Marketing on Internet Road 

PPC is an important strand of your web analysis. One of the cool things about PPC data is that you don’t need a lot of history to draw conclusions from it – a few weeks is enough time to give you an idea of how well a campaign is performing.

Google Adwords data is included in your Google Analytics data and includes metrics like click through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). Google recently released AdWords API v201101, which allows you to more efficiently run reports, as well as implement campaign experiments and other recently released advertising features at scale.

But how do you track success after PPC visitors are on your site? What metrics should you investigate to ensure that you are getting high quality traffic and capitalizing on opportunities to convert?

For these types of performance metrics, you need web analytics! Here are 4 important metrics you should review on a daily basis to evaluate PPC campaign performance.

1. Conversions

It pretty much goes without saying that conversions are the best metric to determine how a PPC campaign is performing. You should have your web analytics set up to record both online conversions (newsletter subscriptions, content downloads) and offline conversions (phone calls, offline campaigns).

To track online conversions, configure your web analytics to record a conversion every time someone arrives on a specific URL. In the case of web forms, this URL would be something like a thank you or confirmation page. For downloads, you might need to add a piece of tracking code that will register the download as a pageview.

To track offline conversions, see one way of doing this in our previous post on Measuring Success of Offline Campaigns in Google Analytics. There are plenty of other solutions out there for tracking other offline conversions (e.g. by telephone) which will integrate directly into your web analytics program so you only have to access one dashboard.

2. Bounce Rate

 
A bounce is when someone lands on a site and leaves without viewing any other pages. Your bounce rate will vary for each campaign. A high bounce rate may be an indication that your content is not relevant or engaging to visitors.

3. Pages Per Visit

The interesting data comes from a very low or a very high number of page views. Very low could mean that visitors are not finding content useful or interesting, and have resigned to go back to search results to find a more relevant page. A high number of page views could mean either you are producing interesting and engaging content (look at time spent on page for engagement), or that the visitor cannot find the content they are looking for.

In both cases, review the relevance of the page content to traffic-producing keywords, and make sure the information people appear to be seeking is on the landing page, or a click away.

4. Average Time on Site

It goes without saying that a higher time on site is better than a low one. Extremely low (0-1 second) — There is no way to read a page’s content in this amount of time. If there are a lot of visitors spending less than a second on the site, it may be the result of one of two things:

• Invalid clicks – Check with your PPC platform to ensure you are not being charged for these.
• Slow site load time – May cause people to get frustrated and hit the back button before ever arriving on the landing page.

Low (less than 15 seconds) — Generally, those visitors who spent 10 seconds or less on a site quickly decided that they were in the wrong place. This may be because at a first glance they didn’t find any relevant information, see their keywords anywhere on the page, or were confused by the landing page’s layout.

Look at these 4 web analytics metrics and you will have a better idea of your PPC performance. Once you have gathered enough data to draw conclusions about which parts of your campaign work well and which don’t work so well, you can start implementing small changes and tracking the different outcomes. By taking this methodical approach you should be able to optimize your campaigns to get the best ROI.

Following Google roll-out of its new search feature named Google Instant (where search results appear as you are typing your search query), and Google new Google Places revolution (where local results appear as the organic results on its first page), Google also introduced – rather silently – another interesting feature – Google Instant Preview.

In case you haven’t noticed it, Google had placed a small magnifying glass to the right of the web page title on the search results. If you click on this magnifying glass, a preview of the destination page is presented nicely on the right side of the page, so you can take a look at how the page looks like before actually visiting the page from Google search results page.

What is the Idea with Google Instant Preview?

Google main idea has always been “Relevance”. This is what brought Google to where it is today.
This concept means something like “we wish to deliver the most relevant (and accurate) search results and in the fastest possible way”. Therefore, Google is attempting to enable us as searches to see that the destination page we are about to visit is really relevant to our search query and with that to eliminate pages that rank with no real reason on the first page.  

Google Instant Preview Status

Google didn’t disclose too much information on this feature. What we can witness is that we see the magnifying glass of the Preview feature in some browsers but not in all of them. There are also still search queries where this feature is not available. This could be an indication that this feature is still being rolled out and tested by Google (which is the same as with the other new changes Google had introduced).

Google Instant Preview Implications

It is very soon to have any conclusions on the implications of this new feature. The Online Marketing community’s buzz has a lot of idea and possibilities but obviously nothing is conclusive. More conclusive implications will surely come after this feature had been rolled out properly and had run for a while.

Just as well, here is out attempt at forecasting the implications:

1.   Pay per Click (Google AdWords): Surprisingly enough, Google is placing the preview of the page on the right side of the page in a way that the Google Adwords listings disappear. This is surprising as AdWords is Google’s milking cow and if this will cause less clicks (leading to less advertisers as well), Google stand to lose.

Therefore, our estimations at this point are that AdWords campaigns will face a drop in clicks once (if) users are becoming used to use the Google Instant Preview feature (and it is an “if”).

Note: This is even more surprising since the other new changes to Google, like the Google Places Search, are placing elements on the right-hand of the search results page, overriding the AdWords listings. Google knows something we don’t?

2.   Site Re-Design: if the online community will start using the preview feature, the way your website (you web page actually) looks like will have a lot of impact on whether your potential visitors will visit the page or not.

It is rather safe to assume that if your web page does not look well and/or does not look relevant to the search query of the visitor, she will not click to visit.

Note that at this point in time, the preview does not present all page equally and even nicely designed pages but such that contain chunks of flash as example comes out badly on the preview image. Again, it is too soon to know if this is an issue that is being solved as part of the implementation or a feature that is here to stay.

3.   Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The visits from organic results have a potential to change, depending on this new feature. As we saw exampled where pages’ position on Google listing where changes according to click-stream for a certain keywords, it could be that we will see the same phenomenon here: if a page is ranked but people don’t click to visit, it might drop in position.

We also can’t overlook the possibility that the ranking algorithms (the plurals here is not a mistake – there are multiple algorithms being tested constantly) will take also the Preview feature into account, one way or another.


I will be more than glad to hear your thoughts and experiences with Google Instant Preview.

Google AdWords is a great lead generation strategy and an amazing tool for generating immediate traffic to your website. It is a very intuitive system, quick to set up and easy to track on results.

And here comes the “but”: just like any other marketing initiative, we need to take a look at the big picture. Since we are mostly interested in Return on Investment, using Google AdWords needs to make business sense.

Here is an example:

Assumption one: Imagine a competitive market where the average Cost per Click (CPC) for the keywords we wish to bid for is €7.5 (or Dollar, or any other currency as it does not matter for the exercise).

Assumption two: we use the global benchmark for Click through Rate (CTR) on Google AdWords, and that is 2% (you should always opt for a higher ratio, but for this exercise it will actually make things worse as you will see later on).

Assumption three: we use the global benchmark for Conversion Rate, and that is 2% as well. Now, this is a ratio that you really wish to improve since the results will be much better and since plainly put – it is your revenue.

Assumption four: are Lifetime Customer Worth is €225. This includes the initial sale as well as repeating sales later on and so forth.

Now, for the calculation:

In order to have one customer we need to drive 50 visitors (1 divided by 2% conversion rate).
50 visitors from AdWords will cost us €375 (50 times €7.5 CPC).
Our profit (sorry, loss) per customer is €150 (€225 minus €375). Oops!

So, what went wrong?

Nothing really. This is a classic case where the Acquisition Cost is higher than the Revenue per Customer which actually mean that you should either make your goods more expensive, or increase the Customer Lifetime Worth (by creating more up sells opportunities or recurring sales), or find an alternative acquisition channel that will make business sense.

As for the CTR comment that appeared before: actually, CTR is not really a factor here since we measure things by a single acquisition. But (and it’s a big but), if your acquisition costs are higher than your revenue per customer, higher CTR means you are spending more money on Google AdWords. You will get more customers of course (do the math: conversion rate stays the same but you get more traffic), but eventually you will have X amount of customers with a loss per customer of €150, so more customers – bigger loss. You should have a really good reason to want to be in this situation.

No matter what is your lead generation strategy, always check the acquisition cost compared to your revenue per customer. We used Google AdWords in this example since a many are rushing to this generally very good Search Engine Marketing strategy without doing the proper calculations first.

Employing Internet Marketing strategies does not necessarily mean a new way of doing business. It is true that the internet and online marketing opened up a window for new and advance way of doing business, but it is also an online reflection of the way you do business offline.

Ask yourself the following question: “How do I get business today?” This answer should lead you in to the best main strategy you need to be using in your Internet Marketing portfolio.
If you are doing business by more than only one method, use more than one method online. Furthermore, extend your online marketing efforts to be using more than one main strategy. This way you can significantly increase your business while still being very efficient, be able to make constant changes and keep the costs low (surely when compared to your traditional marketing tactics).

Word of Mouth and/or Networking

With Word of Mouth the most important factor is referrals and positive reviews on your products and services. The best fit is with Social Media Marketing.
Depending on your exact type of business, choose your Social Networks: LinkedIn (mainly if you are in B2B), Twitter, Facebook and so on. Social Media is all about connections, referrals and experiences people on those networks experienced. This is literally the new way of Word of Mouth.
The complimentary Internet Marketing strategy to use is permission based Email Marketing: use your website and other online touch-points (like you page on Facebook) to encourage customers and prospects to subscribe to your mailing list. Then, send them timely newsletters to keep them engaged and further encourage them to forward your messages to others.

Cold Calling

If your business depends on Cold Calls or incoming phone calls, your strategies should combine Search Engine Marketing together with bought-list-based Email Marketing.
The Search Engine Marketing strategies of Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-Click will ensure your phone is ringing. They are designed to get you found by your target market and potential customers exactly when they are looking for what you have to offer, where they are searching for it and in the way they are searching for it.
If you can purchase bought lists of your potential customers (watch out for legal aspects depending on your location and the vendor), this is a very close match to your cold calling tactics, only via the internet – much cheaper, more flexible and more effective.

Advertising

If you focusing offline on advertising, online you should put your focus on
-   SEO
-   PPC
-   Display advertising

As mentioned above, Search Engine Marketing tactics are the best ways in the online realm to reach your target audience. Done correctly, it should be much cheaper and much more effective than your offline advertising efforts. Consider allocating part of the traditional advertising budget to the online realm.
If your advertising budget is more substantial, explore the possibility of using Display Advertising: literally advertise your business (that is – your web pages) on websites that your potential customers visit. Display Advertising constantly improves and allows more capabilities of socio-demographic targeting to make your campaign more accurate and more successful.  

Face to Face

If your business depends on Face-to-Face meetings, make sure your “face” is visible online.
As this type of prospecting suggests you are in the B2B market, invest in your LinkedIn profile along with a professional profile on a Facebook page.
Furthermore, use YouTube to host videos on your business, your offerings and your sales representatives. Similarly, upload photos to Flickr and presentations to Slideshare.
Make sure to have a professional profile on each of those networks as this is one of the first things people will look at and will help them have a positive perception of your business.

Google are rolling out new set of Adwords reports on Google Analytics. Still carries the indication of “Beta” but it seems it was worth waiting.

For Adwords advertisers, this seems to make the difference in analysis. A lot of data we were struggling to find on Adwords reporting center should now be available where it belongs – on Google Analytics.

Running an Adwords campaign is not only on reading the CTR of a keyword or an ad. In order to improve those conversions of ours we need to dive deep and understand what were the next steps of the campaign *on our website*. According to the announcement of Google, this is exactly the intention with the new reports.

So, if you have connected your Analytics and Adwords account correctly, signing in to your Analytics account will show you the new AdWords section, under the “Traffic Source” menu.

A click on the link will open the sub-menu with 7 reports, some of them as they appear on the previous Adwords reports and some new ones.

The real beauty – and this is new in Analytics – is in the Overview report: the guys from Google took a real effort to speak in a very simple language and to put links to very (and again – very) interesting reports by placing questions that any advertiser should ask him.
I will aim to put much more details on the various reports and options in future posts, but one that I couldn’t hold myself back from is the Search Queries report (“what do users search for to access my site?”). This highly useful report is now made available on Analytics and shows you a step further from only the keywords that drove traffic: the actual search queries used by the visitors that triggered the keywords you are using that brought traffic to your website. All of this, along with visits data such as bounce rate, time on site, goal conversions and more. Talking about valuable insightful data!

There is no doubt this is a great enhancement to the usage of Google Analytics on a holistic approach of a website owner and surely for Adwords advertisers. Enjoy!