Do You Have an Accurate View of Your PPC Revenue?

Michael Erickson — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 22:40:33 +0000

Friday AdWords Help In Less than 5 Minutes: AdWords Assisted Conversions

It’s a busy world; get AdWords help while you wait in line at the grocery store.

Everyone knows that Google Analytics is a phenomenal free tool from Google. Unfortunately, not many people know how to access and utilize a lot of the actionable data. It’s okay, for a long time I was stuck on the ‘audience tab, wondering what to do after looking at my site traffic.

Everyone should also know that most conversions occur using a multi-channel system. Meaning, people will interact with your site’s organic listings, social media, and PPC ads before eventually making a purchase. When was the last time you purchased something for the first time from someone without Google’ing them, looking at their social media, and doing some comparison shopping?

How People Purchase Online

Does this sound familiar? You are on Facebook, and a friend posts a link to a new sweatshirt he just purchased. You click on the link, explore the store, and a t-shirt catches your eye. You Google the company’s name to see if you can find more information on them. You then see if you can do any comparison-shopping, and you notice they have a special offer in their PPC ad. You click on the ad, and make a purchase.

Facebook > Organic > PPC > Purchase = Multi-Channel Assisted Conversion

You have just taken part in a ‘multi-channel assisted conversion’. And before you think you can JUST thank your SEO, or JUST your AdWords, or JUST your social media for your conversions, think again. We live in a multi-channel world.

Learn About Your Traffic and Sales Funnels Using ‘Multi-Channel Funnels’

Vocabulary

Channel: This is any traffic source that’s coming into your site. Facebook, twitter, organic search, PPC ads, and direct traffic are all examples of channels

Assisted Conversion: A conversion that took place over more than ONE channel. I’m willing to bet that most of your conversions are assisted conversions.

Finding Multi-Channel Assisted Conversions

Let’s dive into Analytics and find our how our traffic channels are working with each other. Of course, this assumes you have ecommerce or conversion tracking set-up inside your analytics account. If you need information on this, check out Google’s official documentation.

On the bottom left side of your analytics account , go to conversions -> multi channel funnels

On your first screen, you will get some overview data. Make Sure:

You choose which conversion you are looking at if you have more than one

Select if you want to look at all site data, or just AdWords assisted conversions.

You get a glimpse of how many conversions were assisted. In the example I have here, 75% of conversions were assisted for this ecommerce store. If your buying cycle is long, as your drill back, you’ll notice a greater number of conversions being assisted.

Google Analytics is an incredible tool that provides businesses with a lot of data they can act on. However, it can be overwhelming to look at all that data.
Let us take a look at your account and make it easier for you to understand how to get great results with PPC.

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Discover How Your PPC Campaigns Are Helping

Now one of my favorite pieces of data is the ‘Top Conversion paths’ this highlights all assisted conversions. You can actually see the pathway for your assisted conversions.

I use this for highlighting the impact of PPC assisted conversions. It’s quick, it’s fast, and it lets you know how much money an AdWords has helped you make!

Go to Multi-Channel Funnels
Top Conversion Paths
For this report, I look at all data, over 60 days
Show 5000 rows (on the bottom right of the Analytics screen)
Export as CSV

You might see some data that surprises you. In this example, you’ll see that my client made 1,100 from people that visited the site directly 18 times!

Get to the Good Stuff: PPC Assisted Conversions

If you want to find out the full impact of your AdWords campaigns, just set up a filter in excel, and view all conversion channels that involved ‘paid search’

You can also view how many paid search initiated funnels you had. Great stuff!

Calculate what the impact of your paid search had on your conversions.

Compare the revenue generated by PPC assists VS total revenue. If the percentage is low and you’ve got a positive return, then it might be time to scale your AdWords account. There might be more opportunity out there!

Calculate what percentage of your funnels are initiated with a paid search click. If this number is low, you should consider expanding your keyword list to capture new customers, or explore the display network.

I’d love to hear how you used Multi-Channel Funnels to make informed decisions about your adwords account. Leave a comment or email me directly. I answer every email, and would be excited to explore your AdWords campaigns for more opportunity.

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