How To Monitor Results With Pay Per Click
Online marketing is now essential for businesses as the internet becomes more integrated in our daily lives. Pay per click advertising is one of the most effective form of online advertising today. PPC campaigns draw traffic from search engines by displaying ads relevant to what is being searched. When clicked, these ads take visitors to a sales page or landing page.
PPC campaigns ultimately aim to produce interest in a product or increase sales. The technology used in PPC campaigns allow for a quick turnaround of marketing data. Most ppc networks, including Google Adwords, give its users the ability to access useful reports regarding the performance of your campaign – allowing you to tweak your campaigns for better results.
Your site’s traffic is the most basic data used for optimizing PPC ads. The data can reveal how many visitors came to your site and identify where they originated. Check the dates when you have experienced a spike in traffic and check if those were the dates when you ran your ads.
Conversion rates are perhaps the most critical metric for your PPC campaign. Understanding how many clicks turned into a sale will give you a chance to determine how much it costs you to generate a lead from your campaign, and you can measure this over a period of time to determine the effectiveness of your ads. Keep in mind that measuring conversions can take many forms.
Joseph Thornton, author of the book, “The Online Advertising Playbook” explains that site registration, submitting contact information or requesting a download of a product or service are all forms of visitor interaction that could qualify as a ‘conversion’ when they are directly related to a PPC campaign.
Another way to measure the effectiveness of a PPC campaign is to analyze different keywords and keyphrases as they relate to conversion rates. If you are able to drill down exactly which keywords and keyphrases are leading to a sale, you can optimize your website for these words and also use the data for future campaigns.
Finally, determining the rankings of your advertising segment will help you determine which placement is the best for your particular niche or industry. Google Adwords rotates the ads in its sidebar column to ensure a fair advantage for all advertisers, but there are some spots that are considered ‘Featured ads’. These spots may have more value for you in a very competitive market, and can make it easier for you to decide where and how to promote your PPC campaign and achieve the best possible results.
