My company doubled our revenue when we stopped doing audits.

Anyone can audit and critique your digital marketing efforts. The real power is in the recommendations that come with it.

In some cases, the recommendations might be "stop doing X and do Y instead," which means time (and money) spent on auditing "X" would be a waste.

Nothing wrong with honest, helpful feedback and constructive criticism— but make sure you’re getting your money's worth on the recommendations that follow.

Audits are cheap. Plans are powerful.

Yes, it’s always worth investing in some professional help. The good news is: it’s very difficult to "crush the whole thing" with a Google Ads campaign.

The easiest way to fail on GAds is to waste money. Be ready to spend $100/day for ~2 weeks in order to see some real results— either good or bad.

But even still, hiring a pro to give it a look would be a great way to ensure your settings and campaigns are configured optimally. I'd expect to pay $50-100/hr for that person's time.

I don’t provide this service but I could definitely connect you with a few folks who do, if you’re interested.

Do you already know which products/niches you want to work in? The tallest hurdle I’ve seen block affil success is when marketers lose steam. If you don’t care about the products you promote, will you stay motivated to promote them?

Sure, the payout provides motivation but that only gets you so far. AM is a grind. Make sure you’re working in an area where you don’t mind grinding.

"Is content marketing the right direction for our ecommerce business?"

Yes. It takes a lot time and work, but it can be worth every minute.

It's a method of utilizing SEO: letting Google drive searchers to your website when they search for phrases related to your business.

Movoto wrote a great piece that explains the thinking behind using Content Marketing, and how they took their blog from 2,000 views per month to over 18,000,000 in 2 years.

Here’s the home run that exemplifies the thinking behind content as a marketing initiatve:

>Our first thought isn’t, “Oh, this will be cool” or “This would fit perfectly on The Atlantic” or “This will soooo go viral.” No, our first thought is, “Is there an audience out there that will link back to us?”<

Audience first. Whatever content you publish has to reach and resonate with the right audience.

—————

"What's is the best way for your suggestion to move forward into content marketing?"

Figure out who you want to reach and what they care about. Then create videos, graphics, and written text (blog posts or educational resources) that appeal to those users.

Then you have to promote it.

"Publish and pray" doesn't work. Andy Crestodina at Orbit Media famously said "It’s not the best content, but the best PROMOTED content that wins."

But that's a separate question altogether.

Hope that helps! Please reach out to me here on Clarity if I can provide any more answers for you.

Good luck!

I don't agree 100% with David's answer, but I'm not the server expert that he is. Instead, I'll answer from a purely Google-centric point of view.

Generally speaking, faster is better. If that means achieving the speed through CF, then that's fine. Google doesn't care where your website is hosted (other than bad neighborhood/webspam signals). Which is to say: SS vs. CF vs. any other standard host is irrelevant for SEO.... at face value.

Where there start to be big differences is in speed and security.

Given that it sounds like you've already chosen SS, I'd say sure, go ahead w/ CF... or any other proxy/CDN, **if** it's reliable and fast.

At the end of the day, Google wants to send its users to great websites with great experiences (because that makes the user feel good about using Google).

So if CF or another CDN helps you deliver a fast, reliable, secure experience for your users, then Google is happy.

One last disclaimer/reminder: this answer (and my expertise) do not take server/DNS/CDN technology into account. There are always upsides and down. SEO is only one seat at the decision-making table. YMMV, but if it were me, I'd vote yes.

No first-hand experience, no. But I hope my answer can still be helpful.

Go after the problem. Write articles and resources about the issues that your add-on solves. Publish YouTube videos and in-depth written pieces detailing every tiny feature of the add-on, and how it benefits G Docs users.

It's true that almost no one will read every word of your in-depth piece, or watch all 9 minutes of your video, but that's ok. Google will. And whatever small percentage of those resources applies most directly to searchers will be valuable to them.

Then you've gotta promote these resources. Places like Quora and Reddit are a great start. Don't be overly spammy, just hawking your add-on shamelessly. Be genuinely helpful, and provide links to your articles/videos (because THEY are helpful).

Trust that some of the Quora/Reddit users will visit your resources, and some of those visitors will view your add-on. Not all, but some. If you try to go for 'all', you'll drive people away, especially on Reddit.

Answers like this one on Clarity are another great spot. Facebook and LinkedIn groups. Other forums or online communities.

Find niches and verticals that may frequently encounter your problem. Then find groups of people in those niches/verticals. Again, don't spam. But when those people see that you can understand and relate to their problem—and help them solve it—they will gladly risk a click.

Let your videos/articles do the rest of the work moving them down the funnel toward the add-on.

Hope that helps!

By the way, what does the add-on do?? Super curious now.

Publish great stuff and promote it to right people.

You'll need to provide more details/context for your question.

How long is a piece of string? How big is a house?

It all depends on how much time, money, and/or effort you're willing to spend generating those leads.

Francisco has a good answer. I especially agree w/ the Inbound strategy.

Put yourself in their shoes and predict what they're thinking/wondering/asking about. Create a content publishing strategy around those topics/questions.

The forums you mention will be a goldmine. Read the discussions and look for patterns in the language these patients use. Make sure your publishing matches their language.

Look for patterns in the patient profile, too.

Are they all likely to be 65+? Likely to be overweight? Likely to be male? Likely to be white/caucasian? Etc etc. If you can identify a persona, it will make ad targeting easier.

For example, 80% of mesothelioma patients are male. 95% are white. Knowing that, you could safely advertise to white men with a degree of confidence in your targeting.

The last strategy you may want to consider is a social media-focused 'shareable' campaign. Write/create/produce some piece of content about your cause with a strong TAKE OUR SURVEY call-to-action. (A poignant, touching, emotional video comes to mind, but I suppose it depends on the condition in question.)

The further the video spreads online, the more exposure your survey receives.

You'll get more individual attention with a single person, but unless you're paying a full-time salary, you won't be that person's only client.

CRO work can be billed hourly or by project. For someone really good, you can expect to pay $100-150/hr, probably.

Look for stats.

Not all campaigns are the $300,000,000 button— https://articles.uie.com/three_hund_million_button/ —but showing you stats means that CRO person or agency is doing their dilligence to track their own progress.

YOU should define the goals, not them. But they should definitely be able to explain in great detail how they plan to achieve your goals. No smoke and mirrors. Get specifics.

Be skeptical of promises or guarantees. Be accepting of softer language like estimate, experiment, trial, variable, likelihood, etc.

And to answer your last question, if you have good traffic but few leads, yes CRO is what you need. Good luck! Let us know how it goes.