Once upon a time, back in 2004, I had only one client out of 15 that was tracking sales and revenue. The rest were happy to be on the world wide web and were waiting for the phones to ring off the back of all this traffic.

PPC tracking today

We know that the benefits of PPC are endless; but has the heavy focus on measurability finally come back to haunt us?

• PPC is highly measurable
• You can monitor the performance of every keyword

However, shouldn’t the most important benefit be that the masses are actively looking for you and your offering online?

Not being online is like having a store that never opens. Users know what you offer but if you’re not online (or open) then they can’t buy!

I think it’s fair to say the tracking landscape has changed alot relative to what it was 5 years ago. Now, we wouldn’t dream of activating accounts until tracking is in place! Not only has the market moved towards tracking performance, we now track click journeys which provide rich information and great insights for our clients, but are we missing the full online picture?

We now track everything including:

• What keyword did they use to find us?
• What keyword did they use to convert?
• What message was the user exposed to when converting?
• How many visits did it take before the user converted?

All the information that these answers above provide undoubtedly gives PPC the edge against all other marketing channels. This is where the market is today and rightly so. In the current climate where budgets are tight the benefits of PPC will be ringing around meeting rooms all over the world.

Nonetheless, there are some holes in our data that prevent us from seeing the entire picture. Where are the holes in PPC results? All will be revealed in Part 2.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Google analytics, ppc, Google, Make It Rain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.