Bill Rice Internet Marketing > PPC Marketing

Testing Marketing Campaigns

June 17, 2009 By

No matter what industry you’re in, if you are not measuring your marketing efforts, chances are you will be missing out not only on sales, but the opportunity to expand your business. There are several different ways to determine your marketing ROI, particularly for online marketing. Let’s take a look at how you can start testing campaigns and measuring your marketing metrics.

Picking an Analytic Program

The first step towards measuring your marketing ROI is to select an analytic program. There are numerous different applications both for offline and online use, but one of the most popular is Google Analytics. If you are using Google’s AdWords, this application is absolutely vital to ensure you are not overspending on your campaigns.

Regardless of the application you select, the important thing is being able to effectively track and manage your sales, the results of your different campaigns and your marketing metrics. Without this information, you are effectively working in the dark and your business will suffer, even if you don’t realize it.

Interpreting the Data

It’s one thing to have the data for your marketing metrics at hand, it’s another to be able to interpret it correctly. This is why picking the right application is necessary for your success. You need to be able to easily look at the data and see where you may be going wrong. You need to have the ability for testing campaigns and measuring their effectiveness against one another.

While you can do this manually, it is more work than necessary and it is simply much easier to have an application take the data and present it to you in reports that are easy to understand. If you have a sales manager, they will find their work made much easier when they can collaborate with you on these reports and see what areas they need to improve on as well.

Enacting Change

Once you have the ability to measure marketing ROI and you’ve got the data in front of you, it will only be worth anything if you actually enact change. Testing campaigns helps you see what may or may not be working and allows you to easily make even the smallest changes before they can get out of hand.

For example, let’s say that you are running a PPC ad promotion for a specific product. The click through rates on your ads are fantastic, but you’re not closing the deal. This is an indication that something is wrong with your landing page. The longer you let it sit, the more money you’re going to be wasting on your pay per click ads. You’ll need to make changes and watch the trends to see what precisely needs to be done.

In today’s online world, we have so many different options available that can help us be successful, but we need to make use of them and we need to listen to the data that is being presented. Once you have this in motion, you’ll be able to achieve your sales goals much more easily and you may even surpass them.

Filed Under: Lead Generation Tagged With: Google Analytics, marketing, Marketing ROI, PPC Marketing, Social Selling

The Basics of Setting Up PPC Marketing

June 5, 2009 By

When it comes to ROI and overall ease, PPC marketing is the choice of many businesses, both offline and online. However, there are a few pitfalls that can make this type of marketing a headache. By following some basic rules, you’ll be able to ensure that your next online marketing campaign is a success, no matter what industry you’re in.

Getting Started with PPC

First, let’s discuss what pay-per-click marketing is and what you can expect. Unlike other forms of advertising, where you generally pay a set price to be viewed by a set amount of people, your ad will be visible throughout the duration of your campaign, until you reach the set amount of clicks you have agreed upon.

It is a good idea to start by setting a budget of what you plan to spend on your ppc campaign. Most services, such as AdWords allow you to set not only a total ad budget, but also what you would prefer to spend for each day. Your ad will then show until you hit that marker. Be forewarned, if you do not set a budget, you may end up spending a good deal more than you planned to with your campaign.

PPC marketing requires testing before you commit to spending a large budget. Ideally, you should have at least three versions of your ad for testing purposes. Set a small budget and run the ads for a few days. See which one performs the best and then use that for your campaign. You will need to monitor its effectiveness however, and you may need to change the ad in mid-campaign if it’s not performing well.

Secrets to Your Campaign Success

Having more than one ad is not the only secret to your success. You will also need to have at least one landing page set up that gives your visitors an instant look at what you have to offer. You may want to have two of these pages, and just like before, test them to see which one is the most effective.

By far, one of the best tools that you can use for testing purposes is Google’s analytics feature. This will integrate with your AdWords account and allow you to get precise testing data on not only the ad, but also the landing page. You may also want to consider using a service like CrazyEgg.com that offers mapping of your page to see where people are clicking.

What Should You Offer?

While you can promote nearly anything with a pay-per-click marketing campaign, most businesses find that it is ideal for either giving away small products, or promoting inexpensive products that have an upsell. You will need to factor this in when you are creating your campaign.

This will also have an effect on your budget, and the range of cost per acquisition that you are comfortable with. Although PPC is cheaper in the long run, and more effective, there are no guarantees. Approach pay-per-click marketing like you would any new marketing campaign. Be careful, test the waters and never get in over your head.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: AdWords, marketing, online marketing, PPC Marketing

about |  contact |  disclosure