Like many businesses that advertise online you are probably
spending a portion, if not your entire advertising budget on PPC
(pay per click) advertising. The problem many businesses have is
being able to determine the most profitable avenue to continue
pursuing in their advertising methods.
How to determine the best avenue
Typically, businesses rely on the stats provided by the PPC
companies, but usually this isn't good enough. Sure, if you only
advertise in Google AdWords or Overture this method may be
sufficient, but what if you advertise with more than one PPC
company or you advertise on banners, email and
pop-ups/pop-unders also?
The solution is tracking. The only way to know if one of your
avenues is performing better than another is to track the users
and determine where all the buyers/leads are coming from.
For example, say your candle company advertises in Google
AdWords and on Overture for the key phrase "scented candle" and
you receive, according to Google and Overture combined, 300
visitors, and from your own records 20 orders per day.
Without tracking the users at most you know that google gave you
120 visitors and Overture gave you 180 visitors (remember this
is an example), the times that the users visited your website
and of course that you received 20 orders for that day.
With tracking you would still know all of the above information,
however you would also know even more vital information like
that out of the 180 visitors that overture gave you, 18 of your
20 orders came from them. You would also know (depending on how
detailed the tracking was) what pages they looked at and if they
have previously visited your site, among many other things.
How to implement PPC tracking
The most common method of pay per click tracking is using a
special URL in your ads.
For example: http://www.yourwebsiteaddress.com
rack.php?src=google&term=scented%20candle
The special URL will allow you to determine the source of the
click (in the example above, Google) and more importantly the
term (in the example above, "Scented candle").
The software is most typically implemented in either PHP or Perl
and stores the information about the user in MySQL or any of the
other major databases. The most common information logged is
date, time, IP address, session id, referrer, current page and
their user agent.
Benefits of PPC tracking
Based on the above example of the candle business we were able
to determine that the business was only generating 2 sales per
day from Google, however it was generating 18 sales per day via
Overture. Because we only generated two sales on Google we are
able to determine if it is cost effective to continue
advertising with google (e.g. generating a profit or losing
money through advertising) or to take our advertising dollars
elsewhere.
The primary benefits are:
- Save advertising money by advertising wiser. - The ability to
test the effectiveness of changes in your ad copy. - Assist in
your website layout (e.g. make it easier to navigate and
purchase).
Conclusion
Tracking your advertising is beneficial to any business that
advertises online, businesses that are big (Bank of America,
Monster.com, Capital One, Progressive Auto Insurance) all do it
and so do your competitors. Don't let your competition gain an
advantage; start tracking your users today! If used right, you
will be glad that you did!
About the author:
Joel Strellner is the owner of Tactical Designs, LLC a Web
Design and Development company based out of Las Vegas, Nevada.
You can visit his website at http://www.tacdesigns.com or read
about and inquire on Tactical Designs' custom programming
services at http://www.tacdesigns.com/web_programming.
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