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Per Click - Step 6 Which Ads?
Ask Susan - Tip of the Month
August 2004
There are six major steps to effectively use paid advertising
on the Web.
1) Which
key phrases (search terms) to use?
2) Which
service has the best price for each key phrase today?
3) What
is the most effective wording to bring in customers?
4) How
much should I spend and how do I control the spending?
5) What
ranking do I want and how to I keep it there?
6) How do I know which advertisements are bringing in
customers and which ones are wasting my money?
There is an expression in advertising about knowing that
you are wasting half your advertising budget, you just
don't know which half. With Pay Per Click advertising
you can tell which part is working and which part is wasted.
Obviously this can save you money, allowing you to spend
your advertising budget more effectively.
Now that your ads are running, you are bringing more potential
customers to your website and getting leads or sales.
Some of the ads are bringing in leads that become valuable
customers and some are just wasting your money - how do
you know which is which?
Your website was built to either generate leads or direct
sales. For leads people may call you, send an e-mail or
fill out a form. For direct sales, you probably use a
shopping cart. We have the most experience with lead generation
so we'll start with that.
For most of our clients leads can come in from the Web
site by phone, e-mail or the e-mail form on the website.
1) Phone leads can be categorized and tracked according
to the source of the lead and the specific service of
interest. There are many ways to do this and one is to
simply ask the customer. They probably won't remember
the search phrase they used to find your website but
can tell you that they got the phone number from your
site.
If they are interested in a specific service you know
that your website is visible for that service. This may
be the pay per click ads or may be from optimizing your
site. Your traffic logs will give you some insight.
2) E-mails: Many websites are set up with a link to send
an e-mail to sales@company.com with a subject line in
the e-mail. These are regular e-mails so the prospect
can provide any information they want, not necessarily
what you need. But an e-mail does give you their e-mail
address and allows you to start a relationship.
Since different pages of your site present different aspects
of your business, you may wish to know from what page
they sent the e-mail. You can use a different subject
line or different e-mail address on each page to give
you a better idea of the prospect's interest.
3) Forms: When the visitor completes and submits an on-line
form, a Thank You page is typically displayed. Each time
the Thank You page is displayed, you know that a form
has been submitted. If the form is a request for information
or an order you know that the submittal indicates a potential
customer.
The Thank You page can be used to determine which ads
are bringing you potential customers. There are several
services that provide the tools to track this information.
These include Overture (go to Account Set-Up and click
"Page Help"), Google
AdWords Conversion Tracking (PDF) and Atlas
(formally GoToast.
Typically, code is added to the Thank you page. The pay
per click services such as Overture and Google show you
the number of Thank You pages displayed (forms submitted)
for visitors from each advertisement. Atlas shows you
the number of submittals of each key phrase.
This measurand is extremely useful; you can tell which
ads are most effective and allocate your spending to the
ads that provide the highest rate of conversion of visitors
to potential customers. You can also use these numbers
through time to measure the impact of changes to your
website.
We are getting amazing results with pay per click advertising.
It takes planning, time and attention.
Regards,
Susan Hankins
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