From my logfiles, I know that I HAVE conversions.
Also Google thinks that I'm having conversions. For one campaign it shows 2,56% conversions for the last 7 days. However, if I drill down into that campaign to see which keywords make the conversions, EVERY SINGLE keyword gets listed with 0.00% conversions!
How can that be?
Associated question: that campaign has a CTR of 2,6%. How do I relate CTR and Conversions?
a) 100% impressions lead to 2,6% Clicks. Do those 2,6% now transform into new 100%, and out of these 100% I have 2,56% conversions? That would be rather bad.
b) Or do the 2,56% conversions also relate to the 100% of impressions? Then a CTR of 2,6 and a conversion rate of 2,56 would be rather good, wouldn't it?
Any help would be appreciated.
Looks like there may be a glitch somewhere
And btw, the answer to your question is a), the conversion rate is the % of people who convert based on the total number of people who have clicked through your ads...
Syzygy
As for the second part: my logs hint that rather my reason "b" seems to be the right one. Are you sure about your answer?
Conversion is how many of those who clicked converted on your website.
If your looking at a small, recent date range, odds are the reason your not seeing conversions is that all the data isn't updated yet.
Usually you'll see data updated first at the campaign level, then the adgroup summary page, then on each actual adgroup.
If you ever look at 'today' in the date range - you'll probably see different stats for each of the above views. It takes Google (usually) around 4 hours to update stats (so you're always looking into the past). However, often the conversion data can lag even further behind, and there have been multiple instances where the conversion data got 'stuck' and wasn't updated for 24-48 hours.
So I'm having 2,56% conversion of 2.6% Clicks of 100% impressions? That's not too impressive :-(
It's all in perception. ;)
Sometimes I wish our widgets would NOT be in the 5-digit pricerange...
Also the conversion-rate percentages now varies more, and they are more different from the CTR rate compared to my first posts.
What should I do about conversion costs? Since our high-priced widgets are not available in a webshop, I count the submission of feedback froms as conversion (since it reveals name and email-address to us). So what pricetag should I give?
Calculate your break even point.
If you know how many people fill out the form buy your software, then you know your lead to sale conversion rate.
If you know your average profit per sale (sale price - marketing costs, payroll, bills, etc), then you can reverse set up a formula to determine your PPC bid break even point.
For example:
If your average profit is $5000.
Your close % (those that filled out the form & then purchased) is 10%.
That means your average lead break even point is $500. ($5000 * 0.1)
If 5% of your visitors fill out your lead form, then you can bid $25/click and break even ($500 * 0.05 = $25). (break even point * form fill out % = bid break even point)
Therefore, account wide (this isn't on the KW level yet, just account wide), if you bid less than $25 per click - you're breaking even. So, now determine the ROI you want from your sales. If you want a 100% ROI, then you can bid $12.50/keyword.
The next step is to start calculating ROI based on both ads, landing pages, and keywords. If your new to this, I'd start with the ads & landing pages first. Sometimes, it's not the KWs, but the ads/landing pages that don't convert. Start some split testing to see if certain ad & landing page combinations lead to a higher conversion %.
Once you've done some testing on this, and you are starting to get some good KW level data, then you can start adjusting bids for the actual KWs based on your ROI. If you have a keyword with a 10% form fill out, then you can bid 4 times more than a keyword with a 2.5% form fill out % to achieve the same ROI on both keywords.
Hope this all makes sense (and my math is correct), just the 2nd cup of coffee ;)
My only problem is, that in my industry it doesn't work that way. Our widgets (only partially software, in contrastto what you have assumed), are in the 10K$-25K$ range, decision timeframes are typically 1 year (6 months when it is fast, but on occasion we had almost 2 years as well), very often public tenders are required as well.
So I put a huge focus on branding, on becoming an authority in providing as unbiased as possible information, useability, freshness of content, multitude and versatility of information. Off-web factors (nowadays called cross-marketing) include PR, presswork, roadshows etc.
The AdWords campaigns are just small tiles in the overall mosaic. We have very good organic results too, soo we get conversions "for free" from these as well.
So if we make a 150K$ sale, a lot of factors come into play. That person MIGHT have heard on the web the first time about us, maybe even via an AdWords ad. But in almost every case a sales rep has been visiting him - probably multiple times. He most likely has attended one of our roadshows. He might have vistied us on tradeshows. He has almost for sure read a couple of press articles about us. And finally we made the sale.
This makes it almost impossible to put a pricetag on the AdWords conversion.
What I can try though is that I look at the AdWords items exclusively, tuning out everything else. My philosophy is to settle for the #2 spot, so what I can try is to compare the CPC with te conversion rates so I get even with them. This means if I spent amount X on Clicks per month for ALL campaigns, then I set my conversion-pricetag to a value that overall conversion cost equals X. So all my conversions for a given month equal my total AdWords cost for that month. By this, I have a fixed number per day which I can use for budgeting and which I can report to controlling.
Does that make sense?
If you plan on being in business for 5+ years, you might want to think about tracking solutions that can warehouse all your data for that amount of time, so that you can start to see historical patterns.
If you use a tracking solution that captures the email address or sets an ID for a visitor. Then in your internal tracking system, use the same ID for those visitors. Keep secure page on your site so that when you make a conversion, you can 'force' that user to convert by entering it manually. This will start to give you an idea of what words/themes are converting. (This is for $$ conversions - not necessarily form fill outs). If you're using a CRM software, some systems can cross integrate and auto update this info for you as well.
However, you can also start to force conversions of people who don't just contact you once, but are genuinely interested, and you're actively trying to recruit. This way, you'll also start getting 'interest' data so that you have a type of conversion you can also start to work with to get better total numbers (1 conversion/month takes a LONG time to build up data - by forcing certain other conversions based on customer touch points, you can start to see patterns).
I'd suggest not only doing this for PPC, but for organics, banners, and any other online campaigns as well. (Does your site see a spike in type in traffic after a tradeshow? Do different tradeshows give you different types of type in traffic, do some just seem to fail and not increase your traffic?) Over the course of years, organics will change and become more expensive in certain sectors - knowing which ones you want to target can help you with long term marketing costs.
Also, if you offer a lot of info on your pages, and you start to find that visitors that look at 4 pages, spend 8+ minutes (I'm just making up variables here), or view certain pages become converters - then you can start to tailor your campaigns appropriately to people who fit those profiles.
That's a long term solution, with some potentially hefty associated costs, depends on margins, etc if if you can afford such a system. Over the lifetime of a company it could make you much more profitable in a couple years.
so knowing how you received certain visitors, interest, etc can also become good data to work with
I couldn't agree more! That's why our sales-reps are instructed to ask how a potential customer found us upon first contact. That's why we use different URL's for printed ad campaigns. Unfortunately, we are limited by national law in the way how we may aggregated and combine data, but within these bounds we try to search for relations and patterns. Funny enough especially the sales-reps often fail to see the point of knowing WHERE a potential customer came from, as long as he finds his way to us...
If you plan on being in business for 5+ years, you might want to think about tracking solutions that can warehouse all your data for that amount of time, so that you can start to see historical patterns.
Well, we ARE already in business for almost 15 years (I'm in my 12th year with the company), and if we don't fall prey to hubris, we might stay for another 15+ years :-)
When it comes to CRM solutions, any off-the-shelve product doesn't work for us. We have settled for Lotus Notes, since this gives you the ability to program our own applications on top of it, even though it sometimes is a pain...
However, you can also start to force conversions of people who don't just contact you once
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "force". Our industry IS getting more and more competitive each day. A few competitors have already started the price-spiral-of-death. We managed to stay out of it so far by adding additional value. However we can NOT afford to drive potential customers away by building too much of a barrier before they get the information.
EVERYTHING you will get when you fill out the feedback form (= my definition of conversion) is also available freely on the site, though maybe not one mouseclick away but maybe 5 mouseclicks away. I WANT and I NEED the visitors to get these information easily. If they are using my feedback forms, they trade convenience for their contact information. If they don't want to revel who they are, they get the information as well.
Just as an example: the feedback form only consists of two fiels. Ohne for the name, the other one is called "Email or Phone". 99% of all the people sending the form give their email, NOT their phone number. They don't want to be called. They want to get the data and then THEY decide when to contact next.
OK, actually - invaluable as it is - it leads away from the initial question. Is it still right in this forum? Shall we start a new thread somewhere else?
This is hidden from the user, and isn't forcing the user to do anything, you're forcing your tracking system todo something.
For example, say you are able to define dollar amounts by average conversion to sale for various actions.
1. Form fill out $25
2. Phone contact $50
3. Sent media kit $150
4. In person presentation $500
You can add these variables to your CRM (which has a unique visitor ID associated with it in your tracking system). Each time this occurs, you're forcing a conversion (i.e. you are making the data appear - not a user action). This data can now be associated with the original way the customer found you to start putting dollar amounts on various campaign types.
