Metrics are important. You can’t run a successful pay per click campaign without setting goals, measuring data, and analyzing the proper information. There are many things, however, that are flexible. For instance, what metrics, exactly, are important to you? You might be interested in conversions and someone else could be interested only in leads generated. You might like to know how many visitors return to your site each month, but someone else may only be concerned with total visitor count because they have a one-time offer. Those are flexible items. But there is one thing that is not flexible if you want your pay per click advertising campaign to be successful.
The one thing that every pay per click advertiser needs to do well is analyze their metrics – whatever data they deem important to measure – over time. You can’t look at just one day and expect to understand what is happening. Trending is the story.
Metrics are a constant up and down motion. Fluctuation is the nature of the beast. That means you have to play the metrics game as if it is the stock market. Look at the trends. Did your conversions go up over the past three months? Why? Did you see more fluctuation than usual? Why? Did you see a jump in site visitors and a drop in returning visitors? What changes did you make to your landing page to cause that? Was there another trigger that caused the change? These are all questions you should be asking yourself as you analyze your data.
Metrics is not a zero sum game. It is a game of trends. The successful pay per click advertiser looks at trends over time and tries to figure out how to make those trends pay.
