To execute a successful paid search marketing campaign, one of the most important elements needed is good data. Paid search is full of data points that search marketers constantly rely on to understand trends and make optimization changes to improve the campaign’s future performance. However, with so much data available, it’s often hard to know which numbers to focus on. Below are the five most important metrics to focus on, from least to most important, that ensure optimization and growth success for your paid search account.
Number 5: Keyword Mapping
Paid search marketing always starts with a keyword list. There are many keyword research tools that are used to generate this list. However, users’ search habits continuously change and we discover new keywords on a regular basis including newly searched phrases and misspellings. This provides deeper insight into how both targeted and potential keyword phrases are mapping to search engine results pages. Without knowing which keywords are highly searched on and are delivering relevant traffic to your site, it is impossible to fully utilize and understand the conversion data for your campaign.
Number 4: Impression Share/Share of Voice
This metric answers what percentage of total search queries your ad appeared for and is important in order to understand the total opportunity for your keyword group. An impression share of 75% implies that there is an additional 25% of searches that your ad did not appear for. By understanding this metric, and monitoring it closely, advertisers are able to make budgetary decisions, and measure incremental opportunity.
Number 3: Conversion
How do your keywords convert? If your keywords don’t convert then it is unimportant what any other metric says. This could point to an opportunity with landing pages, keyword selection, or the conversion funnel, but should be a key metric to keep an eye on as any campaign is analyzed.
Number 2: Purchase Path
Traditional analytics packages like Omniture and WebTrends are great tools, and are needed to understand how your Web site functions, and to determine pain points for your customers. However, when trying to understand how a paid search campaign works, a different perspective is best. Traditional analytics use ‘last click’ methodology. Meaning, the last click a users took to get to your site and convert gets 100% of the credit for the sale. For example, if a user clicked on multiple paid search ads before making a purchase, the credit for that sale would go to the last ad that was clicked. This isn’t wrong; it just doesn’t fully allocate credit to the process. This process may have included display advertising, e-mail, organic search, and paid search. Measuring the impact of all these tactics and the impact to one another is the best way to understand, and measure, the effectiveness of any marketing program.
Number 1: Profit
When push comes to shove, if your paid search program doesn’t make your company money then it isn’t working. Understanding how much you are spending to acquire new business in aggregate is the most important metric when determining how much you should be spending on a paid search campaign. This is often a struggle for companies who sell multiple products, and have various profit margins. However, it is crucial to do some due diligence in this area in order to understand this metric.
