C = COST PER CLICK

A method of buying advertisements on the web. With the CPC media mindset, the advertiser only pays for mouse clicks of the visitors, not for the times the advertiser’s ad is shown (that way of advertising is called CPM, cost-per-mille).

The most effective types of CPC/PPC advertising are context advertising and search advertising. Context advertising displays your ad or announcement on relevant websites. Search advertising shows your ad on the search results pages of Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex and others.

We want to give you a real-life explanation of the CASHCOW formula, by zooming in on young Mark's milk business.

Mark's father is a dairy farmer and Mark sells cans with milk from a branded booth next to a road where a lot of cars pass by. The sign "Fresh Milk" is placed on top of the stand for the drivers to see.

So CPM (cost per mille advertising, buying banners online) in this case would be the thousands of cars which saw the tent and drove on without stopping. You as the advertiser pay for the number of these cars, who saw the tent. But the Cost Per Click (CPC) type of internet media buying is when you pay only for those cars that stopped to see the Marks' tent – the quantity of clicks.

Example of search advertising:

Google's Adwords Program (or, in Russia, Yandex Direkt). An advertiser who sells milk online buys context ads that appear only when a search engine user searches for milk on Google. If the searcher clicks on the milk ad, the advertiser pays an amount to Google for generating the click, the lead.

A = AFFILIATE MARKETING

Basically an attractive, low risk method of internet media buying to reach performance based marketing goals: leads, sales, email addresses, customer data and more.

You get your visitors from other websites or blogs on a no cure no pay basis. This affiliate advertising is more specifically called CPA- (Cost per Acquisition) and CPL- (Cost per Lead) advertising.

So, with affiliate marketing you won't have to pay for the amount of times (CPM) your ad is shown online, you even won't pay for the number of clicks (CPC) --- you simply pay for every milk pack a partner website or blog helped you sell. This is called CPA – Cost per Action or Cost per Acquisition. It requires a bit of technical implementation but it's certainly worth the effort. In Eastern Europe this advertising aproach is not yet as big as in the West. Examples of big affiliate networks are Commission Junction, Tradedoubler, Zanox.

Getting people that may not immediately buy to sign up to your online milk newsletter can be achieved by offering a payment to website owners and bloggers for every email subscription from people referred to your milk site by them. This affiliate advertising approach is called CPL – Cost per Lead.

So with our Mark, the milk seller, buying media on a CPA/CPL basis means that you pay for only those cars who stop at the milk tent and buy some milk, or for those drivers who leave their contact details for a potential future home delivery (CPL).

S - SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

Is the art of upgrading of your site for better "findability" in search engines.

There is internal (or onsite) SEO – upgrading of your site structure and there is external (offsite) SEO – the quantity and quality of external links to your site. Both of them are used for one goal – better indexing of your site by search engines robots from Google, Bing,Yahoo, Yandex etcetera.

SEO is one of the most effective method of attracting the relevant visitors to your site. Usually if your site takes the top positions in the search results on different keywords the more visitors coming to see it from search engines.

So for internal SEO of your site you should look at such factors as – HTML coding, the text performance, text quality and capacity, formatting, number of headlines, structure, navigation etc. For external SEO you should mind this – links exchange, buying of links on shady link exchange platforms and so on.

If we look at our Mark with his milk tent than it should be the size and the color brightness of his tent to better be seen from the far of the road for car drivers, so they can see the milk tent and stop to see it.

H = HUMAN INTERACTION

It's the marketing tool used to be closer to your customer, to convert and to understand his needs and demands.

It can be a call center, live chat with the visitors on your site, participation in and moderation on forums or social networks (Facebook) or social media interaction (Twitter).

Sometimes it’s not enough to have a good informational one-way site for your clients. A lot of people prefer some form of personal contact to ask about the products or services your company supplies. Or they prefer to speak, chat or write with a person before they part with their online shopping money.

Some people need to leave their feedback about your company or your products for you or others to read. So a good brainstorm about ways to talk to your clients and how to gently persuade them in a more interactive way is recommended. The socialization of the digital environment – the Web has become more “human”!

Our Mark with his milk business has less of those issues – because he sells milk in his tent, he’s interacting one-on-one, interactively talking to people, getting their opinions and milk feedback. But still, young Mark could think about those who have no time for that, and he could give those people leaflets with his contact number and Facebook page, for people to leave their comments later. He could also put a message board with comments from his clients on the side of his milk stand for new customers to see.

C = CRM (CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT)

CRM -- a customer retention scheme for example via e-mail, sms, or phone.

In larger, data-driven, companies, CRM is normally the department or direction responsible for customer data analysis and segmentation (personas), predictive analytics and (cluster) modeling, RFM (recency, frequency, monetary value) segmentation, cross selling or white label.

When you already collected some information about your web visitors and clients, which is easy to do on the Internet, you probably want to use it. You can divide your customers into groups and types according to their differences in (online) behavior and conversion potential and propose a separate sales or communication approach to each of the groups, according with that segment’s needs and specifics.

You can also integrate selling other products and services which are close to the ones you sell, to provide your clients with more convenience and your company with the potential to upsell.

For some organisations that have just started, CRM and data management is fairly basic still. One of those enterprises is Mark’s successful milk trading business.

While selling his milk, Mark collected a lot of requests for honey from people and customers he talked with. So he offered his neighbor Pete about a partnership. And since then, Mark also sells honey in his milk tent sharing the proceeds with Pete.

O = OPTIMISED USABILITY

Make sure your site converts your visitors properly before you spend big money on traffic acquisition and advertising. Conversion: when your website visitor becomes your customer.

Let’s talk a bit about web site usability.

People usually don't use sites twice if it’s too hard to find the necessary information. When you build or reconstruct your site you should ask yourself -- is the most important info visible and is it easy to find for the user? Is the site structure logical, not too complicated? Is the menu simple? Is it easy to search? Is it easy to buy on the site?

While answering those questions don’t research from your company’s perspective, but ask regular people, who are either new to your business and have a fresh view on the pluses and minuses of your site.

When we look at the usability in Mark's milk-sellingexample, we should look at the location of the tent on the highway – is it located conveniently for drivers to stop there, can they easily park their car and perhaps sit down conveniently to enjoy their fresh glass of cash cow milk? If not – hardly anyone will stop to buy Mark's milk or Pete's honey.

W = WEB ANALYTICS

To measure is to know. In the digital world everything is measurable – so with good web analytics and data management you can calculate the return of your marketing investments (ROMI), find opportunities and eliminate bottlenecks.

Some examples for web analytics are - Google analytics, Omniture, Webtrends, Webtrekk etc..

Although Web Analytics is the last element in the C.A.S.H.C.O.W. formula, it’s certainly not the least important. The beauty of the online environment (and possibly a worrying aspect as well) is that everything is measurable.The guy with the most data wins in this digital era – if he knows how to use it.

Don’t economise on good analytics, invest time in figuring out what is hidden in the data you have access to.

Our young milk-entrepreneur Mark in his milk tent never forgets to count the quantity of daily clients. He also checks the temperature, considers the different seasons and the days of the week because he noticed that it makes sense to use these bits of information when calculating how much milk he should bring to the milk stand to sell. This way he has little wasted milk. Mark is already thinking how he can expand his assortment soon with the remaining to produce cheese or butter. And when he monitors the trends in his sales he can plan when he should even go to the cattle market to buy the best cow for more milk production.