Eric Ritter

How do I increase my website traffic?

August 17, 2014 by Eric Ritter

Recently, the practice of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) has flared back up. As a Digital Strategist (CRO) is always on my mind for my clients. Without successful CRO your clients will fail.

The process of optimizing for conversions is guided by two factors: Increased visits to a website and an increased conversion rate. In other words, you need to have visitors to your website that you can convert to customers and on the other side you need turn an increasing number of them into actual customers.

Today I’ll start off by looking at the first half of the equation:

How do I increase my website traffic?

Which Marketing Channel Gives You the Most Bang for Your Click?

August 14, 2014 by Eric Ritter

Don’t think SEO matters? Think again.

Thanks to an infographic by Conductor featuring the most concise industry data I’ve seen so far this year you can see from which channels brands get the most customers from.

The infographic shows in detail which channel (social, organic search, email, or PPC) gets the most visitors, results in the most customers, and thus gives you the most bang for your click.

To no surprise the channel that drives the most visitors is organic search.

According to Conductor: “Visitors from organic search are 2X more likely to be extremely engaged and visit more than five pages when compared to the other channels.” Wow.

How to be a great manager

July 31, 2014 by Eric Ritter

Let me start off with a story about a bad manager. This story is what really got me thinking about how to be a great manager. I’ve had quite a few managers in my career. Due to the nature of the advertising and marketing world it is very common to switch jobs and thus managers every few years. Most of the time during the interview process you can gauge what kind of manager your boss will be. But, what you never expect from a manager is indifference.

Coming back to my experience with a bad manager, during the first few months in this job my manager provided feedback to my questions and met with me on a fairly regular basis. However, increasingly our interactions would start to revolve around fires within the organization, emergencies surrounding the organization, or to point out what I was doing wrong. The few times during my tenure that we met in person, he focused on his agenda while multitasking at the same time. I had no opportunity to share my thoughts and ideas, get feedback necessary to move forward on projects, and he never once asked me a question.

His overt lack of interest and investment in me destroyed my engagement in the company. While my performance was high (I did ace my 90 day review after all), I needed input, feedback, recognition, and counsel. I longed to be connected and part of a team.

All this got me thinking: What kind of manager had I been in the past? What kind of manager did I want to be? What type of manager did I want my future managers to be? The one thing I knew is that I wanted to have and be a great manager. Someone who treats people with respect, coaches and mentors employees, and sees them as real human beings with meaningful lives and valuable experiences that extended beyond the business, but could contribute to the business. [Read more…] about How to be a great manager

Effects of Ad Placement and Type on Consumer Responses to Podcast Ads

July 19, 2014 by Eric Ritter

It has been brought to my attention how difficult it is to find my peer reviewed journal article on which forms and placements of ads people like the best when listening to podcasts. This journal article is derived from my Master of Advertising Thesis.

Well, to make things easier I’ve decided to just upload it to my blog:

Effects of Ad Placement and Type on Consumer Responses to Podcast Ads

Here’s the Abstract of the journal article (aka TL;DR):
The purpose of this study was to understand the effects of podcast ad placement and podcast ad type on consumers’ perceived intrusiveness, perceived irritation, attitude toward the ad, and ad avoidance. Our 2×2 (traditional ad vs. sponsorship by beginning vs. middle) experimental study found that sponsorships generated better consumer responses than did traditional ads and that podcast ads placed at the beginning of audio podcasts yielded better consumer responses than those placed in the middle. Implications for marketers and advertisers are discussed.

Are Native Ads the answer?

July 16, 2014 by Eric Ritter

First we need to make sure we are asking the right question. Is it as simple as age-old advertising dilemma: “How do advertisers and brands connect with millennials and teens on a deeper level?” Yes it is. Over and over advertisers chase the next shiny object in hopes of answering this fairly simple question. Well, now at the half-way point of 2014 the answer seem to be native ads.

Native Advertising

In the past year, native advertising has gained a fair share of interest as well as controversy in the ad industry. At the bare minimum it is viewed simply as an alternative to static banners or just something else to throw into the digital media mix. A big reason native advertising is taking off is because brands and agencies complain about how ineffective of an eyesore to consumers traditional banner ads are. With native ads there is a very fine line to walk, as pushing out content that comes across as too authentic can turnoff teenagers from a brand’s marketing. [Read more…] about Are Native Ads the answer?