Dealing with PPC Goals and Outcome Measures

There has been a lot of talk these days about the importance of setting goals and measuring outcomes in PPC. Many professionals discuss these ideas abstractly as sales, leads, visitors, and branding or identity goals. Although the words sound clear, in truth, they probably mean nothing at all to most people. So how do we go from sales to measurable results in PPC?

Perhaps the answer occurs with some basic steps:

Sales

Have a sale on a particular product or service
Differentiate your product with increased levels of service
Take phone calls specific to that sale item—Hotline! Live Support, Dedicated 1-800 Number.

Leads

Make additional product information, tips and guides available to customers.
Use questionnaires to get feedback about your customers’ interests and things that they like to do.

Visitors

Hold contests to provide customers with rewards for the things that they enjoy
Think of an advertising budget as a percentage of sales.
Dedicate a percentage of sales to gaining customers as they explore the sales cycle since customers may buy later following broad searches.

Branding & Identity

Clearly explain the nature of your business, and why you are in business, and how you can help customers to solve a problem.
Support causes that mean something to your customers and your business.
Make your company logo visible online, using images that communicate your message, and broadcast those images throughout the website.

In the PPC campaign, the plan might unfold as follows:

Step 1

1. Build a time limited campaign specific to the product or service that you want to promote
2. Create a targeted landing page
3. Write targeted ads
4. Use a dedicated phone number and email so everyone at your company knows that the items are hot and a top priority.
5. Measure phone calls, clicks, sales, emails.

Step 2

1. Write additional product information, tips and guides and make them available to customers
2. Record email, phone and address data using it to gain insights into your customers.
3. Use 2 types of questionnaires: 1 for buyers and 1 for browsers to find out what brought them to your website, what makes them different, and what they like to do.
4. Measure qualitative results and use it to formulate an Action Plan (or contest) below

Step 3

1. Hold contests that provide the rewards related to the things that your customers like to do.
2. Make the contests avaialble to buyers and to visitors who dig deep to reach internal pages.
3. Continue to monitor sales and commit to raising the budget proportionally to sales increases.
4. Write targeted ads.

Step 4

1. Do a lot of work on your Frequently Asked Questions and About Us pages by asking staff about all the odd questions that they have been asked over the years.
2. Invite visitors to ask questions.
3. Spend a lot of time on your About Us pages because customers who are not familar with your business tend to visit those pages.
4. Build your brand by celebrating various causes—whales, pets, culture, women, environment—and make your site present by raising funds, donations, or pages dedicated to supporting various charities and organizations.
5. Write targeted ads
6. Measure the number of visitors to the About Us pages, number of visitors to social cause pages, and the number of Frequently Asked Questions.

If this simple email helped you to think about your business a little differently, then I’d love to hear from you.