New to paid search? Whipsawed by conversion tracking? If you’re running a paid search campaign and your focus is sales or lead generation, you will want to implement conversion tracking. Don’t worry – it’s not so hard.

In this article, we’ll talk specifically about the Google AdWords conversion tracking implementation, but conversion tracking code on other search networks – like Yahoo/Bing Adcenter – is placed in exactly the same way (with a different piece of code).

And why should you care? Well, for one thing, conversion tracking will allow you to determine your return on investment for paid search. Paid search has the benefit of giving you measurable data: knowing how much it costs to complete a conversion is invaluable if you’re tracking ROI.

First, a primer on how conversion tracking works. When a user clicks on your paid search ad, she is driven to a landing page on your website. Once there, if your paid search goal is either sales or lead generation, the user will be given the option to complete a conversion. If you are an e-commerce site, it might be the sale of a t-shirt. If your conversion focus is lead generation, it may be a completed form or a download. Either way, this action is called a conversion.

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Looking for PPC management tips? There’s a great deal of information about getting started in PPC, but once your campaign is set up and running, how do you make sure you are getting the best results?

Remember, PPC is never set-and-forget. You should consider a PPC campaign to be a lifetime project. This isn’t just because the market is constantly changing (true), or to combat ad fatigue (important): it’s also because paid search is an excellent source of data that will improve all other marketing efforts.

That’s pretty powerful stuff, right? Paid search is easily more measurable than any other marketing strategy. And you can use what you learn to inform messaging and strategy across channels. Write 4 ads for each ad group and see which one performs the best? That’s built-in A/B testing, baby. And you can take that message that performs the best and use it in your email copy or in a banner ad.
So with that in mind, these PPC management tips will help you get the most out of your campaign – and help you learn the most from the valuable data your campaign can produce.

PPC Management tip #1:
Log in once per week.
Once your campaign is humming along, you can probably chill a little on the daily optimization. But don’t let your campaign stagnate for more than a week. Remember, the market changes every day (we aren’t kidding). In addition to your competitors building out their strategies, which could affect rankings and click price, Google may be testing new Quality Score factors. Or you might have a website issue that breaks some of your landing pages. You won’t like finding out that you’ve been driving paid clicks to a 404 page.

PPC Management tip #2:
Get negative.
Adding negative keywords to your campaign is one of the easiest and most effective ways to reduce click costs as your campaign matures. These tricky little words will prevent your ads being served for any search phrase containing them.

Run a search query report on a monthly basis to see exactly what people are typing into find you. See any search terms that aren’t relevant? Terms that will never result in a conversion? Add those words to your negative keyword list.

PPC Management Tip #3:
Test your messages.
Here’s the deal. If you write four ads for an ad group and allow them to run, some ads will get more clicks and conversions than others. What can you learn from these “winning” ads? You learn that the ad copy is compelling. It has been proven to be more compelling than those three other ads. Should you then just allow the winner to run?

Nope. Keep testing. Markets change. People see the same ad repeatedly, and then they don’t see it anymore. You may change your offer. Keep on testing. Forever.Use what you learn by incorporating the compelling ad copy into your messaging on other channels. Try it as an email headline, a brochure or flyer offer, or a display ad.

Pro tip: Set a calendar reminder to help you with these tasks. That way, you won’t allow your campaign to stagnate and fall behind on performance. Remember: optimize, optimize, tweak, optimize: like a diamond, this PPC thing is forever.

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Acronyms. They save time. They can be hilarious, evocative, punchy.

Occasionally they even infiltrate our vocabulary, lay eggs in the intestinal wall of our language, shed their individual-letter pronunciation, and burst forth from our stomachs, dancing, as fully formed words. (SCUBA, IKEA, LOL, RADAR, LOLZZZ.)

But they can be confusing.

Today it’s my solemn and reverent duty to explain just what the deal is with the most confusing acronyms in digital marketing: SEM, SEO and PPC.

SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, refers to activities that allow someone (usually a business or cause) to appear in the results on a search engine. SEM may apply to either organic results – which are the product of SEO – or paid search (PPC) results.

The important thing to note here? SEM is an umbrella term that refers to both SEO and PPC.

You may be confused. This is normal. And frankly, people don’t always follow the rules.

Let’s talk about SEO and PPC.

Here’s a diagram of a search results page. As a user, you get here by typing in a search term on Google, Yahoo, Bing or another search engine, and hitting ‘go’.

The results on the left side of the page are organic results.

This means the folks at the top worked hard to get there by focusing on search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO is the process of telling search engines that their content is very relevant to the search terms by focusing on site design, keyword density and content optimization.

SEO can be a long process, but if you negate the costs of expertise and tools, it’s free.

Paid search, or pay-per-click ads, appear on the right side of the search results page.

If you see a PPC ad on the right, it means that someone is running a paid search campaign: paying each time they get a click on one of their ads. PPC works like an auction: advertisers bid on keywords. When a search engine user enters a search term that matches an advertiser’s PPC keyword, this could trigger an ad. If the user clicks on the ad, the advertiser pays the price she bid on the keyword.

Why would you try PPC, when SEO is free?

We always suggest you develop a marketing strategy that includes both PPC and SEO. Good site SEO is imperative for a successful PPC campaign, and the valuable, instant data generated by PPC can help inform and speed up the results of an SEO strategy.

That’s a lot of acronyms.

For more on the PPC/SEO/SEM debacle, including how PPC and SEO can work well together, read our post PPC and SEO… Working Together or check out some slides from a webinar we held: 9 Tips for Maximizing PPC and SEO.

TTYL, PPC homies!

Wow! What an exciting day for you! You’ve decided to have a search marketing campaign.

You are embarking on an exciting journey: with search marketing, you can generate consistent, cost-effective sales and conversions, drive targeted traffic, and compete with bigger advertisers (while paying less).

But hey, it’s not all impressions and conversions and the pitter-patter of little clicks. In this guide, we’ll help you understand what to expect in terms of search marketing results.

In the search marketing industry, the best metric for measuring results is ROI: return on investment. ROI is the measure of profit earned from an investment. In plain English, your search marketing ROI is what you get out of your efforts in search marketing.

First, let’s talk about the things you must do in order to have a successful search marketing campaign that gets you results.

Understand your goals. Why are you getting started with search marketing? Is it because you want to sell more diaper management consoles? Or is it because you want to increase diaper management console sales by 20% over 6 months with a CPA (cost-per-action) of $10 per diaper management console? It helps to have specific goals – so that you can then compare them against your ROI.

Set realistic goals.
Ok, before we get crazy, keep in mind that search marketing isn’t magic. Research click and conversion prices in your space and use what you learn to set informed, reasonable goals.

Be prepared to work.
Search marketing is like other marketing programs: you get what you put into it. Structuring your campaign properly and constantly optimizing it are essential to your success.

So when can you expect results? When will your campaign be mature enough to calculate your search marketing ROI and compare it against your goals? It will take a while for your search marketing campaign to be fully mature.

Phase 1: Campaign generation
During this first phase, you will design the framework of your search marketing campaign. Building small, thematically-relevant ad groups, generating large numbers of diverse keywords, and setting up ad messaging testing programs during this time are essential for the health and prosperity of your campaign. Also: make sure you have all conversion tracking ready to go.

Phase 2: Exploration
The exploratory phase begins when you launch your campaign, and it’s important to learn as much as you can during this time. Allow ads to run, track conversions, and build out your keyword list. When you’re in the exploration phase, think of yourself like a scientist running experiments: you want to try everything you possibly can, analyze the results, and eventually narrow your focus to activities that seem to be working. When you have a solid data set (we suggest 100 conversions per experiment), allow your best-performing ads to continue running, and write more ads to test. When you see which keywords are converting, use what you learn to brainstorm more keywords that you think might also convert well. Successful search marketers never stop testing.

Phase 3: Optimization
This is the final phase, and you must be prepared to work as consistently during this time as you did during the previous phases – constantly testing, generating new ads and keywords, tweaking landing pages, and learning from your successes and failures. But you can also measure results! Keep in mind that the market changes constantly and you should repeat your ROI calculation on at least a quarterly basis.

To calculate your search marketing ROI, you must have conversion tracking implemented, so that you can attribute sales of your product to your search marketing efforts. Then, determine these simple metrics:

Ad cost: how much you spent in your search marketing campaign
Profit: dollar amount you made in sales that came as a result of your search marketing campaign

A word on profit: you may want to consider what this means to you. Is it total earnings from your campaign, or would you prefer to subtract costs like hourly rates and office rent? You will need to consider these costs at some point, but you may choose to exclude them from your ROI calculation.

Here’s the formula for calculating your search marketing ROI:

Profit
———
Ad cost
x
100

So if you spend 10,000 on search marketing in August, and you sell enough diaper management consoles to make $40,000 in profit, you have an ROI of 400%.

Understanding your ROI is an important part of your search marketing. When you see that concrete, irrefutable number that shows that your marketing is paying off, you’ll see that the joys and sorrows of having your own search marketing campaign are, oh, gush! just totally worth it!

When your search marketing campaign takes its first steps, let me know.