If you’re selling a product or service, you definitely need to be running an adwords campaign. They are relatively easy to set up but take some learning to keep your CPC (cost per click) low and to ensure profitability stays high.
Note: You must always run an Adwords campaign with conversion tracking.
Here are the metrics you need to know about:
1. Impressions.
This is the amount of time an advert is seen.
2. Clicks.
I reckon you know this one 😉 This is how many times the advert was clicked on Google. From this, the CTR (click through rate) is calculated.
3. Conversions.
This is when a customer takes action on whatever you want them to take action on, signing up on an email list or buying a product. The number of conversions, the conversion rate and the cost per conversion are by far the most important figures you can keep track of. A good rule of thumb is a 1% conversion rate per sale.
4. Conversion tracking
These figures are so important, you need to set up conversion tracking through AdWords. It’s free and pretty simple to do. If you don’t know how much a conversion costs, you’re missing out on the most important piece of financial data to your business.
Be Patient
You need to make sure everything you’re doing with Adwords is statistically valid. In most cases, you should have at least 20 conversions before taking any action. At a conversion rate of 1% (as mentioned), you’ll need 2000 clicks and at an average CTR of 5% that’s 40,000 impressions.
Once you have enough data, act on it. Pause or delete the poorer advert and split test it against a new advert.