Tracking & Optimizing For Online Advertising...

Tracking & Optimizing For Online Advertising PerformanceThe scientific approach for achieving more profitable pay-per-click advertising campaigns.

Simple, Sophisticated and Profitable™

January 2011

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Tracking & Optimizing For Online Advertising PerformanceThe scientific approach for achieving more profitable pay-per-click advertising campaigns.

Authored by

Hanny HindiClickable Search Marketing Guru

Max KalehoffClickable Vice President of Marketing

Ben SeslijaSenior Director, Acquisition & Analytics

This Clickable White Paper addresses:• The Fundamentals of Tracking For Search• Key Metrics You Should Know

• Front-end Metrics

• Back-end Metrics

• Online vs. Offline Metrics• Conversion Tracking Tools• Measuring the Success of Your Facebook Ads• Performance Tracking and Reporting



IntroductionIn his Definitive Guide to Google AdWords, Perry Marshall suggests that direct mail coupon

codes may have been the first form of performance tracking. “Advertisers quickly discov-

ered that they could ‘key’ the order forms with a code, according to which magazine, which

advertising copy and offers were used, and get enormously different responses. Within a few

decades, this became a rigorous science.”

The purpose of that new science was to attribute revenue to every dollar of marketing

spend—and to optimize accordingly. For example, order Form “A” cost so much to distribute,

and resulted in such in such revenues. Order Form “B” cost the same amount, and produced

5% greater revenues. What was the difference? A promotion? A different pitch? A simplified

form? The next mailing would be modified accordingly; a new set of variations would be

tested; new budgets would be set. And so on.

Direct mail – or “snail mail,” as we’ve come to know it – moved slow, so it used to take

marketers weeks or even months to collect response data. Advertisers mailed out thousands

of catalogs and placed hundreds of ads, waited for orders to come in, and used sales data

to tweak their next promotion. With online advertising, the entire cycle can be repeated every

day, on a minute-by-minute basis.

Advancements in tracking and reporting online advertising have revolutionized sales and

marketing. Billion-dollar advertising businesses like Google Adwords, Microsoft adCenter and

Facebook Ads have taken advantage of these opportunities and expanded them. Today, adver-

tisers have the tools they need to build and manage campaigns with greater precision than

ever before. Nonetheless, thousands of businesses miss out on this opportunity to grow.

In a study conducted by Clickable, it was revealed that 50% of small and mid-sized businesses

failed to properly implement online conversion tracking. And among advertisers that did

properly implement online conversion tracking, only 15% attributed a value to each conversion

event. Why? Some are unaware of the tools available to them. Others have tried to use them,

but have been overwhelmed by their complexity. But it shouldn’t be this way.

In this white paper, we will demonstrate how you can overcome the complexity of performance

tracking and quantify each stage of your conversion funnel—both online and offline. We’ll

discuss the fundamentals of tracking for search and social media advertising; key metrics that

every advertiser should know; tools for measuring online and offline conversions; and best

practices for integrating performance tracking metrics into your overall business and P&L

reports. Follow our guidelines, and you’ll improve your online advertising performance and

business profitability.

Clickable Study on SMBs and Conversion Tracking

SMBs with Conversion Tracking

SMBs without Conversion Tracking

SMBs who track every conversion event

SMBs who don’t track every conversion event

50%

15%

50%

85%



Advantages of Online AdvertisingToday, marketing is a science, driven by data and carefully managed experiments. “Marketing is

the new finance,” said Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, said in an Adweek interview. “Just as

finance has become more quantitative because of what happened in the 1970s, you’ll see mar-

keting do that.” The key to this transformation is the rise of granular, comprehensive conversion

tracking tools and methodologies.

Assigning Revenue to Actual Ad SpendHow do you determine the effectiveness of a billboard? a print ad? a TV commercial? Billions

of dollars have been spent researching those questions, but the answers are rarely clear. With

dynamic performance tracking tools, on the other hand, every dollar of online ad spend can

be matched to every dollar of online revenues — and even to offline telephone conversions.

The contrast with traditional forms of advertising is clear.

High Volume of Data Collected on Daily BasisEven in places where traditional advertising has been more scientific – such as split-testing in

direct mail campaigns – marketers have always been hobbled by the same problem: insufficient

data. Mark every mailer with a unique code, rigorously track the results, and you’re still be lim-

ited to a few hundred data points. Moreover, crucial pieces of data may still be unavailable, for

example: How many people opened the mailers? How long did they spend looking through the

creative? Did they look at every page, or just the first one?

With online advertising, particularly search, millions of keyword queries often result in hundreds

of thousands of ad impressions, thousands of clicks and hundreds of conversions. There is a

high volume of data, and the data are collected at every stage of the funnel. This is the founda-

tion of a true science of marketing.

Industry & Competitive

Research

Taxonomy Development

Keyword Selection

Metrics Provisioning

Preliminary Testing

Initial Optimization

Full Push On All Networks

Stages of a Successful PPC Campaign



Goal-Based AdvertisingBroadly speaking, all advertising is “goal based”: business owners want to make money. With

today’s performance tracking tools, goals can be defined far more precisely. You can determine

exactly how much you want to make for every dollar you spend (by measuring your “Return on

Ad Spend” or “ROAS”) or exactly how much you want to spend for each fixed-value conversion

(by setting a maximum “Cost Per Acquisition” or CPA). Goals no longer need to be set at the

level of quarterly returns. Today, they can be set down to the penny and by the hour.

Disadvantages of Search TrackingOf course, there are downsides to performance-based marketing. Dozens of data points, millions

of line items, and more coming in every second—traditional advertising may have been signifi-

cantly less precise, but it was also much less complex. Enter analysis paralysis.

Complexity of DataVery quickly, the ability to track every stage of the funnel turned into a requirement. For example:

What keyword did a user search for? What ad appeared—headline? Description? What was the

call-to-action and display URL? What was the ad’s position on the search results page? What

percentage of users clicked on it? What page did they land on? How long did they spend there?

Did they click through to another page?

The list goes on...

Metrics OverloadNot only are there significantly more data points in performance-based advertising; there’s signifi-

cantly more data. Advertisers who have tried taking advantage of this embarrassment of riches

are familiar with the flip side: metrics overload. Handling thousands of lines of data is one thing.

Millions?

Resource Costs (Agency and SEM Managers)Many advertisers have responded to these new challenges by seeking out expert help. Unfor-

tunately, the cost of expertise is often high. And with performance based advertising keyed to

specific revenue goals, those costs can’t be buried in a generic “marketing” line item.

It’s no mystery why so many marketers have struggled with performance-based advertising.

However, the benefits of doing it right far outweigh the disadvantages. More importantly, the

disadvantages can be mitigated, considerably. Complexity can be reduced; data can be

organized; and costs can be brought to manageable levels. We’ll explain how.



The Fundamentals of Tracking for SearchSuccess in performance advertising depends on the careful analysis of specific metrics and pre-

cise goals set at each stage in the funnel. Before we discuss each entity and metric, it’s impor-

tant to review some general best practices.

delicious

Fundamentals To TrackingTrack: Monitor your entire funnel

• Not all traffic is created equal

• Not all conversions are created equal

• Know conversion metrics at all friction points

• Assign cost to each stage of funnel

Focus: Avoid paralysis by analysis• Establish key metrics that you will observe on a

daily basis & use for optimization

Automate: Use tools to diagnose opportunities & threats

• Use tools to save time developing & managing

your search efforts

Track The Entire FunnelAs mentioned, most media channels let marketers track only a small part of the marketing

funnel. Advertisers could track ad copy and location targets; sales data from completed conver-

sions; and demographic data collected from customers. Online performance advertising makes

far more data available. And all of it can help you grow your business.

Install Conversion Tracking to Collect Consistent Data Across ChannelsData can only be analyzed after they have been collected. This requires conversion tracking tools.

Nearly every major online advertising network – including Google Adwords and Microsoft adCen-

ter – has its own tracking technology. There are also numerous third-party tools available, each

with their own advantages. Moreover, a more complete picture of your advertising performance

requires the integration of offline, telephone conversions.

The most important criteria for choosing a tool is consistency across networks and channels.

Even the same data points – including ones as straightforward as “clicks” or “impressions” –

might be tracked differently by different tools. In order to have an accurate picture of relative

performance, you should use a single tool to track all of your online and offline advertising

performance.

Identify Key Metrics at Each Friction PointEven with sophisticated tools and talented marketing experts, it’s impossible to optimize every

data point. Data must be prioritized. Impressions, clicks and conversion rates usually are most

important, followed by bounce rates, timestamps and I.P.-level location data.



(Side note: You should collect and store all of your data: backups are important, storage is

cheap, and later you might find important use for seemingly benign data.)

Assign Costs and Goals to Each Stage of the FunnelTracking every stage of the sales funnel doesn’t just mean downloading a pile of data and stor-

ing it in Excel. Data must be organized. Specifically, costs and revenue goals must be assigned

at each funnel stage. For example: How much are you paying for every second a user spends on

your landing page? How much are you paying for each click? How much revenue does each click

generate? Once you set each of these parameters, translating millions of lines of data into a few

pages of reports will become a far simpler process.

Avoid “Analysis Paralysis”Establishing cost and revenue parameters will help you avoid one of the easiest pitfalls of perfor-

mance marketing: “analysis paralysis.” Building a rigorous process to collect, collate and analyze

data takes time. But, you should only do it once—not every day.

AutomateWhen you install a robust conversion tracking system, determine key friction points, assign costs

and revenues to each one, and build a consistent optimization schedule. In essence, the daily

management process comes down to diagnosing threats and opportunities, and optimizing ac-

cordingly. Nearly all of the diagnostics – and a significant amount of the optimization – can be

done for you. Automated bid management tools can be extremely valuable, but the the volatil-

ity of advertising networks don’t allow you to “set it and forget it.” You still will need to track

performance reports yourself, and recalibrate your goals accordingly. And many processes, such

as landing page optimization, are still manual.



Key Metrics You Should KnowNow that we’ve reviewed overall best practices for tracking online advertising performance,

we can review key metrics. The danger, as any experienced advertiser knows, is that the huge

flurry of numbers will just blend into one another. However, there is a simple way to mitigate

that risk: identify the specific business decisions that you need to make on the basis of each

metric’s performance. These can range from adjusting a bid by a few cents to a significant

overhaul of your landing pages and campaigns. With performance tracking, there’s no reason

to make any of these decisions without all of the information you need.

Front-End Metrics: Get Them to The StoreThe first stage of the conversion funnel occurs wherever you display your ads: a search engine

results page (SERP), a Facebook news feed, or a content network placement. The goal at this

stage is to drive qualified traffic to your site.

Imperative: Track or Lose

Fron

t-en

d M

etri

cs

Bac

k-en

d M

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Sales

CPA

Conversion Rates

Revenue

ROI

Impressions

Clicks

CTRs

Costs

CPC

Avg. Position

Customer GEO

Time of Conversion

Demo, LTV, Behavioral, etc.

Track

Optimize

ImpressionsAn impression occurs whenever an ad appears. Conversion tracking tools provide aggregate

impressions by entity—either keyword, ad, ad group, campaign, or account.

At later stages of a campaign, impressions are a quick indication of whether you are bidding

enough for your ads to appear on a regular basis. However, your ads should appear regularly if

you consistently meet First Page Minimum Bids.

For all of the metrics below,

we’re using definitions pro-

vided by the Search Engine

Professionals Marketing Organi-

zation (SEMPO). You can access

it at: http://www.clickable.com/



Impressions are a more useful metric early in a campaign, especially when identifying potentially

valuable keywords. When you set your keywords to broad match in the search engines, a wide

variety of terms can trigger your ads. A Search Query Performance Report will tell you exactly

which ones trigger your ads. Reviewing the Impressions by search term is a precise way to deter-

mine which specific keywords are potentially important to your customers.

Optimization Tip: Negative KeywordsIn addition to indicating which keywords you should focus your ad spend on, the Search

Query Performance Report indicates which keywords you should avoid. If you are running

Broad Match terms, there is a good chance that your ads are being triggered by keyword

phrases you don’t want to bid on. These might include irrelevant synonyms (e.g., “pickle

ball” for a vendor of pickled cucumbers), or phrases indicating items that you don’t have in

your inventory (e.g., “silver pens” for a vendor who only sells black and gold ones). Imple-

ment negative keywords and these terms won’t trigger your ads. You’ll reap all the benefits

of casting a wide net with Broad Match terms, without wasting ad spend on

irrelevant clicks.

ClicksA click occurs whenever a user clicks on an ad.

While it is important to maximize total traffic to your site, you will want to minimize unqualified

clicks: if you have a lot of clicks but few conversions, you’re driving the wrong traffic to your site.

These clicks are costing you money, but hurting your profitability. Most likely, this means that

you are either bidding on the wrong terms, or misrepresenting your products and services in your

ad copy. Pause or revise keywords and ads with high volumes of clicks, but low conversion rates.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)Perhaps the most important front-end metric is the Click-Through Rate, or CTR: the percentage of

users clicking on an ad out of the total number who see it.

Because Google Adwords optimizes campaigns based on CTR, search marketers are very familiar

with this metric. However, on a long-term basis, it is much more important to optimize for

conversions rather than clicks. If you’re optimizing for CTR, you’re optimizing based on cost-

drivers rather than revenue-drivers. After building your Quality Score, shift your focus to

conversion rates.



Optimization Tip: Quality ScoreThe Quality Score is value assigned to each keyword that measures the relevance of your

ads to a user’s search. Everything from your position on a search results page to your actual

cost per click (CPC) depends upon your Quality Score, but the precise algorithm used to

calculate it is a closely-guarded secret.

Many factors contribute to Quality Scores – including the alignment between keywords and

ads, and landing page load times – but clicks and CTRs are the most important. When you

launch a new campaign, drive clicks (and Quality Scores) as high as possible. Though a

single-minded focus on clicks will result in lower-quality traffic and lower conversion rates, a

high Quality Score will drive down your long-term costs.

CostCost is a straight-forward metric: it is the dollar amount you spend on advertising.

In most traditional media plans, cost is an absolutely crucial metric. Marketers need to keep a

careful eye on each line item in order to stay within their budgets. Performance marketing is

different: cost is only important as a component of “Return on Ad Spend” or “Cost Per Acquisi-

tion.” Rather than being restricted to a specific budget, marketers should set revenue goals and

maximize ad spend while meeting those goals. This where advertising moves from a cost-center

to a profit-center.

Average Cost Per Click (CPC)Cost Per Click (CPC) is the average dollar amount you pay for each click. It should not be con-

fused with your Maximum CPC Bid. “Max. CPC” is the most you are willing to pay for a click on a

particular term. “Avg. CPC” is the amount you have actually paid, and will most likely be lower.

Average PositionPosition is the placement on a search engine results page where your ad appears relative to

other paid ads. (It is not relevant to content network ads.)

In very limited cases, you may want to bid for the top position. This is useful for branding cam-

paigns, where your primary goal is to establish the relevance of your offer above all others.

However, it is rare for the top position to be the most efficient or profitable: most likely, you

are paying significantly more than you should. Eye tracking research has shown that searchers

generally consider the first three ads on a page as a cluster. The amount of attention they give

to these three ads is nearly identical (though there is a significant drop off starting at position

four). Therefore, the second and third positions will very likely drive the same kind of traffic as

the first.



More importantly, the first position could cost much more than the next two. “Number one” is

a glamorous spot, which means that your competitors are likely overspending on it, driving up

costs. As a result, the number two and three positions may be significantly less expensive, while

driving only marginally more revenues.

Back-End Metrics: Measure The Effectiveness of Landing Pages and OffersOnce a visitor arrives at your landing page, your goal is to convert them. Conversion events can

range from something as simple as a page view to something as complex as an e-commerce

purchase. There are metrics that are relevant in both cases, such as “visits” or “conversion rate.”

However, a number of metrics are only relevant to revenue-generating conversions.

Imperative: Track or Lose

Fron

t-en

d M

etri

cs

Bac

k-en

d M

etri

cs

Sales

CPA

Conversion Rates

Revenue

ROI

Impressions

Clicks

CTRs

Costs

CPC

Avg. Position

Customer GEO

Time of Conversion

Demo, LTV, Behavioral, etc.

Track

Optimize

VisitsA visit occurs whenever a user arrives at a landing page.

Marketers are sometimes concerned when the number of reported “clicks” is higher than the

number of “visits” to their corresponding landing pages. However, a minor variance between

“clicks” and “visits” is to be expected. There are a number of reasons for this, including page

load errors: sometimes users click on ads but lose their connection or close their browser before

the landing page loads and a “visit” is registered. As Clickable Online Marketing Guru Ehren Reilly

has written, this is comparable to the “breakage and spoilage” of the retail industry: “If you ship

10,000 apples from point A, you might be lucky if 9,970 viable apples arrive at point B and make

it onto the correct stand in the produce aisle.”



When the variance is particularly high – more than 20% – this is probably the result of human

error in the implementation of the tracking code, or a significant problem that is causing your

landing pages to consistently fail. You should review your tracking code, test your pages

(especially Javascript code) or contact your IT department.

RevenueRevenue, like cost, is a straight-forward metric that has a very different function in performance

advertising. It’s the second half of that crucial ratio – Return on Ad Spend – that is at the heart of

goal-based advertising. As a stand-alone metric, it is purely informational.

Conversions/SalesA conversion occurs whenever a user performs a desired action on your site. Most performance

marketing goals should be based on conversions. The value of a conversion can range from a

simple counter for page views to a portion of revenue (less sales tax, etc.). For our purposes, we

only need to make one distinction: are you generating revenue? If not, you should set a “Cost

Per Acquisition (CPA)” goal; if you are generating revenue, you’ll optimize your campaigns for a

“Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).”

Conversion RateThe conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your page who have performed a desired

action. (It’s not calculated relative to impressions.)

If a user has already arrived at your landing page, it means that they saw your ad and were com-

pelled to click on it. Low conversion rates usually mean that your landing pages or offers that

are ineffective. This is either because the message on your page is not aligned with your ad copy

(in which case you can simply rewrite your ads) or the pages themselves need to be revised.

Because you won’t be revising your landing pages on a daily basis, you will not be optimizing for

“Conversion Rate” every day either. Review it, and adjust for it, as often as you can revise your

pages.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)If your conversions do not generate revenues directly (such as page views or newsletter sign-ups)

you should set a “Cost Per Acquisition” or “CPA” goal for your campaigns. CPA is the total cost

of an ad campaign divided by the number of conversions. CPA goals are ideal in cases where all

conversions can be valued equally. With a CPA goal, you can decide how much you are willing

to pay for a page view, a sign-up, or a lead – $5? $50? $500? – and optimize your campaigns

accordingly. Setting a proper CPA does take some calibration. Make it too high, and you will wipe

out your margins. Too low, and your total traffic (and revenues) will be depressed accordingly.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)Online marketing campaigns that directly generate revenue should be optimized for “Return on

Ad Spend” or “ROAS.” ROAS is the profit generated by ad-campaign conversions, per dollar spent

on advertising expenses. (It’s not quite the same thing as ROI, because it does not account for

your total costs, only your online media costs.)



Optimizing for ROAS is similar to optimizing for CPA. Similarly, the trick is to find the sweet spot

between efficiency and total traffic. High margins could lead to very few total conversions; high

traffic to extremely low margins. As always, a calibration phase is necessary at the beginning of

any new campaign, with ongoing optimization.

Back-End Metrics: Post Sale OptimizationEach sale provides data you can use to facilitate the next one. If you don’t take advantage of

post-sale optimization, you’re leaving huge opportunities untapped.

Geo-LocationBased on I.P. Addresses, conversion tracking tools can pinpoint customer locations with great

precision. This information can help you manage your location, or “geo,” targeting options.

Optimization Tip: Geo-TargetingMany advertisers are familiar with geo-targeting as a way to manage local campaigns.

If you’re promoting a local retail business, or running a national campaign with locale-

specific messaging, geo-targeting is a powerful way to ensure that your ads only appear

to the right people. But, with location-specific performance data, you can also target your

campaigns to regions with better performance. Break out locations with higher click-through

and conversion rates and you’ll drive up your overall Quality Score—and drive down your

overall costs.

Conversion TimeThe day of the week and the time of day you make a sale are both important data points.

While location targeting is a more popular option, “week parting” and “day parting” are also

powerful search marketing tools. Week parting allows you to adjust your bids by a specific

percentage – or pause them altogether – on certain days of the week. Day parting gives you the

same flexibility at 30-minute intervals. These tools are only effective if you have accurate data

about when your conversion events occur. With that information, you never need to waste ad

spend on days – or at times of day – when your ads have historically underperformed.

Customer DemographicsWhile Google Adwords and Microsoft adCenter (Bing) are implementing tools to provide more

demographic information to marketers, demographic targeting for search is still limited. However,

Facebook Ads provide a wealth of demographic details about users who see and interact with

your ads. As with location targeting, data-driven demographics are much more valuable than your

initial guesses about customer distribution.



Online vs. Offline MetricsSo far, we’ve focused on metrics relevant to online conversions. But many customers still prefer

to conduct their business over the phone with a real human being. This is especially true of

high-consideration products that usually include a sales interaction, or businesses with a large

customer service component. Phone conversions are usually much higher quality than online

conversions, and present far more opportunities for up-sells. But phone calls also present unique

challenges to performance marketers. In order to incorporate offline conversions into your

reports, you will need call-specific tracking tools.

Imperative: Track Different ConversionsQuality: Phone vs. Online

• Phone leads/sales are usually higher quality

• Easier to submit form than call

• More intriged with your offering

Revenue: Phone vs. Online• Easier to convert/up sell

• Direct interaction with the sales rep

• Easier introduction to other products/services

Cost: Phone vs. Online• Greater human/technology interaction

• Sales rep cost

• Technology implementation

vs.

Call-Specific MetricsNearly every front-end metric that is relevant to purely online campaigns is relevant to campaigns

that end with a call. However, some metrics further down the funnel might not be applicable to

campaigns that end with offline conversions. (A “click-to-call” mobile campaign, for instance,

won’t have landing page-specific metrics like “bounce rate.”)

The metrics below are unique to campaigns with offline conversions.

Number of Calls“Number of calls” is as simple as it sounds. However, depending on the type of campaign you

are running, you will have to account for it differently in order to make a useful comparisons

with online conversions. If you are running a “click to call” campaign (where the phone number

appears in the ad), then “calls” occur at the level of “clicks” in online campaigns. If you’re phone

number appears on a landing page, a call may qualify as a partial conversion.



Call DurationThe average duration of a call is one way to quantify the effectiveness of your sales force. If

users are only spending a few seconds on the phone (and not buying anything) your salespeople

need to revise their openings. If the average call time is too long, you have to craft a more

streamlined pitch.

Caller Location and Time of Call“Caller Location” is comparable to “geo-location” in online campaigns; “Time of Call” is corre-

sponds to “Conversion Time.” They can be used to optimize your campaigns in the same way as

their online equivalents.

Caller IDCustomer phone numbers can be stored for follow-up messaging with customers and prospects

(much like emails collected on a web form).

Many call tracking systems can help you manage your sales team. With a purely online campaign,

you can manage everything yourself: if you have high bounce rates and low conversion rates,

edit your landing pages. The same doesn’t hold for campaigns with offline conversions. Short

phone calls that don’t convert? Your sales team isn’t working as well as it could. A good phone

tracking system won’t only indicate that these problems exist; it will help you solve them by pro-

viding a recorded archive of your calls. By listening to the recordings, sales leaders can identify

specific problems, retrain staff, and help conversion rates grow.

Finally, there are numerous post-sale metrics that you should collect as well, including up-sells,

qualified leads and number of products sold. Those metrics will be specific to your Customer

Relationship Management tool (CRM).



Conversion Tracking ToolsNow that you know what you need to track, you need a tool to facilitate the process.

Most performance tracking tools work the same way. First, you install a tag on your landing and

conversion pages, triggering the tool to collect information based on the referring URL and cook-

ies in the user’s browser. Most tools will also tag the destination URLs of your ads with details

about keywords, ad groups, and so on. It sounds simple enough, but there are a huge number

of conversion tracking tools on the market. Each have their advantages and disadvantages, but a

few simple criteria will help you find the right one.

ComprehensivenessThe first thing you need in a tracking solution is comprehensiveness. You need to collect data for

a metric before you can optimize for it. (If your conversion tracking tool doesn’t provide “bounce

rate” figures, for instance, you won’t be able to update your landing pages if users consistently

leave after a few seconds.) Carefully review the specs before you implement a solution, and con-

firm that it includes every metric you’re tracking or planning to track in the future.

ConsistencyEvery tool measures data slightly differently. As we mentioned in the section on key metrics, for

instance, there will always be a slight variance between “clicks” and “visits.” There is another

consideration you need to keep in mind: different tools may track the same metric differently. If

one conversion tracking tool logs a “visit” before loading the rest of the page, and another logs

it after the page has loaded completely, they aren’t tracking exactly the same thing. If you have

different tools implemented at the same time, you won’t be able to accurately make relative

comparisons across networks. Which brings us to the final consideration.

Cross-Platform CompatibilityThe only way to assure consistent data is by implementing one tool that tracks performance

across all platforms. Savvy marketers need to know which networks produce the highest-quality

traffic. Using one tool to track conversions on multiple networks will tell you everything you need

to know. Do some products sell well on one network, but poorly on others? Is the quality of each

network’s traffic different depending on the day of the week? Are there geographic variations

based on network? With answers to questions like these, you’ll be able to distribute your spend

across networks with scientific precision.

These three criteria will help you choose a robust and effective online performance tracking tool.

The next step is to expand your tracking to include offline conversions. To do so, you’ll need to

consider issues unique to call tracking tools.



Static vs. Dynamic Tracking SystemsThere are two types of call tracking systems: static systems and dynamic ones.

Static Systems use a small number of phone numbers, are easy to set up, and allow you to track

basic performance at the top of the funnel. They have the added advantage of being cheap and

easy to set up. A comparison with dynamic systems, however, demonstrates their relative disad-

vantages.

Dynamic Systems use a large set of phone numbers that allow you to track performance across

the entire funnel. Different keywords, different ads and different landing pages can be associated

with different phone numbers, giving you a clear sense of exactly what is driving your revenues.

Of course, that optimization comes at a price. Dynamic systems are more costly than static ones.

If the additional optimization makes up for that cost, it’s worth it. But there is only one way to

determine whether that’s the case: incorporate the cost of your call tracking systems into your

online marketing costs, and calculate your CPA or ROAS accordingly.

Tools For Tracking Offline/Phone ConversionsCall tracking tools should ideally serve two functions. First, they need to provide performance

metrics with the precision and granularity of online tracking tools. Second, as we mentioned

above, they need to help your sales leadership optimize their team’s performance.

Even if you’re not ready to invest in a full-scale, dynamic call tracking system, static call tracking

is still superior to no call tracking. You won’t have the granularity of online performance tracking;

static systems only provide a few phone numbers—not enough to assign a different number to

each ad group. Nonetheless, you’ll have enough data to track performance at the campaign

level (if you have a limited number of campaigns), which will still allow you to perform basic

optimization.

With a dynamic tracking system, you’ll have enough phone numbers to assign a different one to

each ad group. Keep your ad groups small and focused, and this will give you all the flexibility

you need. But, as we mentioned above, dynamic tracking systems are more costly than static

ones. Only implement them if the additional optimization makes up for the additional costs.



Measuring the Success of Your Facebook AdsWe’ve already discussed the importance of performance tracking to search advertising, but the

same rules hold true for social media advertising, including Facebook Ads. Above all else, don’t

run paid ads on social networks if you’re not measuring conversions—even if your primary goal

is to generate “likes” rather than to generate revenues.

Tracking Conversions Within FacebookFor ads that have a page within Facebook, provides you with basic tracking metrics, such as

impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), and “likes.”

Facebook also provides “Social Context” metrics for paid ads. When users “Like” an ad, members

of their direct networks will see messages below it – such as “Jane Smith likes this” – indicating

its relevance to their friends. “Social Context” metrics allow you to see what percentage of your

ads include this additional promotion.

“Social Context” metrics include:

• Social impressions: ad impressions that include social endorsements.

• Social %: The percentage of ad impressions that were delivered with social endorsements.

• Social clicks: clicks on ads that originated from an ad with social endorsements (e.g. a

social impression)

• Social CTR: social clicks divided by social impressions.

Because these metrics are relatively new, there are few data yet regarding the impact of “social

context” on advertising performance. As more advertisers track these figures, we’ll learn more

about “social context,” and how to take advantage of it to improve performance.

Tracking Conversions Outside of FacebookTo track conversions to pages outside of Facebook, you’ll need to have access to a third-party

solution. Clickable Conversion Tracking, for instance, provides the same consistency for Facebook

Ads as it does for search advertising, including Google Adwords and Microsoft adCenter (Bing).

Achieving Success with Facebook AdsIf you’re new to Facebook Ads, or if you’re looking for new ways to drive revenues and grow your

business with social media ads, please consider our recent white paper, Growing Your Business

with Facebook Ads. We discuss ways that online advertisers can maximize their investment with

Facebook Ads, including Facebook Ads basics, and best practices for fan pages and paid

advertising. You can download the paper at http://www.clickable.com/facebook or contact your

Clickable Solutions Expert for a hard copy.



Performance Tracking and ReportingTracking and reporting go hand in hand, but different types of reports serve different purposes.

Some are for your own use: daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly reports that will help you

optimize your campaigns. Others are performance reports for your colleagues and managers.

Investing time in organizing and building a full set of reports will pay significant dividends in the

future, simplify account management, and save you time.

Management ReportingThe first reports you build will be for your own use. In determining which reports you need to

build, one consideration should trump all the rest: every report should help you make spe-

cific business decisions. Each report should have a different time interval: either daily, weekly,

monthly, or quarterly. What you include in those reports should be driven by optimizations that

you will make at each interval.

Daily: The quintessential daily search marketing task is bid management. There are a number of

reasons why bids might need to update your bids. These can include changes to your average

positions or Quality Scores. Or, they might be the result of market factors, like new First Page

Minimum Bids or new competitors bidding on the same terms. Whatever the reason, effective bid

management is a daily process.

Weekly: While you may need to change your bids on a day-to-day basis, you aren’t likely to

update your keyword lists or revise your ad copy as frequently. As a start, make it a weekly task.

To support that task, make sure your weekly reports provide you with the information you need

to effectively manage keywords and ad copy. Are your CTRs low? Rewrite your ads. Are your

pages relevant to the users’ keyword searches? Or are they bouncing off your pages after a few

seconds? Adjust your keyword lists accordingly.

Monthly: You can edit keywords, bids and ads directly in the networks’ interfaces, or in the tool

you use to manage all of your online marketing in one spot. Editing your landing pages is more

complex. Even with a robust content management tool, you’ll want to test and QA any changes

before pushing new pages live—especially if they contain dynamic components like forms or

conversion scripts. As a result, you won’t be editing your landing pages every day, or even every

week. Most likely, it will be a monthly process at best. Make sure your monthly reports reflect

that fact.

Quarterly: Quarters are good times to step back, reflect on long-term performance, and (when

necessary) make major changes. If you need to overhaul your accounts, build a new set of cam-

paigns, or introduce new networks and marketing channels, the first weeks of your fiscal quarters

are good times to do it. This is when you’ll need your most comprehensive reports.



Executive ReportingYour executive reports are going to be very different than your management reports, for one

reason in particular: your coworkers and managers are not online marketing experts. In order

to communicate your success to your colleagues, you will need to translate it into metrics

that they understand.

Executives are often resistant to new or untested ways of doing business, and there are still

thousands of marketers, advertisers and executives who have never tried online marketing in

their own businesses. Understandably, those business leaders are going to be resistant to

trying something risky or new. Put a report in front of them that’s filled with “Quality Scores”

and “CTRs,” and you’ll only alienate them further.

In the section above on “Key Metrics,” we pointed out that “Cost” and “Revenue” are only

important to online marketers insofar as they are components of two crucial ratios: “Return on

Ad Spend” (ROAS) or “Cost Per Acquisition” (CPA). If you’re meeting your ROAS or CPA goals

while maximizing revenues, you’re doing something right. But to communicate that success to

your colleagues, you will need to translate those ratios back into what they understand: money

in vs. money out. “Cost” and “Revenues” may not be the metrics most relevant to your day to

day operations, but they are the metrics most relevant to bottom-line minded business leaders.

As you already know, performance-based online advertising presents is the greatest marketing

opportunity to come along in decades. Now, you need to convince your colleagues. Nothing will

do this more effectively than demonstrating performance. Translate your reports into the same

metrics being used by other business lines and channels, and your colleagues can make the

comparison themselves. More often than not, online marketing will come out on top.



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Clickable Solutions Experts will create and manage online campaigns tailored to your busi-

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