We all know about metrics. They are essentially measurements which allow you to assess different characteristics of your PPC campaign performance. Measurements such as Cost Per Click, Conversion Rate, Cost Per Lead and many more all help you to get a better picture of how your campaigns are doing. But with such a vast amount of potentially important information to analyse, it’s often difficult to work out which metrics you should be paying attention to.
In this blog Freelancetosuccess will single out the key offenders in terms of deceptive metrics and highlight which analytics you should hone in on in order to get better results for your money.
It’s always nice to be popular, right?
In the world of PPC this is not always the case. Traffic-based results can often give you a false sense of how well your campaign is doing. When we say traffic-based what we are talking about is any metric which relays information about page visits or interactions. Imagine your campaign’s Interactions or Impressions metrics are registering high amounts of traffic. Measuring high results on these metrics can often trick you into thinking that your campaign is doing better than it actually is.
Imagine owning the coolest, busiest bar in town…but everyone brings their own drinks. Having a lot of people visit your site via your PPC campaign is proof that something is working but it’s only worthwhile if these visits result in a certain quantity of monetary conversions. Don’t forget it’s Pay Per Click, so the more people who click through your ad, the more money you have to dish out.
What you are really looking for is how to generate more revenue with less traffic.
How do we achieve this?
Well, one of the best ways to ensure that your ads are attracting the right traffic is to customise your audience. If you went door-to-door to sell your product, wouldn’t it be great to pick out 10 or 20 addresses where you knew you could get a sale instead of canvassing the whole city?
With Facebook’s Business Manager you can target the type of customer who is likely to be receptive to your campaign. By using your customer list, Facebook will be able to generate a customised audience for your campaign. This is done by analysing the data of your previous customers and then targeting potential customers with similar characteristics.
This approach is also possible using Adwords. In a similar manner you can utilise your proven client base to refine your audience in a way which will boost your sales but not your traffic. This is also a fairly new development in Google Ads so using it may give you a bit of an edge over your competitors who may not be maximising on this area.
As well as customising your audience you may want to consider Retargeting. This is where you target the people who clicked through your ad but for some reason don’t continue to purchase or even hang around very long. See if you can bring them back and seal the deal. On Adwords you can look at your Remarketing Lists and adapt your campaign to re-prompt these potential customers. You may also want to think about timing. If these customers are currently searching again for a service you provide, remind them who you are and what you do.
Getting specific with your keywords will also help to better define your audience and limit your traffic. Think about it… the broader the keyword the more clicks it will attract without necessarily attracting many purchases. The more specific you are when defining what you offer, the more likely you are to be found by the right customer.
Don’t forget Conversion Tracking – another way to optimise your sales whilst decreasing the amount of irrelevant interactions. This allows you to really scrutinise your potential customers activity post click. By understanding which customers proceeded to sign-up, purchase or just have a nose you can better gauge which campaigns are really driving your customers towards conversions.
These are just couple of the ways that you can focus your campaign so as to bring in a larger revenue whilst minimising the cost.
Ok. Are there other deceptive metrics?
Money makes the world go round. It’s as simple as that. So usually that would mean that your Conversion metrics is the one to worry about and in many cases it is.
However, it’s always important to keep in mind what ‘Conversion’ means in terms of your particular campaign. In some cases, a conversion may only signify that someone has signed up for your newsletter or completed a form for more information.
You need to dig deeper to find out which of these conversions have resulted in a final sale and measure how much traffic your campaign is getting against this.
Anything else?
As we have mentioned in previous blog posts, a constant appraisal of your campaign in terms of wasted spend is crucial. What areas of your campaign are burning rather than earning money. Make sure to keep an eye on your Cost Per Conversion metric.
Some campaigns generate more traffic equaling more conversions. Whilst this sounds great, in some cases a rise in the price will mean that, even though you have both high traffic and high conversions, you are losing out. Try to identify the reason for this and make the necessary alterations.
Often the culprits are keywords which are underperforming. If this is the case pause or get rid of them. Try to keep in mind that, although it’s sometimes difficult to see your traffic and conversion volumes purposefully dip, ultimately the goal is the right amount of conversions at the right price with less traffic.
Is that it?
For now, yes. But remember: don’t be blindsided by big numbers on the wrong analytics. In terms of traffic-based metrics, less is often more.