The major slip that PPC Advertisers Make

The biggest in PPC is one that’s not easy to fix, but it’s completely necessary for success in PPC: neglecting to focus on conversions.

No Conversion Tracking at All.

The lack of any type of analytics or conversion tracking is appallingly common. I see this most regularly among traditional advertisers who are familiar to offline methods of advertising. Even if they have a Web presence, most of their traffic comes from offline channels that can’t be effortlessly tracked to their source. As a result, these advertisers do not have a good tracking system in place. Yet, many of these advertisers understand they are behind the times, so they are worried to try PPC.

Tracking Code Installation Errors.

While the analytics vendors make it sound easy to install conversion tracking, it’s really a technical and often challenging process. I’ve had more than one experience with an unwitting advertiser who placed the Google or Bing conversion tracking pixel on every page of their website. While it’s fun to see a 300 percent conversion rate, it’s not very significant.

Make sure to follow code installation instructions very carefully. And if you’re the agency providing the code, give clear directions on where it should be placed.

URL Tagging Errors.

This one is typically the fault of the PPC manager. We’ve all done it – and hopefully, we’ve all caught the mistakes before they became too costly. Tagging errors can be a minor nuisance or an luxurious error. The best-case scenario is that visitors will reach the correct landing page, but their visit won’t track properly. The worst case is that the tagging error causes the whole URL to break, sending the visitor  to a 404 error page.

Always check and validate your tagged URLs before launching a new movement. It only takes a few minutes, and it’s worth the effort.

If you’re using Google Analytics, and your AdWords account and Analytics accounts are linked, you won’t have to worry about tagging your AdWords URLs. Also, Bing newly launched a long-awaited auto-tagging feature. Bing Ads auto-tagging will mechanically append tracking tags to your PPC campaigns. It’s a much-anticipated feature – be sure to take advantage of it. 

Not Going Deep Enough.

If you’re using auto-tagging, you should be able to get all the detailed data you need to properly optimize your campaigns. But some third-party analytics programs want manual URL tagging.

Resist the excitement to simplify the tagging process by only tracking at the engine or campaign level. You must tag down to the keyword level at a minimum to effectively optimize your PPC campaigns.

If you find that you’re running into challenges with getting the data you need, don’t desolation. Both Google and Bing offer free conversion tracking scripts that will not only track campaign data, but display it right in the interfaces. Most social PPC engines also offer a conversion tracking script. It’s a good idea to install these scripts anyway, if probable, as they offer a redundancy to your other tracking package, enabling you to spot issues with code or other discrepancies rapidly.

Not Setting Goals.

Believe it or not, many advertisers embark on a PPC campaign without setting goals first. If you haven’t decided on metrics that define achievement, it will be impossible to focus on conversions. Take the time to define the actions on your website that indicate a conversion has taken place. For e-commerce, it’s typically sales. For lead generation, you’ll want to track lead form fills. For any type of website, there might be other actions that show a hand-raiser: spec sheet downloads, "contact us" form fills, video views, etc.

Even if you are using PPC for awareness, you should be tracking actions that point out visitor interest. Whitepaper downloads, views of a key page, or even time on site are metrics that can be used to indicate "conversions" in an awareness campaign.

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