One of the most significant challenges any business faces is measuring the impact of their advertising. There’s nothing worse than having to rely on asking your customers how they found you to track your advertising results. The good news is that search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising are among the most measurable types of marketing.?
With any SEO or PPC campaign, businesses can and will get a wealth of measurable data. The most common pieces of data include the cost per lead (CPL), cost per click (CPC), total clicks, number of leads and cost per sale (CPS). There are many other pieces of analytic data generated by SEO and PPC campaigns.?
In addition to providing clients with vital analytic data, a solid search marketing firm will go to the next level and present measurable data that can be translated into actionable business results. For example, an analytics dashboard helps business owners to quickly and easily understand how their campaign is performing.?
Giving the client the ability to check a campaign’s data at their convenience is essential. If results start to slide, no one wants to wait until the end-of-month report to hear about it. Being able to take action quickly is one of the advantages of PPC and SEO campaigns. It is easy to make adjustments quickly without waiting for production or print deadlines.?
The real beauty of SEO and PPC advertising is that each click can be tracked. Whether that click falls on a landing page or on the actual website, it is easy to know which clicks are leading to phone calls. With the proper technology, clients can track which ZIP codes those calls are coming from in order to plan new store locations and know when the busiest times are for each store.?
All of this valuable information makes it easy to follow leads all the way to a completed sale. Calculate CPS by dividing your total sales for the period by your total marketing spend for the period. For example, if you spend $1,000 on search marketing during a period where the organization produced $50,000 in sales, you are seeing a $50 return on every $1 spent. Armed with this information it is easy to see how much it costs to make the phone ring and how much it cost you to make the sale. ?
Although SEO and PPC advertising has shifted the mindset of what to expect from advertising campaigns, the bottom line, as with all advertising campaigns, remains to bring in customers and maximize your overall ROI.?
