4/15/10

Conversion tracking 101

1. tag ads (in other words use the link i just sent to append the destination that visitors go to when clicking your banner ads).
[3:47:56 PM] bill patton: 2. Set up the "goals" within your GA account.
[3:48:42 PM] bill patton: **each goal would be something like "submitted custom quote" or "submitted regular quote". You'll set up a goal for each of your contact/conversion types.
[3:49:08 PM] bill patton: This is done at the root level within your GA account by deciding which page defines a conversion (usuall a 'thank you page' or similar).
[3:50:06 PM] bill patton: 3. Once you have set up the goals and tags within GA and your advertising vendor you'll see within your GA account "traffic sources" - campaigns.
[3:50:26 PM] bill patton: Within each campaign you will see the # of visits and the # of conversions - giving your the conversion info you are looking for.
[3:51:11 PM] bill patton: 4. for bonus credit - calculate your average revenue per conversion - you can associate a $$ value for each conversion rule - this will then let you start calculating the value/click vs. the cost/click you are paying for.

4/1/10

Google Re-Marketing and Post Impression Conversion Tracking

Google has recently implemented two interesting display (content network) specific options.

1. Post Impression Conversion tracking
2. Re-marketing (Audience targeting)

Post impression tracking allows you to track web based conversions that happen after an individual view (as opposed to clicks) a display ad. Since we are finding that content network buys garner huge impressions but low clicks as a general rule - this promises to allow us to attach some value to the impressions.

The re-marketing concept allows you to define a page on a clients website (for instance the lodging options page for a resort) that would in turn 'cookie' visitors to this page and add them to an audience that you define. You can then use this audience rule to limit the distribution of specific ads. In the case of lodging page visitors you would be able to run a discount lodging offer that would be exposed only to those individuals who have visited your lodging page. By adding a second "negative" criteria of "not part of the audience defined as those who have visited an online booking confirmation page" you can show this discount offer only to those who have visited the lodging options page but have not purchased.

To date i've put together one small campaign using these two techniques - has anyone else experimented with these techniques from within the adwords platform - and seen conversion/response rate lifts?

Importing GA data to excel using excellentanalytics

Just started testing this service - so far VERY promising. More to come...

Excellent Analytics