No Analytics - Good Luck!

I was recently asked by Garrett French, yes “THE” Garrett French, to create a post covering any marketing lessons I have learned. I would say one of the most important lessons I have learned is the importance of analytics, especially in paid search.

If you do not have a way to track conversions and revenue to the keyword level, you can not fully optimize a paid search campaign. If you do not have analytics to that level, my only advice would be to get the most experienced paid search person you can so they can use their previous experience to help optimize your campaign.
On a side note, with Google Analytics free for everyone. There is pretty much no excuse not to have analytics on your site.

Let’s go over why it is so important, especially for ecommerce sites.

You sell 2 name brand TV’s. You bid on Panasonic Televisions, Panasonic TV, Sony Televisions, Sony TV.

Out of your $8,000 a month budget, $8,000 of it goes to the 4 terms above. To make things real easy you spend $2000 on each of the 4 terms every month. Without revenue tracking to the keyword level and looking at just conversions, you estimate your paid search revenue is $24,000. You feel things look good, but looks can be deceiving.

Now you add keyword level revenue tracking and below are the results.

Panasonic Televisions adcost $2000, revenue $100
Panasonic TV adcost $2000, revenue $100
Sony Televisions adcost $2000, revenue $100
Sony TV adcost $2000, revenue $23,700

Still think you are doing awesome? With this new information, you can re-allocate the funds from the 3 non-performing terms and add them to “Sony TV.” Now look at your next months results:

Panasonic Televisions adcost $500, revenue $25
Panasonic TV adcost $500, revenue $25
Sony Televisions adcost $500, revenue $25
Sony TV adcost $6500, revenue $72,000

Same adcost, but your revenues increased dramatically.

Get your full analytics going!!!!