An Analytics Program Pays For Itself

MoreVisibility - February 8, 2007

“What do you mean, you don’t have analytics? How are you measuring the success of your campaigns?”

I find myself asking that question over and over to both new and prospective clients. It seems like analytics would be the logical companion… especially when you may be spending thousands of dollars per month with online marketing initiatives. You would think, right? Well… that’s not always the case.

Maybe it’s that people don’t recognize the importance of an analytics program… After all, the major engines offer a free conversion tool. Shouldn’t that be enough? What do I need with analytics, if I already know how many people are converting?

If you have all the money in the world and don’t care about how much you spend on your traffic, then it might be okay to focus only on conversions… But, if you’re like most companies, the ROI is a big deal. In fact, ROI is at the center of most campaign strategies.

That being said, consider this. The “free conversion tool” tells you A, B, and Z
– A — Your ad got impressions
– B — Someone clicked on your ad
– Z — someone converted

It’s easy to forget about what happens in-between B and Z… Like, “how many people landed on your site, and clicked off without looking around?” or “how many people put a product into your shopping cart, but didn’t complete a transaction?”… Take it one step further, and ask yourself what it was that people typed in organically when your ad came up. If you sell CDs, do you want your ad to come up when someone searches for “free music”?

An analytics program will give you vital information to help identify issues with keyword choice, ad copy, and your shopping cart. It gives you tangible, raw data in it’s purest form… You can expand on keywords you didn’t realize people were searching on. You can see what your website is being associated with, and include negative keywords to prevent your paid ad from coming up among the undesirables. This will inevitably result in lower drop-off rates, and a higher ROI.

In a nutshell, It pays for itself.