Relative Conversion Rates of different advertising medium

[derekwong28]

I need some urgent advice on the relative conversion rates per visitor referred from different forms of advertising.

If for example that I would get one sale from 100 visitors referred from the main search results in Google, what would the figure be for:

1. Pay Per Click Search Engines
2. Pay Per Click Banner Advertising
3. Pay Per Click Text Ads
4. Pop-ups or Pop unders
5. Yahoo directory listing

We have just started a campaign which is massive by our standards (will cost more than $2500 this month) and our sales had tripled. However, we don't know whether we will make extra money or not from this. It will be very difficult for us to track the results, I would like some advice from members who have experience in this so we can adjust the targeting.

[ebizpro]

There is no formula that will tell you you'll get X-results in this advertising medium if you've gotten Y-results in another.

There are way too many variables related to conversion, so results will vary from situation to situation. You must track leads and conversions separately for each source, then drop the duds and keep the winners.

[rossH]

I don't understand why it will be difficult for you to track the results - I agree that's what you must do to find out yourself what works best.

To spend that kind of money, surely you have server logs?

You can get some very affordable tracking services, you can use a little javascript or a cookie, you can track users from the entry page to exit page, and when they buy, and what brought them in the fist place.

Isn't it a cardinal rule of marketing to track everything? I think you should put that in place first :)

[derekwong28]

Unfortunately, we don't have access to the log files. Morover, it was only recently that we had access to the ip addresses of our customers. We have tried and tracked various forms of advertising in the past and have found that banners and pop-unders were extremely ineffective. However, PPC appear to give a conversion rate of up to 1 in 20 in contrast to general free listings which gave a conversion rate of between 1 in 100 to 1 in 200.

The reason why we have mounted that campaign at this time is that we have access to some eagerly awaited products from a manufacturer whose product line has no effective competitors. Therefore we wanted to sell as many as possible before our competitors have access to these products. Whereas beforehand, we did not dare to mount a campaign of nature before because we did not have the correct products. At least so far, things seem to be going well and I do not mind spending much more provided that it is effective, If anyone could give some examples of the relative conversion rates of the different types of advertsing, it would be very informative.