My friend Alan Weinkrantz shoots a quick video to capture some of the things Pear Analytics is up to. In this video, I talk about the importance of measurement to achieve better marketing performance, in addition to some of the tools we are building to help clients track real-time results.
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We just finished putting together a comprehensive online ad campaign using Google AdWords for a hospital in Chicago. We needed to create four campaigns centered around “heart attacks”, “heart disease” and other cardiovascular related topics. The set up work was kind of exhaustive as we scrubbed the keywords for searchability, effectiveness, competition, and average cost per click. We also set up a strategy for each landing page, remembering some of the rules about good landing page design. Then we needed to determine what we were going to track in the campaign in order to compute the real return on investment, or ROI. If you use AdWords’ Conversion Optimizer, it will kind of give you an ROI, but in terms of the ad spend, cost of acquisition, conversion values and some other things. However, the ROI extends beyond the campaign since there is activity that drives leads to the client that AdWords can’t track (that I am aware of); in our case with the hospital, consultations scheduled, consultations completed and ultimately, procedures. Well each of these has value that must be calculated as part of your ROI on the campaign. Quite simply, we can define ROI in the following manner:
where the total benefits are all of the conversions and their associated values along the way, and the total costs are what the campaign cost with click expenditures, web design, development, tracking, analysis, account service and more. In the end, we set up 8 different conversions that were cross-utilized in the other ad groups and landing pages, so when you add it all up, there were over 25 points of conversion – all having value to the client.
So we can easily see here under the “Conversion Tracking” menu that so far, only after a day of running the campaign, we have 54 conversions on Zip Code Entry. Well, we have several ads that drive you to a landing page that ask for a zip code before you can use the risk assessment tool, so if I click on each conversion, I get the following:
and now I can see that the Zip Code Entry was most successful on the Cardiac Risk Assessment Calculator conventional ad, run 1 (I talk more about how to set up AdWords campaigns for maximum efficiency and results in another post). Overall, I’m getting an 84.38% conversion rate on this particular metric, which is very good. This says that most people are OK with giving you a zip code in order to use something of perceived value, or to get to the next step in the process. So, during the campaign we will add up all of our conversions, multiply them by their respective values, and divide by campaign cost. This method will show your client much more value of what the campaign is extracting, rather than just looking at click through rates (CTR’s) and ad conversion rates.
How do you calculate ROI for online ad campaigns?
I’m starting to learn more about how to use Twitter’s advanced search portal, and I have to say, this is impressive. With the influx of social media, blogs, discussion forums, vlogging, and so much more, companies are wondering what the effect social conversation has on their brands. Well, now we can have a peek into what people are saying about brands in terms of quality, service, reliability and more. According to TechCrunch, there are well over 1 million users of Twitter as of March 2008 (which I’m sure has grown substantially since then…new estimates are >3 million), so as more people begin to use Twitter, the better the search data could become. Here is an example of the advanced search page on Twitter:
What impressed me the most was not the ability to search for exact words or phrases, or even by geolocation, but the attitude of the comment. So the search algorithm looks for those silly expressions, or emoticons we always use when IM’ing, like 
or 
or even a question mark at the end of the search term or phrase. You get to find out some really interesting things! Try it for yourself.
When you are spending money on pay-per-click advertising, or even search engine optimization, it’s nice to see people converting, or the act of getting the visitor to do what you want. After all, you are paying for the traffic, so wouldn’t it be prudent of you to give them what they are ultimately looking for? What if you went into the Dollar Store and everything was $3? You would be very disappointed, right? You would turn around and walk right out!
So let’s use an example. Let’s say I am interested in getting back in the gym, so I do a search on Google and find this::
Awesome! I totally need to get back into shape, so I am digging this 50% off enrollment, especially when enrollment is probably $150 or more.
So after you click on the link above, it takes you to the following landing page:
Wait a minute….where’s the stuff about the 50% off enrollment? I don’t see it….do I have to sign up first? Do I have to call, or give a promo code? Now the potential customer has a bunch of questions, and so they are likely to “bounce” from this page given too many unknowns. Not surprisingly, this happens all too frequently.
But let’s say I do stay on the page. What is it they want me to do? Better yet, if I am Spectrum Clubs, what do I want you to do? I would like you to probably a) fill out a form; b) call me; or c) stop into one of our clubs. Tracking wise, the easiest thing to track would be the form submission, then the phone number, and lastly, the visit to the club. Let’s say I’m looking for a form to fill out so someone can contact me later.
The problem is that this page has 8 different things for me to click on – but only 1 of them will take me to the form. So, after I’ve paid $2 to get you here, I’m going to challenge you to a game of Roulette? There is a 1 in 8 chance now for the visitor to even click on the right button, and even less of a chance to get them to fill out the form and submit it. This reduces conversion, and increased cost per acquisition.
So, let’s look at a few pointers for good landing page design which is sure to increase your conversion rates:
Happy landing page designing! Monitor and test often.
