SearchPath Blog: Google PPC - Conversion Tracking & Maximising Returns

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Google PPC - Conversion Tracking & Maximising Returns

The constant focus in our business is to maximise the returns we provide to our clients, whether we're working on Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click Advertising, Web PR.

Today we're highlighting just one of the tools available in Google Adwords that helps us understand how we can most effectively target a customer's budget and maximise their return -
Conversion Tracking.

Quite simply, Google's Conversion Tracking enables you to measure how many visitors from a Google PPC Ad react in the way you want - ie they purchase something from you, they complete a sign-up or enquiry form, or view a specific page on your site.

Without Conversion Tracking, you still get lots of good stats from Adwords as to how welll your campaign and keywords are performing - ie how many clicks each keyword is receiving, click through rate etc but it doesn't necessarily follow that the phrases getting the most clicks convert the most visitors.

For instance, you might be advertising the term 'pink widgets' & 'blue widgets'. While pink widgets had 50 clicks and a 30% click through rate, blue widgets received 30 clicks and 20% click through. (we do regularly achieve these levels of click through for our clients!).

Without Conversion Tracking, pink widgets looks to be the best performing phrase. However, being the smart marketer, you've switched on tracking and noticed that blue widgets converts over 60% of visitors, while pink widgets converts 10%. That's 18 actual conversions for blue, and just 5 for pink. With a limited budget, where would you now focus your campaign?

These new conversion figures now give you real data to analyse and enable you to truly focus and maximise your returns.

Setting up Conversion Tracking is quite simple - a piece of code needs to be placed on your conversion page which may be the 'thank you' page that is displayed after someone submits a contact form, or completed a purchase.

You can also set a monetary value for each conversion, enabling you to measure the cost per conversion as well as the conversion rate.

If you're running an Adwords campaign without Conversion Tracking, you're almost certainly not maximising your returns. Give SearchPath a call and let us help you.