17 replies to this topic

[twhittle]

Hi all...hope all is well.

I have a client that receives only about 4% of his business through his web site. I've been doing some click campaigns for him for a while now, and am trying to get him to use some traffic monitoring software to give us more detail as to what PPC engines and phrases are converting. He asked me to sit in a demo with him today, and they're asking for roughly $500 a month.

My client asked a great question though. If only 4% of his business comes from his site, is spending this additional amount really going to help him? I haven't given him an answer yet and hope that you can help.

Are there other questions I need answers to? I'm a little puzzled here, and any help would truly be appreciated.

Thanks, :learn:

Todd

[Scottie]

$500 a month? What exactly do you get for that?

Buy Conversion Ruler for $20-$70 a month.

And 4% of $100 isn't much but 4% of $100,000,000 would be worth it so it's really hard to say.

[Jill]

If you know what you're doing with pay-per-click advertising, you have the potential to make an unlimited amount of money from it. Once you figure out how to obtain a positive return on investment (ROI), the more money you spend on your campaign, the more money you will make.

I listened to an interesting presentation about this at AdTech. There was a Google rep, a Shopping.com rep, and Kevin Lee from Did-It (who was sponsoring this particular luncheon event). All of them said that very same thing. You basically have a blank check, once you've done things right.

So yes, web analytic software is extremely important. You need to measure and test everything with a PPC campaign.

Others here who have more experience will surely chime in on this.

Jill

[Hippo]

I have been managing many PPC campaigns for over a year and for many industries.

Yes, getting your "analytics" is important, but conversion is the primary analytic. Conversion Ruler for $20 is the best way to start, in my opinion.

If you want to spend your money wisely, you should probably also spend some money on Andrew Goodman's book as well. I'm sure Jill has a link somewhere here. That book, $20 for Conversion Ruler, and some time and testing are what will help you the most. Much more that $500 for "full analytics" (in my opinion).

Keep in mind that PPC has gotten very competitive over the last six months or so and will therefore need some attention for it to be successful. One of the most important factors I have found is competition analysis. Keep an eye on what others are doing and endeavor to be "better" than them.

[twhittle]

Scottie, Jill, Corey...thanks for the feedback.

I knew that $500 was alot, especially PER MONTH. I'm looking around at other web analytics software as well, but will definitely take a gander at Conversion Ruler.

Thanks again.

[AussieWebmaster]

Personally I like www.KeywordMax.com it is a much less expensive tool, starts at $19.95 a month and has all the bells and whistles... they even have a PPC and PPA division at the company (DirectResponse)... so once you get the swing of things they can even help get you relevant traffic.

[Greystar]

Scottie, Jill, Corey...thanks for the feedback.

I knew that $500 was alot, especially PER MONTH. I'm looking around at other web analytics software as well, but will definitely take a gander at Conversion Ruler.

Thanks again.

Anyone used any of the free analytics shareware/freeware? Most of my clients have quite flash analysis software in place already (redsheriff and clickstream immediately come to mind) although I gather they are quite expensive...

I have a few smaller clients with nothing in place - I'm gonna have to try the 30 day trial with conversionruler - which seems quite cheap, especially for smaller niche websites that don't have mega trafic levels.

[Haystack]

Greystar, I'm not aware of any freeware programs that offer conversion tracking, which is the kind of information a business really needs to make sound decisions about what's working (generating sales/leads/subscriptions/etc.) on their sites.

[AussieWebmaster]

But if you are running your PPC campiagns on Google and Overture both now offer free tracking programs, so get the clients to just spend their money at these 2 places.
Hey 19.95 a month for a very important work tool is something they may want to invest in.

[goodman]

Hey,

Since people are talking about ConversionRuler, I just thought I'd mention a couple of things about it and tracking in general.

1. Since Google is not ruling out using your Conversion Tracker data to help them with stuff like pricing AdSense clicks, privacy concerns are more salient than ever. It makes more sense than ever to go with a full-featured third-party tracking tool, whichever one you choose. "Free" is nice, but if it comes with strings attached, then paying $50/mo. or so to see exactly what your traffic is doing is worth it.

2. ConversionRuler 2.0 is coming out May 15. Many of my clients use the 1.0 version and while it's accurate & useful, we've been eagerly awaiting a more powerful & useful version and it's finally coming out.

The second-tier PPC's continue to be maddening in that many have their good points, but will not sustain their good performance. Too many bad clicks. When you use something like ConversionRuler Complete you can drill down to see the actual referrer of your paid clicks, and it's scary to see where some of that traffic comes from.

For most advertisers it makes sense to leverage their efforts with Google AdWords and Overture before wasting time playing with the others. FindWhat, Kanoodle, and ah-ha all have legit partnerships and I think all have their strong points.

But basically the problem with most of the remaining second-tier PPC's is that you'll hear anecdotal evidence of good performance that cannot be substantiated. Sit down and talk with a hard-core advertiser who is running multiple campaigns for $300k/mo. to get the real story. Most of this stuff is garbage because the source of the traffic is garbage.

We all know why we like traffic from search engines like Google and Teoma and portals like AOL and Yahoo. We know what those things are and we know that lots of real users use them. Secondarily, we can have some assurance that real users are reading ABCNews.com or using Metacrawler or Dogpile. But once things get more obscure than that, common sense should tell us that it isn't worth the trouble.

[Jill]

Since people are talking about ConversionRuler...

Ummm...yeah, we were...last year! You dug deep for this thread, Andrew!

[jjisles]

I just took a Conversion Ruler and my question is this. They say they do not deal with bid management. Does anyone have any recommendations on a bid management software package? One that automatically monitors bids on all your keywords and will change that bid to keep you 1st, 2nd... or that will bid up to a certain amount on an individual keyword?
Thanks
Jarrod

[Scottie]

I think GoToast does bid management.

[Jill]

And check out Did-it.com

Jill

[AussieWebmaster]

lol... and there is always KeywordMax and for that matter WebSideStory which is from HitBox