Confused about Measuring PPC?

You’ve put money into pay per click advertising and no one can blame you for wanting to know just exactly what you’re getting out of it. The thing is…it’s complicated. We understand and share the frustration. Here are a few tips and pieces of advice we’ve been able to offer in answer to some questions clients typically have.

How is ROI Measured for PPC?

Tracking the return on your PPC investment is very difficult. Just because a client calls, it doesn’t necessarily mean they clicked your ad. If they did click the ad and we don’t see a conversion, it doesn’t mean they didn’t call. If we use the call now button on the ad or install conversion tracking, the ads still can’t track how much revenue was generated per call or conversion.

Here are some ways that we can measure ROI:

  • Add Google Adwords conversion codes to the site to see how many people have completed the process of clicking the ad and following the call to action.
  • Use different phone numbers for each marketing campaign (not just PPC) that leads to the main line. This way we track how many people called from that unique phone number and marketing effort.
  • Often it is best to track conversions, clicks, calls, and total sales in an excel document, as the numbers are connected to each other and the various marketing efforts. Watch how this data changes by adding or removing marketing methods. For example: turn off a few campaigns and see if the number of conversions, calls, and total sales decrease. If not, turn off the remaining campaigns and continue to monitor these numbers. This method will tell you how PPC efforts are performing.

If your campaigns are set-up properly, you should be able to track how well your ads are working fairly easily.

Check each page that’s linked to an ad for the following:

  • Comprehensive keyword lists for each product or service.
  • Unique and appropriate landing pages for each product and/or service, with call to actions.
  • Conversion tracking for call to actions.
  • Strong lead generation forms.
  • Incentive offers to convert.
  • Easy to locate contact form.

Quality Score

It is imperative that ads have a great quality score; if not, you’re paying more than you should for your ad to be displayed. This reiterates the importance of applying the above list to every page that’s linked to an ad.

There are several formulas that we can use to measure, but they all come down to having a solid conversion process in place and tracking how every sale comes through, which doesn’t seem to be available yet.

Is there a strategy on when to turn off a PPC campaign?

The primary reason to turn off PPC would be that the page/site is ranking organically for the desired keyword phrase. This is our ultimate goal.

Another reason to turn off a PPC campaign would be if the CTR/ad is no longer performing as desired or if the bounce rate is very high. If, for some reason, the company isn’t getting the desired results, it doesn’t necessarily mean we should turn the ads off; it just means we need to look at the complete process, make adjustments, and test results. Split testing should always be done during a PPC campaign, and campaigns will need to be continually tweaked until they yield the desired outcome.

What software programs do you recommend to measure PPC, ROI, click through rate, etc?

At the end of the day, Google AdWords Dashboard, combined with Google Analytics are the tools to use. They will provide the desired information with no additional fees.