Here‘s how to leave profitable business on the table:

1. Ignore offline leads/sales

Most companies advertising on the web can accept phone calls, and often these calls result in the most valuable sales, partner relationships, or opportunities.  Ignoring this activity when evaluating PPC performance can lead to keywords that result in calls being poorly positioned and therefore unable to take advantage of the highest volume of truly profitable activity.  Track your phone activity and record the method of company contact in your customer/lead database. Use this information to help you evaluate your PPC spend.

2. Be literal about tracked leads or sales

There is always uncertainty in web marketing, even with highly trackable Pay-Per-Click marketing.  A percentage of people who see PPC ads won’t click on them, opting instead to visit the advertised site by typing in the domain name (this is “No Referrer”, or “Direct” traffic).  In a consumer campaign that number may equal 10%-20% of the tracked PPC traffic, however with a highly technical B2B audience, that may grow to 50%-100. Excluding No Referrer/Direct actions from your analysis means the PPC numbers will always be conservative; it also gives a false sense of the actual return on PPC spend.

3. Use average values

Average values are the enemy of a performance-based Pay-Per-Click program.  Evaluating your PPC program in aggregate, or by ad engine, means missed opportunities.  You are allowing low-performing terms/ads/networks to drag down the positioning of your best performers.  Be granular.  Unless you allow the best performing pieces of your campaign to be evaluated independently, you won’t tap into the high value and the higher volume that you get in high ad position on your best terms.

4. End assessment at the web site

The interaction with the web site is the beginning of the sales conversation, not the end. If you are not feeding post-lead or post-sales data back into your campaign optimization, you are likely missing opportunities to optimize on any number of things that relate to true profitability. Yes, it is hard.  Do it anyway.

5. Don’t stay in contact with leads/customers

You just paid X dollars to capture a lead.  Why only have one conversation with them?  Companies that lead the way in maximizing the return from their Pay-Per-Click investment nurture the leads that don’t lead to immediate sales.  Keeping in touch with them will keep your company on their radar.  A percentage of aged leads will convert down the road, which raises the return value of the marketing you have already paid for.