AussieWebmaster
01-01-2005, 06:35 PM
As many articles seem to suggest there are still a large number of people that still only measure their traffic as far as the first page and do not bother to extract the more important results that give numbers for true ROI.
While it is good to keep an eye on what terms are getting you traffic and from what engine, it is more important to know which ones convert and what creatives are better at converting while maybe not as strong on the CTR.
Tracking tools allow you to work the tightrope of PPC advertising with the benefit of a net - without them you are stepping out there blind. CTR is important especially in the battle to lower costs at Google and even to keep from being disabled - but without the ROI - without knowing which terms are actually converting - you are basically working the tools to lower the cost of your traffic. Much of the spend could be saved if you know what words (and creatives) just don't convert.
If there is anything you want to add to your arsenal this new year it is a better understanding of how to use thwe tools you have more effectively.
Comparing Creatives
Any tracking tool will isolate the code and it is with this method that you can start comparing creatives. For this example we will work with Google (since they allow multiple creatives) - it can be done in an AdGroup with multiple words but gives you a much more meaningful result if you create a Valuable Terms campaign and use the say top 50 terms that are getting you high traffic. Each term then gets its own AdGroup and you then can create say 3 ads (make them a little different) trying one with the keyword in the title, one with it in the lower lines and another that uses other words.
The code is then attached to the ads - number them with the word attached - I will use the code I use for KeywordMax but it can be adapted to most others including the ones that analyse your log files as it is then attached to the requested page - your destination URLs will be http://www.domain.com/landingpage.html?engine=adwords&keyword=the+term+1 etc. where the number represents the specific ad.
Then when you do an analysis you need to have the code tracked to your conversion - an email signup, sale or whatever and this can be multiple coversion items which allows you to see if a particular ad converts better for a certain item or type of action. But you will see term 1 or term 2 or term 3 and this gives you information about the creative and the traffic it brings to your site.
Interestingly, you may see one ad has a better CTR when you look in the Google account center - but armed with your conversion numbers you will be able to tell if this ad also has high conversions.
Say ad 1 has a CTR of 10% and got 200 clicks, ad 2 had a CTR of 7% and got 140 clicks, while ad 3 had a CTR of 4% and got 80 clicks.
If you look you will see that the clicks were charged at different prices (for this let's say .90, 1.00, 1.10 to try and make it simple) - the first number to work with - and now you look at the conversion rates. If ad 1 had a conversion rate of 7% and ad 2 had a conversion rate of 12% while ad 3 had a conversion rate of 14%.
So the spends were $180 for ad 1 and converted for 14 visitors and thus cost $12.86 a close, ad 2 cost $140 for 17 conversions or $8.24 a sale, and ad 3 spent $88 for 11 sales at $8 each.
So we have a sea of numbers - but they can be used to make decisions.
First you have costs for sales - so if your profit is lower than $12.86 obviously regardless of volume you are just losing quicker - if it is still a profit then you need to work the profit numbers - let's say you make $20 a sale.
You profit $7.14 for sales from ad1, $11.76 from each ad2 sale, and $12 from ad3.
Now you go back to the Google numbers - if you look at say 10,000 impressions:
ad1 would get you 1,000 clicks and 70 sales, ad2 would get 700 clicks with 84 sales and ad3 would give you 400 clicks for 56 sales.
ad1 makes you 499.80
ad2 makes you 987.84
ad3 makes you 672.00
So using creative tracking you choose ad2 for the maximum profit.
This can also be done for landing pages but that is for another post.
Sometimes you get sidetracked by the best CTR - keep the above in mind and increase your profits.
While it is good to keep an eye on what terms are getting you traffic and from what engine, it is more important to know which ones convert and what creatives are better at converting while maybe not as strong on the CTR.
Tracking tools allow you to work the tightrope of PPC advertising with the benefit of a net - without them you are stepping out there blind. CTR is important especially in the battle to lower costs at Google and even to keep from being disabled - but without the ROI - without knowing which terms are actually converting - you are basically working the tools to lower the cost of your traffic. Much of the spend could be saved if you know what words (and creatives) just don't convert.
If there is anything you want to add to your arsenal this new year it is a better understanding of how to use thwe tools you have more effectively.
Comparing Creatives
Any tracking tool will isolate the code and it is with this method that you can start comparing creatives. For this example we will work with Google (since they allow multiple creatives) - it can be done in an AdGroup with multiple words but gives you a much more meaningful result if you create a Valuable Terms campaign and use the say top 50 terms that are getting you high traffic. Each term then gets its own AdGroup and you then can create say 3 ads (make them a little different) trying one with the keyword in the title, one with it in the lower lines and another that uses other words.
The code is then attached to the ads - number them with the word attached - I will use the code I use for KeywordMax but it can be adapted to most others including the ones that analyse your log files as it is then attached to the requested page - your destination URLs will be http://www.domain.com/landingpage.html?engine=adwords&keyword=the+term+1 etc. where the number represents the specific ad.
Then when you do an analysis you need to have the code tracked to your conversion - an email signup, sale or whatever and this can be multiple coversion items which allows you to see if a particular ad converts better for a certain item or type of action. But you will see term 1 or term 2 or term 3 and this gives you information about the creative and the traffic it brings to your site.
Interestingly, you may see one ad has a better CTR when you look in the Google account center - but armed with your conversion numbers you will be able to tell if this ad also has high conversions.
Say ad 1 has a CTR of 10% and got 200 clicks, ad 2 had a CTR of 7% and got 140 clicks, while ad 3 had a CTR of 4% and got 80 clicks.
If you look you will see that the clicks were charged at different prices (for this let's say .90, 1.00, 1.10 to try and make it simple) - the first number to work with - and now you look at the conversion rates. If ad 1 had a conversion rate of 7% and ad 2 had a conversion rate of 12% while ad 3 had a conversion rate of 14%.
So the spends were $180 for ad 1 and converted for 14 visitors and thus cost $12.86 a close, ad 2 cost $140 for 17 conversions or $8.24 a sale, and ad 3 spent $88 for 11 sales at $8 each.
So we have a sea of numbers - but they can be used to make decisions.
First you have costs for sales - so if your profit is lower than $12.86 obviously regardless of volume you are just losing quicker - if it is still a profit then you need to work the profit numbers - let's say you make $20 a sale.
You profit $7.14 for sales from ad1, $11.76 from each ad2 sale, and $12 from ad3.
Now you go back to the Google numbers - if you look at say 10,000 impressions:
ad1 would get you 1,000 clicks and 70 sales, ad2 would get 700 clicks with 84 sales and ad3 would give you 400 clicks for 56 sales.
ad1 makes you 499.80
ad2 makes you 987.84
ad3 makes you 672.00
So using creative tracking you choose ad2 for the maximum profit.
This can also be done for landing pages but that is for another post.
Sometimes you get sidetracked by the best CTR - keep the above in mind and increase your profits.