Adwords Tracking

When you start reading about Adwords Tracking do your eyes start to glaze over? Your mind wanders?

For me tracking is one of the most important topics as a Search Marketer and I personally find it very interesting and know it to be one of the most impacting skills to learn as a PPC Marketer. The day I started paying more attention to it and applying it to all aspects of my business is the day I started to see real progress in the ‘profits’ department.

The trouble is there are so many things regarding Google Adwords tracking to learn. Google provides you a large set of data you can act on; you can never accuse them of holding back in that department.

The trick is learning what to pay attention to, figuring out what’s most important, how to track everything, what tools to use and how to filter all those stats so you can apply them in beneficial ways to your campaigns.

A good friend of mine online I’ve known for a few years, Adriana Copaceanu, contacted me this last week and asked if I wouldn’t mind answering some questions for her readers on her new blog (My Online Business Journey) regarding Adwords Tracking. I said, “Sure!” I knew tracking was a big topic, but here was a chance for me to help others understand the big picture and boil tracking down so it’s easier to understand and tackle.

After answering the questions it essentially turned into a 5 page report! So Adriana decided it would be best to break them up into parts and topics for better discussions on her blog.

I’ll post a link to each part here so you have them in one place. To understand tracking I believe you also have to understand how each level works from campaign to keyword. So you’ll not only learn what tools I use and recommend to track various things, but also what I believe you should pay attention to, how to decide what tools to use or start with and the importance of each element.

Here’s our Series on Adwords Tracking:

Part 1:
What is the difference between campaign, ad group, text and keyword tracking?

Part 2:
Google Adwords Tracking – Ad Group Level

Part 3:
Google Adwords Tracking – Text Ad Level

Part 4:
Google Adwords Tracking – Keyword Level

Part 5:
Is Google AdWords Tracking Important?

Part 6:
Adwords Tracking Helps You Make More Money

Part 7:
AdWords Tracking Made Easy

Great posts if you are interested in learning more about this topic and how to approach the myriad of tracking options and all the stats you have access to in your Adwords Account!

I hope this information helps! Good Luck!

-Matt Levenhagen

Pay per Click Advertising – Opening Profit Doors!

I’m a big believer in investing in my business to look for growth opportunities. This includes investing in market research and testing advertising channels or methods. I’ve been doing it for years.. I did it before I even had an online business or before I went full-time online in 2005.

In my previous offline businesses (which included insurance agencies, remodeling and painting businesses) in order to find customers or clients, I tested a wide range of advertising methods. These included ads in local papers (big and small), yellow pages, various lead systems offline and online, flyers and more!

When I found something that worked, I tested layout, size, copy.. words. Depending on the time of the year and season my copy would change to target different segments of the markets. Over time as my businesses developed I would focus my advertising to target segments for other reasons.

We are essentially doing the same things online. As Campaign Blasters (PPC Advertisers and Affiliate Marketers) we have our method of driving traffic. We find quality merchants, products and bring them to their markets using PPC.

Sometimes it’s a flop.. sometimes we have some limited success.. other times we find great SUCCESS. We get to the successes by taking action and testing, testing and testing. You can ‘think’ something will work. You can be ‘told’ something will work. But true learning comes from diving in, taking a chance and testing…

Those campaigns that do well we’ll attempt to expand that success. We spend more to get more out. We test our copy and target our markets better. We cut costs through things like negative keyword research, bid management and improving Quality Scores in various ways. We seek out more segments or adjust to focus on segments that can make us more money (through keyword research, analysis, tracking etc).

When we find a winning campaigns, our job has only begun. That’s Opened the profit door for us. We got our foot in there.. we open it further until we can slip into the profit room and scale our efforts.

I don’t put limits on what tools and devices one uses to expand their discovered winners. It can be just through PPC efforts or even expanding into the realm of SEO and beyond.

But the technique we use is to open the door using PPC.. investing in market research. Ultimately THAT is what we teach here in the Blast Membership. We teach you how to test markets, merchants and products using PPC. And then using that profit intelligence how to launch and expand further into those markets.

It’s a great thing to commit to building out websites or networks of sites in a niche market when you already are making money in that niche and have successful keywords to scale.

And as I said some flop.. the GREAT thing about being an affiliate marketer is that it costs us little to test a market. We didn’t invest in the development of the product, their website.. nada. We invested in a little advertising to see if we could make some money.

So we move on..

And we focus on the winners. We forget about the losers.. we were just testing; we don’t dwell on them.

If you are going to expend energy, expend it on winners or taking more action in new markets or with new merchants.. those things you have control over and care about. Forget about the rest.

As Affiliates (and especially Blasters) we have flexibility, can adapt and turn on a dime. Something doesn’t work.. we do our best to make it work and then just move. We’re off to testing or working on something else. We are diversified enough in that our risk is more spread out.

PPC is a powerful tool to hunt for profitable markets.. you aren’t investing thousands, sometimes 100s of thousands, in a franchise or some over-hyped opportunity. You are simply investing in the research, through advertising, that can help you wedge yourself into new markets. We make money first which tells us there is profit potential. And then, only then, commit more time, money and resources.

-Matt Levenhagen

Tracking + Split-Testing + Adwords = Better Results!

If you want to end the struggle and actually start to get GREAT RESULTS with Adwords advertising, there are a couple things that you need to really learn to do besides just manage your Adwords account.

If you are failing to get the results that you desire, learn how to track your clicks and conversions. And how to split-test your ads and landing pages.

Personally I want to make sure I’m tracking everything down to a keyword level. This way I know when I get a conversion exactly where that conversion came from and what keyword(s) to concentrate on. So you don’t just want to know what ad group or what campaign a conversion came from. You want more detail then that!

This will help you trim your costs and focus on those things that are making you money. Sometimes you’ll only get one conversion.. if you have thousands of keywords and don’t get a conversion again for a while, you might waste a lot of money trying to get that second conversion again. If you knew the exact keywords, then you could pause or delete what didn’t convert (and save massive costs sometimes) and concentrate your efforts on the winner!

And learn how to Split Test… this is very, very important!

I have to wonder how many marketers set up a campaign, point it at a landing page and didn’t get the results that they desired. And how many just shut down that campaign deeming their efforts a failure!?

Your next step should be to create identical copies of that landing page, and then modifying those copies and making a lot of different variations until you do get the results you desire; even changing the offer and message! For instance if I’m going to send traffic to a squeeze page, I want to have multiple versions of that landing page so I can split test them continuously until I get the results I desire – or beyond!

If that squeeze page is performing at only 5% conversion rate, I’m not going to just dump it. I’m going to figure out why it’s not performing well.

Don’t just give up! I think too many people do!

Also, I think what happens sometimes with marketers online is they are taught certain methods and ways of doing things, they are given templates to apply to their business and shown how to approach things.. but unfortunately not every approach works in every market or situation; you still need to test!

Everything that you’ve been provided or have learned in the past is just a guideline. It is your job to start there, but then to adapt it and improve it until you get the results that you desire or need.

If you are tracking and split testing, you will learn a lot more about your traffic, you’ll know what to concentrate on, and you will have more control over your results and in the end your profits!

– Matt Levenhagen

P.S. If you want to get serious about testing check out: Small Changes; Big Profits! (at least pick up the free 20 pages… I guarantee it’ll be worth the effort)