“How do I track conversions for a service where the only way people can opt in is by phoning? My client does not want a separate phone number for ads. I don’t know how to increase CTR (click through rate) and QS (quality score) because conversions are not being recorded.”
My reply:
Don’t get me started about clients who don’t do everything that us marketers tell them to do. That used to happen to me too, and it was so very sad ;)
So I’ll deal with the question assuming the problem is the expense of setting up call tracking (although Google Voice is available for click to call in certain accounts, with more to roll out at some point, and my friend and NC neighbor Ryan Pitz has a very reasonably priced call tracking solution for US-based businesses).
What’s the most old school, duck tape and baling wire, McGiver sort of way to track calls off of AdWords ads?
The old standby, the secret phrase.
As in, on landing page number one, you instruct your visitor:
“Call 1-800-555-1212 now to schedule an appointment to get your legs waxed. Make sure you mention the magic word ‘Agony’ to get your free cuticle bronzing as well.”
And on all the other landing pages, you substitute a different word.
Now all you have to do is convince the person answering the phone to tally the magic words, and if possible, link the source to the customer and their spend.
Semi-snooty final word:
For the record, conversion tracking will not help you with either CTR or QS. It will help you with another reasonably important metric, WYMMON (“Whether You Make Money Or Not”).
Sometimes you can do all the right things with AdWords, like deleting expensive keywords that don't lead to sales, and discover that your best efforts have actually killed your sales.
Quick heads-up: Registration is now open for Camp Checkmate Chicago, June 10-11, 2010. Two days of intense "Playshops" (fun workshops), quality time with me, Perry Marshall, and Glenn Livingston. Click to find out more (opens in a new window so you can keep learning about the Search Funnel Report on this page).
And now to the Search Funnel Report. Here's what Google has to say about it:
In a nutshell, here's the problem that the Search Funnel Report solves:
You run a keyword report and discover that a certain broad keyword gets lots of impressions, many clicks, and no conversions.
So you delete the keyword.
Then, next month, you realize that your sales are down, even for keywords that had done really well before. Keywords that weren't even in the same ad group or campaign as the one you deleted. Not only conversions, but clicks as well.
What the…?
"I'll Have the Usual"
Suppose you walk into your favorite diner tomorrow morning, go up to the counter and tell the short order cook, "I'll have the usual." Eight minutes later, you get the tall stack of banana pecan pancakes, three slices of bacon, wheat toast with orange marmalade, and a pot of English Breakfast tea.
Next week, you're traveling on business to an unfamiliar city. You find a diner that looks just like your favorite one, walk in, go up to the counter, and tell the short order cook, "I'll have the usual." The cook looks at you like you have three heads.
Obviously, the words "I'll have the usual" don't have any magic power. They work at your diner only because of numerous previous interactions with the cook. They don't work where the same history isn't in place.
The Hidden Conversion Path
Your best converting keyword may be a version of "I'll have the usual." Suppose you sell digital cameras. Your money keyword might be "PowerShot 780SD". That's the click that brings the customer ready to buy.
But suppose customers will buy from you only if they already have a history with you. Suppose they have to start buy searching for "digital camera" and then find your store. They don't buy, but they spend time looking.
A couple days later, they search for "Canon cameras", based on information they got when they were on your site. They see your ad, but go instead to an organic listing that reviews Canon cameras.
The following week, they search for "PowerShot 780SD" as the camera they want, and they see your ad, click it, and place an order.
Until now, Google would tell you only that the keyword "PowerShot 780SD" led to a sale, and the keyword "digital camera" brought a bunch of tire kickers who never bought anything.
Based on that data, you might have deleted "digital camera" as an ROI-negative keyword, and never realized that keyword was an indispensable early stepping stone on the conversion path.
The Good/Bad News
Conversion tracking just got 300% more complicated. That's good news if you're willing to spend the time to understand and engage the new complexity. And bad news for those advertisers who would rather not pay attention to results, and just let Google optimize everything for them.
Of course, you can always hire an ROI-obsessed AdWords management agency to do this for you. (If you've been burned by agencies before, I feel your pain. Check out the agency that Kristie McDonald and I started in November: ThePPCagency.com.)
Check out the ad appeared at the top of my gmail this morning:
Headline, line 1, line 2, www.site.com. Wow! The copywriting!
I admit – I couldn’t resist, and I clicked through. What could this company possibly be offering that would be appealing to curious AdWords rubber-neckers? Must be completely universal in appeal – PediPaws maybe, or weight loss, or stop snoring.
Turns out Site.com makes stuff I can’t begin to comprehend. I quote from their home page:
"SITE is a 25-year-old company dedicated to designing, building and selling high-quality track systems for photoresist coating, developing, baking, cleaning and other specialty applications."
I felt bad for costing them money by clicking, so I made a sympathy purchase of a SpinBall™ Single-wafer Spin Station, "a small, manually-loaded tool designed for the spin deposition of photoresist, developer, polymer and other materials common to integrated circuit photolithography." I’m hoping it won’t set me back more than a few hundred grand. But hey, there’s always eBay…
Just got a call from a client who discovered that his cost per click had gone up by a factor of 12 overnight, from $6.50 to $88.00 per click.
Ordinarily, a leap this big is due to quality score. Like Google really hates your website. But the client mentioned in his message, "Quality scores are good or excellent."
So I called back about 15 minutes after getting the message, basically expecting to not know what to do except contact AdWords help and make a lot of noise.
When I reached him, the problem had been solved. Turns out he had switched on Conversion Optimizer, and so he was now looking, not at a cost per click (CPC) column, but at a cost per action (CPA column). Instead of $6.50 per click, he was getting $88.00 per lead.
So if/when you move a campaign to Conversion Optimizer instead of CPC bidding, follow this advice:
1. Download a copy of the campaign into AdWords Editor, so if Conversion Optimizer wreaks havoc you have a Time Machine to bring things back to the way they were.
2. Take time to familiarize yourself with the new dashboard and metrics, so you don’t freak out when the usual numbers go haywire.
As Billy Joel sings, "Everyone goes South, every now and then…" ;)
Google snuck in one of their earth-shaking changes recently, without so much as a "heads-up." Here it is:
Conversions used to mean, "Somebody who clicked your ad just did something good on your site."
So if a visitor opted in to my newsletter and then signed up for the Look Over My Shoulder video series, that counted as two conversions from the same visitor. For that keyword over that time period, my conversion rate would be 200%.
Now, things have changed. A unique visitor can trigger only one conversion. Now the above scenario would register as one conversion and two transactions.
If you’re relying on the AdWords dashboard to give you useful information about your conversions and ROI, forget about it. You need to be setting up and running reports.
Not sure how to go about this? You have several choices:
1. Wait until my current AdWords Ball class is turned into a home study course (March or April 2009).
2. Take the next AdWords Ball course live (April 2009)
3. Hire me as a consultant (right now)
4. Join one of my small group coaching programs (email me at howie AT askhowie DOT com if you’re interested) (January 2009)
I want to track conversions from my AdWords campaign by putting tracking code on the “success” page on my site. Do I need two separate confirmation pages, one with Google code and one without, to ensure that folks that just go to our site and order don’t count as though they came from a Google ad?
My response:
No, you don’t need a second confirmation page. Google’s tracking code is triggered by a visit from someone with an AdWords cookie that says, “This person came from YOUR AdWords account within the past 60 days.”
If you look at the tracking code, it contains your unique account number. So if someone comes from organic search, or a referral, or a direct type-in of the URL, they will not show up as an AdWords conversion.
Discover why most AdWords campaigns fail, and how to make yours succeed. You'll also receive the Breakthrough Online Profits ezine, and invitations to free webinars and coaching clinics.
Howie Jacobson, PhD., is the author of Google AdWords For Dummies, available on every continent (except Antarctica) wherever fine books, overpriced brownies and cheesy calendars are sold.
Testimonials about Howie’s advice
Forgot to tell you Howie, I opened your book randomly to one page, saw an idea you had about adding “24 hours a day, 7 days a week” to my site…I added that to the top of my site masthead next to my phone numbers and am already seeing more inbound calls…thanks for that. — Ari Galper, Founder, Unlock the Game Sales Training, http://www.UnlockTheGame.com
