Online Activity
Tracking clicks to online sales is simple. Simply place the appropriate tracking code on your Thank You page and you know which search terms are and are not contributing to your sales. The same holds true for the submission of online forms, appointments, appications, chats, e-mails–pretty much anything that occurs online.

Offline Activity
Tracking clicks to offline sales is a bit more complicated. You can instruct the customer to mention a code they obtain online to claim a offline discount. Or you can have them print out a certificate or coupon with a bar code that they take to the store. You can even associate each search term with the the code or bar code on the coupon and certificate to track which keywords are performing. This could be very tedious if you are running thousands of search terms but is probably worth the effort.

In Between Online and Offline
Phone calls are not necessarily online or offline, but something in between. It is not as easy to associate a search term with a phone call in this “in between” world. The way to accomplish this is to assign an unique phone number to each search term. This could get very cost prohibitive if, like with most campaigns, you are running 1,000 to 10,000 terms. Imagine securing 1,000 or more unique phone numbers and placing them on 1,000 or more unique landing pages (actually you can avoid multiple landing pages with dynamic content) and setting up the campaign so each search term is associated with its unique phone number. The information learned from this will probably save thousands of dollars in the long term but still may not be worth the effort.

Need for a Click to Phone Call Tracking Technology
Ideally there would be a technology that automatically assigns a phone number to a search term, dynamically places that phone number on the landing page, forwards the calls to the real phone number, and tracks everything for you. Hundreds of phone numbers may still be required but let the technology handle the assignment and minimize the number of phone lines required to the absolute minimum. It seem like as much as we have done with computers we should be able to fulfil a simple requirement like this.

Technology Delivered
siteEDGE Agency clients have access to this technology. We still have to determine if the potential cost to be saved outweighs the cost of integrating the technology, but once we pass this due diligence we will not hesitate to use every tool at our disposal to minimize money wasting search terms and to maximixe money making terms.

If you would like more information on this technology feel free to call Steve Thompson at 816-587-8880 x102 and we will help you determine if it is right for you.

Technorati Tags: Paid Search, PPC, Analytics, Campaign Tracking, Phone Call Tracking

siteEDGE News, Pay Per Click, Tracking, Analytics | 1 Comment »

Google has done it again. Free E-Mail. Free Spreadsheet Tool. Free Website Analytics. Now Free Multivariate Testing. To be honest I was, and still am somewhat skeptical. Call me paranoid but I don’t feel entirely comfortable putting so much information about us in the hands of one company. I must admit I have reluctantly signed up for Gmail and have occasions to use Google Analytics. In the case of Google Website Optimizer (beta) tool, I have nothing but gratitude.

Website Optimizer Defined

Google defines their Website Optimizer as a free multivariate testing application that helps online marketers increase visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction by continually testing different combinations of site content (text and images). Rather than sitting in a room and arguing over what will work better, you can save time and eliminate the guesswork by simply letting your visitors tell you what works best.

Sample Implementation

I will set the stage by describing a fictional company with multiple categories of product offerings. Each product offering fits neatly into ad groups that have significant search volume for the search terms contained within. The challenge is to determine which text/image or a combination of text/images contributes most towards reaching the desired conversion goals.

Lets say in our fictional company’s campaign we created ten landing (Test Pages) pages with various combinations of products, offers, graphics and text. We then use Website Optimizer to track each Page Section or Trackable Item such as a headline, image, or promotional text. Your Conversion Page (e.g. thank you page for online sale, sign-up for newsletter, etc.) is identified and associated with the applicable Page Section.

The result of all this analysis and tagging are Page Section and Analytic reports that tell you which landing page items and combinations are giving you the bang for your buck. Over time you will phase out the ones that don’t work and increase usage of the ones that do.

You could pay a vendor for usage of a tool like this and this is probably recommended if you rely headily upon Multivariate Testing for your campaigns. If you are not in this category go ahead and use Google’s tool. The benefit the tool provides probably out weighs the cost of Google gaining our information…probably?

As always let me know your thoughts.

Technorati Tags: Online Marketing, Multivariate Testing, Landing Pages, PPC Testing

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John Jantsch has a great post about the best metrics that small businesses don’t measure. It’s a list that, when we put together a paid search campaign we try very hard to get our clients to use (or at least figure out).

1) Leads - where do they come from, how many, and what generated them - if you don’t know this, it’s likely you are wasting lots of money on things that are not generating leads, or potentially worse, not sticking with a great tactic.
2)Average $ - What’s average amount of business you do with a client - your existing clients want to do more business with you. It’s easy to create an average dollar number and give your attention to creating more opportunities and more profitable clients - this way you can weed out clients that fall below the number eternally.
3)Conversions - How many of those leads turn into clients - the biggest time killer of all for the small business is chasing leads that are not qualified, not educated (by you, not in life), not ready to appreciate your value. When you measure this, you have to fix it, it’s too painful otherwise.

These are especially important if you’re purchasing leads - no matter what your business, it is vital to know as precisely as possible where your customers are coming from, how much they cost to acquire, and the potential profit from them.

Technorati Tags: Small Business Marketing, Lead Generation, Paid Search, Marketing Metrics

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The Center for Media Research reported Monday that 81% of survey respondents plan to increase 2007 spending on email marketing while 70% of respondents said they apply basic or no analysis to these campaigns.

As an Online Marketer I sometimes grumble at how offline media is not held up to the same standards as online for measurebility. I have even had a client, one of the top five US companies in telecommunications no less, say we shouldn’t hold traditional media up to the same standards as online. This was said while we were sitting down going over the details of their online campaign which reported how every dollar spent related to each conversion we achieved. The results of the online campaign weren’t bad but there was always this offline media superiority aura hovering over our heads. Since there was no way to measure the offline results it must be performing better than online.

Based upon experiences like this you would think I would be relieved to see survey responses like this. Wrong! We must go forward using the tools that are available no matter how uncomfortable they may sometimes make us. This should be done even at the cost of a decision to terminate a non performing online campaign and continuing a offline campaign where we just don’t know.

Pay Per Click, SEO, Tracking, Analytics, Offline Marketing, E-Mail Marketing | No Comments »

Seth Godin is writing about embracing irrelevant metrics - from calories to raw traffic numbers. While I would personally disagree on the calories portion of his commentary, we’re definitely on the same page with the rest of his examples.

At siteEDGE, we place a great deal of value on measurement. We’d like to think that we focus on only the most important, relevant metrics when it comes to determining the success of a campaign. So, what do we look at?

Conversion Rates - How effectively is our campaign selling your product? Is each click (that you’re paying for) likely to buy something, or become a lead? If not, how can we improve it?

Traffic Quality - This can become a point of contention, and is perhaps my own personal preference, but I like to infer that visitors that spend a little longer on your site, and go a few pages deeper (when they aren’t converting from that first page) are of higher quality. Are your visitors taking one look and clicking the back button? Do they think your site is boring or hard to use? In the same vein - is your site bringing back visitors? Do you have enough great content to make your site sticky?

Traffic Distribution - If you were to get dropped from Google’s index tomorrow, would your business survive? Have you diversified your portfolio of traffic channels enough to weather Yahoo’s next shakeup? What if your PPC budget gets cut this quarter?

The Cost Per’s - Cost per Lead, Cost per Sale, Cost per Customer, Cost per Acquistion - call it what you want, it all boils down to one thing - are you paying too much to get new business? Is your ROI positive? Better yet, is it as positive as it COULD BE?

If some of these questions leave you scratching your head - contact us to get a free initial consultation. We’ll talk through your business needs, and let you know if we can help. If you’re not in the market right now, subscribe to our feed or bookmark our site. We will provide you with enough information here to get you started on a great, comprehensive online marketing campaign.

Technorati Tags: Seth Godin, Marketing Metrics, Measuring Success, Analytics, Tracking

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