5 Web Analytics Metrics to Pump Up PPC

These five Web analytics insights can help you boost your pay-per-click marketing efforts.

Using Web analytics to gain insights about user behavior can be an effective way to develop new strategies for pay-per-click accounts.

High-Revenue Keywords

Tracking revenue and goals in analytics is extremely helpful, especially for this exercise. Review keywords bringing in the top percentage of revenue or leads. What are the commonalties? For example, say the majority of your top revenue keywords tend to be branded. Look for opportunities with non-branded keywords, and ensure they are in the correct campaigns or create new ones and assign additional budget to optimize revenue potential.

Sign-Up or Cart Abandoners

An "abandoner” is a site user who started down the conversions path, but for some reason left the site and therefore didn’t convert at that time. By looking at the Web statistics of the relevant pages, you can see how many users bounced from the site, or stayed for a very short time. This may occur directly before a user has to input personal information or credit card information. Use this abandoner data for retargeting campaigns to reach them again with appropriate messaging. For example, for someone abandoning a shopping cart, serve ads with a discount toward the next purchase or remind them of free shipping. For an account sign-up, perhaps message them on the advantages to becoming members. Urgency will be important because abandoners may forget about their site activities by the week’s end.

Content Consumers

For companies that invest in content or blogging on a regular basis as part of their marketing strategy, users who are viewing or interacting in some way with the content can be valuable to reconnect with and drive into the conversion funnel. Two interesting ways to do this:

1. Remarketing to users who visit specific content and serve ads with complementary products or services. You can select multiple pages of similar content or specify a length of time on the site to ensure they are the most qualified leads.
2. AdWords offers a type of targeting called Remarketing Lists for Search Ads that reaches previous site visitors based on searches in the search results pages and on their activity on the company’s website. In the case of content, if a user is frequently reading a specific content topic, then conducts a keyword search on Google.com, it is possible to reach them with a customized ad text.

Highly Engaged

Engagement with a visitor will depend on the website and audience, but generally in analytics you will be looking for returning visits, page depth, time of the site, and number of visits. Identifying the engagement of converters vs. non-converters can give insight into how a campaign could be designed for best results. For example, say the majority of converters purchase in one day. For a new potential customer, using ad copy with timeliness might be important to communicate a same-day sale: "in stock-now," "fast, free shipping," "daily deals."

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2403032/5-web-analytics-metrics-to-pump-up-ppc

10- Point Checklist For An Effective PPC Campaign

Just because setting up a blog is easy doesn’t mean everybody who blogs is an all-star. Along the same lines, just because Google and Bing make it easy to set up a PPC campaign doesn’t mean every advertiser is doing it properly. In fact, the low barrier to entry means a high number of PPC advertisers are doing it wrong.

This is good news! If you understand how to set up an effective PPC campaign, the odds are good you will outperform competitors who haven’t learned the value of following this checklist.

10-Point Checklist For Effective PPC Advertising

1. Have a clearly defined goal. Without one, how will you know if you are spending too much or not enough? A well-defined goal includes both a target number of leads generated by the campaign, and also a time frame in which to obtain them.

2. Understand the value of a customer. If the ROI calculation of your PPC campaign is based only on the value of the conversion, you may grossly underestimate your results. For instance, a PPC campaign may revolve around a $100 introductory offer that generates $20 of profit. But if the average lifetime value of a customer is $1,000 of profit over five years, what is the true value of your PPC conversion — $20, $5,000 or something in between? Define value with care.

3. Define what you are willing to pay for a validated lead. Once you have established the value of a customer, the next step is to determine how much you are willing to spend to obtain a new customer through your PPC campaign.

4. Have an appropriate budget to support your goals. A lofty goal plus a shoestring budget equals disaster. A significant ad spend is necessary – probably much more than the $500 per month many advertisers view as their ceiling – to generate enough conversions to make the campaign pay.

5. Make sure the market is viable. To some extent PPC is a numbers game. If enough people aren’t searching for your products or keywords to generate a critical mass of conversions, your campaign will never get explosive results. Do preliminary keyword research to make sure sufficient keyword search volume exists for your target terms.

6. Create landing pages for the campaign. Sending PPC visitors to the home page of a website is a huge mistake. Instead, craft customized landing pages specifically designed to convert visitors into sales leads.

7. Have resources to make site changes and manage the campaign. PPC campaigns involve systematic testing that leads to continuous refining and adjusting. To execute properly, a firm needs talent and experience in both managing campaigns and making changes to landing pages.

8. Have sales people ready to answer phone calls and emails immediately. Many potentially blockbuster PPC campaigns are destroyed by inept follow-up. When a PPC visitor converts, responding quickly and effectively is absolutely imperative.

9. Don’t give up too quickly. Several months are required to establish valid PPC performance benchmark data, and to know whether PPC is a good fit. In the early months of a campaign, conversions may be few and far between – but this does not necessarily mean you’ve failed. What you learn during those early months will help you adjust your campaign in terms of budget, the offer and the keyword targets. As the campaign is refined, conversions may well improve, and improve dramatically.

10. Track and validate phone calls and emails generated by your campaign. Without tracking, you cannot know whether a phone or email inquiry was generated by your PPC campaign, making ROI calculations impossible. But tracking is not enough: A firm must validate leads to separate true leads from other types of inquiries such as misdials, sales solicitations and customer service requests. If you consider all inquiries to be sales leads, you will greatly overestimate the effectiveness of your campaign.

Stay Actively Involved At All Times

Most of the points in this checklist require ongoing attention. Besides monitoring things within your control, such as the nature of your offer and the keywords you target, you must take into account things beyond your control that can change the dynamics of your PPC campaign. Competitors change strategies in ways that affect your results. Keyword volumes change as user behavior changes and as buzzwords come in and out of fashion within a niche. Thus, bonus tip, #11, is to conduct a strategic review of your campaign, preferably every six months, but definitely once each year. A fresh strategy will make your tactical proficiency that much more productive.

http://socialmediaimpact.com/10-point-checklist-effective-ppc-campaign/#