When you begin an advertising campaign, you need to choose which metrics you will need to consider. This means there are good metrics and then, there are those that do not matter. The bad part of a DIY project is that you do not know how far to go with material selection and how good the material has to remain. The good part is that you do not have to ask anyone, just Google it.
Traffic is the starting point
PPC campaigns work differently when you change the metrics. At the very base level, we focus on traffic. This forms the basis of evaluation of success and failure. Everything on
the internet depends on the traffic, doesn’t it? So, we cannot be wrong. Often, advertisers will look at the click-through rate. They might analyze the success of the campaign by calculating the cost per click.
Impression share and device segmentation are some of the features available on AdWords. These traffic focused metrics are incredibly useful even though most people ignore it. This is because they are more interested in developing their social image and contacts and not in the monetary aspects of the blogging or networking.
Start thinking profit
So, we focus on making a profit. Usually, no one will set up
conversion tracking considering it unimportant. You can measure conversion acts like making a purchase. Or, it might involve lead submission in your ad platform. You do this by placing a code snippet on a thank you message. Or, it
might be an order confirmation page.
If you do not place that piece of code, the only thing you will see is the traffic. You can measure search impressions, a number of clicks, and click-through rates. Now, you have to understand why the traffic based metrics will be confusing.
Use the right PPC metrics
Having the best click-through rate alone will not guarantee the best profit. Nor, will having a large number of clicks. You can decrease the cost per click to rock bottom and still not make the profit you should if you do not select the right metrics. It might be the quality score that is bringing in clicks but not the most number of clicks. Neither will it be the lowest cost per click for the cost will be fairly high. In fact, having the high cost per click might show the red flag to some people. But, underneath it the clicks are converting into leads. It is this conversion focus that we need to focus on in the PPC metrics.
So, set up the conversion tracking right away. Put this on a thank you page and you can use many platforms. Google AdWords or Bing Ads will be the right choices. Use Un-bounce to set up the tracking on the thank you page.
Most important metrics in business
In many of the commercial businesses, the use of phone calls is vital to lead conversion. So, it is important to add telephone calls to the conversion tracking. Take help from any of the call tracking platforms and set up the conversion tracking. Make sure everything remains tracked and measured. While conversions are great, the real point is whether any leads became paying customers. Conversions tell you about the story of the leads but they do not mention anything about the revenue created.
The most important metric of all is the actual ROI. This is the Return on Investment and when you focus on this metric, you go way ahead of the people who still haven’t figured it out whether they are making or losing money. We track each lead in the CRM back to the campaigns we started. In each campaign, we use separate phone numbers. This helps us record which campaign led to the sale.
If you’re interested in running pay-per-click campaigns but don’t want to get your hands dirty, iQlance has plenty of options, from PPC-only to full website overhaul and branding. Give us a shout today!