, we will find areas that can be improved and optimised to achieve better results.

Setting goals and objectives with the client based on industry and current results is critical as each business is different, and clients have their own understanding of what they want. Our position is to identify the common ground and achieve the necessary results within a particular time period.

The next step helps us and the client understand what kind of strategy we will adopt for the next 3-6-12 months to maximise the ROAS. Our team develops your roadmap to closely follow the retail calendar and make the most of upcoming events, investing only in advertising necessary to achieve the desired and set goals. Our results following this step have been outstanding so far, and we do not plan on stopping here. For example, we generated a growth of 1900% ROAS in under four months for one client while also improving their website traffic and customer satisfaction.

The SEM strategy roadmap we set at the beginning of a campaign is flexible to account for changes throughout its course. Having fortnightly meetings to discuss our progress and the further course of action allows us to assess, identify and adjust where necessary to achieve optimal performance. The online data is not a constant, and we regularly collaborate with our clients, using their industry knowledge and our digital expertise to formulate the most efficient campaign. We provide detailed monthly reports on account progress with commentary to understand where we should be going next and what our focus should be on for the next time period. The response to this style of meetings has been very positive and has helped us significantly improve possible outcomes.

Our overall SEM performance is based on an inclusive approach to consider all areas of online business. LION has a dedicated specialist for each online channel to focus on our clients and learn their business from the perspective of being an extension of their internal team. The account manager will conduct specialised research within a particular niche and identify demographics that are likely to fluctuate in order to make necessary adjustments to the digital marketing and SEM strategies. We provide more attention and expertise, offering a wide range of premium eCommerce services within particular channels.

Our performance-based SEM Model helps us achieve the numbers most other digital marketing agencies aspire to. We’ve generated $7,107,036.30 in Google Ads Revenue, 51,366 online transactions, and $1,058,071.09 in managed ad spend in the last 365 days across our existing clients. Results we’re proud to have generated for our clients.

LION Digital’s new performance-based SEM Model is a unique and revolutionary strategy based on collaborative actions that will ultimately lead toward one and only one goal – SUCCESS. We thoroughly investigate digital opportunities to gain mutual wins and help our clients thrive within their dedicated market and niche. Alongside our LION Dashboard, this SEM model is a powerful tool to generate necessary data to make the most informed and cost-effective campaign decisions.

If you would like to learn more about our new SEM model and experience the outstanding results we achieve, reach out to our team and book your introductory meeting with us. Let’s join forces to understand what increased level of revenue is possible for your business to generate!

Article by

Leonidas Comino – Founder & CEO

Leo is a, Deloitte award winning and Forbes published digital business builder with over a decade of success in the industry working with market-leading brands.

Like what we do? Come work with us

No doubt, online was a critical channel for Australian shoppers for the festive season in 2020. And now, online shopper engagement is still presenting a strong opportunity for retailers as we head into 2021.

Here we share with you data from Australia Post, the results are worth attention as they reinforce the importance of digital marketing in this new landscape.

Do you find your digital marketing not transparent enough? Have you ever wondered how your agency or internal run campaign is really performing? Are they on track to achieve the desired goals by the end of the week? Month? Quarter? Or are they reporting inaccurate data which is a common occurrence in our industry?

At LION Digital, we have the solution to this problem. LION Digital has developed an intuitive reporting dashboard for our clients, which provides a unique and simple-to-use platform where you can find everything you need to know at the click of a button. The data includes Google Analytics, monthly agency reporting, Google Console and keyword rankings all in one convenient place without logging into multiple systems.

LION Dashboard is purpose-built to have a detailed commentary on the data and give you statistical insights to all clients. With this platform, clients will be able to oversee the full progress and ongoing performance of our specialists towards the set of goals and requirements. The Commentary section provides regular and detailed monthly reports in the Client Dashboard, top-ranking movements, and deliverables – completed this month and planned for the next one.

The Traffic Report page provides data insight according to customisable date ranges, channel and device segmentation outside the organic channel. The Performance section offers detrimental for the website data about page views, bounce rates, exit percentage, session durations and more, giving an overall overview for further analysis and strategic recommendations for your company. Moreover, clients will be able to understand which pages and products are in higher demand, adjusting their services to the right target audiences.

LION Dashboard also provides an eCommerce Report that shows financial analysis including client’s revenue, transactions, average order value and eCommerce conversion rates. Top Products list contains available on the website items and the revenue earned through the sales during the set time period. This offers detailed real-time customer analytics to further improve digital marketing strategies and overall website optimisation.

Google Search Console is a segment offering website’s search overview, including a range of statistics such as clicks, impressions, average position and searches queries, according to the chosen dates, devices and countries. 

The Search Engine Ranking section provides an insight into organic ranking data with full inclusion of necessary statistics.

LION Dashboard is a completely customisable platform to help our SEO clients gain proper business intelligence and make informed digital decisions based on solid data and recommendations. With our dashboard, all our customers will be able to improve their website optimisation, target the right customers with the right products and access their real-time data.

LION Digital values its customers’ requests and desires and allocates the best specialists towards different projects to achieve their goals, while gaining mutual trust and support. We ensure that each of our channels is led by the best specialists in the digital marketing industry and top experts, who provide their professional insights and support to every client, taking care of all the deliverables throughout the project. Our premium services go beyond SEO optimisations as we also cover such channels as SEM, SMM, Email Marketing, Social Audits, WEB, PPC, Analytics, providing our clients a holistic perspective over their marketing and channel performance.

If you think your business isn’t getting enough recognition and organic traffic online, our team will make sure to change your opinion about digital marketing strategies you currently follow.

Don’t be a scaredy cat, partner with us to take a LION’s share of the market and achieve the status you and your company deserve! Reach out to us to have a chat!

It can be difficult for businesses to know which channel to invest in first, primarily if they focus on running other areas of the company and are not digital marketing experts. In the current economic situation, choosing the right channel is crucial and can make or break most businesses, which means they do not have the luxury of making such an error.

Often businesses make a decision based on internal team knowledge or expertise which may not include the particular channel the business needs. The number 1 reason is from businesses decisions made based on recommendations from single-channel specialist agencies which focus on pushing the cool-aid that their selling at the time down your throat like it’s the best option for your business rendering them incapable of providing a trusted advisor style advice.

Hypothetically let’s say a business invests in SEO, a channel which typically takes between 6-9 months to break even which usually isn’t factoring in product costs and expenses. If they’ve not yet begun working on maximising paid channels, which has a significantly faster ROI, then this, in most cases, is not the most effective use of the marketing budget. Allocating the same investment into a more immediate performing channel could yield a 1:20 ROI in 1-2 months which would then fund the SEO investment and set the business up for greater success.

Here’s some insights from Sarmad Sohail our Director of Search:

“Here at LION we don’t believe in pushing a specific channel but work on a strategy and channel that best suits the businesses profile and ROI. For example, It would not be the best strategy to work on non-branded organic searches for a business that has just launched its own product line. In cases like this, even though I head up the SEO department, we would still recommend the business to start with Paid Media and Social Channels to establish brand equity and move towards SEO after a few months.”

If you’re not sure whether you’re heading in the right direction, then we’re able to take a holistic look at the current state of play of your business and collaborate with your team to map out the best digital marketing strategy with the right steps to ensure that you’re maximising your budget and activating the best channels in the correct order.

Article by

Leonidas Comino – Founder & CEO

Leo is a, Deloitte award winning and Forbes published digital business builder with over a decade of success in the industry working with market-leading brands.

Like what we do? Come work with us