You’re right – pausing PPC campaigns and watching how sales / enquiries / conversions change is a sure-fire way to understand the true value of a PPC campaign.

But for those who are confident PPC is delivering value, but are not sure how (which keywords, ads etc are building interest and awareness), looking at user behaviour stats such as page views, time on site, returning visits etc becomes incredibly useful.

Cheers,
Alan

it seems drastic, but if you conversion data only shows that ppc is accounting for 20% of your sales, and they drop more or less, then you will know what actions to take.

Buy:Viagra Super Active+.VPXL.Zithromax.Super Active ED Pack.Cialis Soft Tabs.Cialis Professional.Soma.Maxaman.Viagra Super Force.Propecia.Cialis.Viagra.Cialis Super Active+.Viagra Soft Tabs.Tramadol.Viagra Professional.Levitra….

He’s completely right – as an industry we need to get better at conversion attribution to better understand PPC’s true value in generating interest and awareness and engaging visitors.

Because PPC is so trackable and accountable (especially compared to offline marketing mediums such as TV and print), it often falls into the trap of over-micro-management, where the only focus is conversion maximisation, where non-converting keywords are ruthlesslessly paused and where the indirect benefits of paid search are neglected and forgotten.

Highly recommend Avinash’s book Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity if you haven’t read it already. Loads of useful advice on interpreting anaytics data and using it to make impactful and informed decisions.

Great post (just arrived via your comment on my blog).

Totally agree with making more use of analytics packages when managing PPC campaigns; and of course your comment about engagement…

As Avinash Kaushik said this week at SES London: “First click attribution is a bit like crediting your first girlfriend with your current marriage”

The man’s a genius

You’re right, with performance-based deals it’s often in the agency’s interests to go after the ‘low hanging fruit’ of highly-converting keywords, ignoring those terms which are not converting as well, but are successfully engaging visitors and developing long-term growth for the client.

It’s important for a client to understand what people do on their site – what their purpose is and how they interact. Once they understand the value of return visits and user engagement for their business, they will be in a better position to adjust the focus and motivations of their PPC agency, to become more in line with their desired outcomes and goals.

Interesting point. Although analytics metrics such as page views, time on site and bounce rate will naturally vary depending on your products, services and industry, I think analytics can still be incredibly useful in comparing different campaigns, ad groups and keywords within your site.

Even if page views are lower because of your conversion-funnel-style landing page, I imagine there will still be campaigns, ad groups and keywords which perform better or worse than average.

I think analytics metrics are most powerful when they are considered in relative, rather than absolute, terms.

Great post. I’d like to get your opinion on the relevance of these campaign metrics when you are sending someone to a specific landing page that is optimized for the conversion (i.e: some text, strong call to action, and a form). Here you are hoping the user converts right away instead of looking around. You ideally want the user to stay on the site even after he/she converts, but now you have the lead and can contact that person directly. I’ve noticed this trend especially with B2B sites.