There are different levels of detail you can track at. To drive the best results from paid search, more detailed analysis will always help, but there is a law of diminishing returns where detailed tracking may not be worthwhile if the volume of advertising is limited.
The ideal scenario would see you tracking through to specific items sold for a specific keyphrase. You have to avoid these common disconnects…
- Disconnect between final search or visit which achieved purchase and earlier parts of the ‘search journey’. How important is this? Is it actionable if you know earlier stages?
- Disconnect with specific phrases used.
- Disconnect with sales – due to cookies or URL tracking.
- Disconnect with the sales order processing system – whether returned, profitability of product etc.
- Disconnect with the customer database – can you calculate lifetime value.
The challenge is to develop a plan to link up separate systems and make estimates where this is not possible.
Improve the detailed granularity of your reporting using our checklist of 10 levels of reporting accuracy for Pay Per Click Marketing.
However, if you are reviewing your paid search effectiveness or selecting a new tracking tool, it makes sense to review how detailed your tracking is. You may know that you have achieved 500 sales through paid search in a month, but to what extent can you break this down to understand effectiveness?
This is our checklist of the level of detail you could be tracking at.
1. Track Referrals Between Paid Search And Organic Search.
You will likely get referrers from paid and natural search for many terms, so you need to distinguish between them using tagging as described in the next section.
2. Track Across Different Search Networks.
Your reports should distinguish between networks such as Google Ads, Yahoo! Search and Microsoft adCenter.
3. Distinguish Between Search Network And Content Network.
Identify referrals directly from the search network and third party sites such as those using Google Adsense.
4. Link Through To Product Value.
This is conversion to different types of value events and lifetime value. This is a challenge for products where there is a long lead time, e.g. B2B. It also requires linking through to product sales price, margin or modelled lifetime value.
5. Breakdown By Product Or Service.
Report on paid search at different levels of individual product items (SKUs), product groups or categories.
6. Track At Keyphrase Or Search-Term Level.
Oftentimes results are aggregated upto campaign level, so it is not possible to break down by keyphrases.
7. Track Across Multiple Visits To Purchase.
When purchase occurs over several site visits, can you track using cookies and establish which referrer are they attributed to?
8. De-Duplicate Or Weight Sales Attributed To Different Referrers.
When multiple visits occur to cause the purchase, there is a risk you may be paying different affiliates for the same purchase. De-duplication is required for this.
9. Track To Offline Value Events.
Through the use of phone number tracking, options are available to track offline sales made by phone.
10. Subtract Sales That Fail Or Returns Are Made.
For a retailer, product returns greatly affect profitability. Since some products will have higher return rates this can potentially affect the profitability of a paid search campaign
Tracking across multiple visits to purchase (the search journey) using cookies is important if you are to assess which keyphrases are driving sales. The sale is made on a final visit based on a brand search, yet the sale should ideally be attributed across the different visits, perhaps giving more weighting to the early visits, without which the brand may not have been included within the searchers consideration list.
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