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Posted by Uncle Sha
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How “good” is “good” when it comes to PPC (pay per click) conversion rate? If you use PPC in your marketing mix currently, you know that conversion rate is one of the most important factors in determining your PPC return on investment. When you pay for clicks, you spend a lot of time and energy making sure a lot of these clicks turn into some kind of action on your website. Website conversion can range from a simple contact form submission to a product sale. This is the definition of your PPC conversion rate: the number of conversions divided by the number of clicks.
We currently operate a website which markets custom t-shirts. We use PPC as a key part of our marketing strategy. The cost per click on some of our primary key words can get as high as $4.50 per click, so conversion rate is a make or break proposition for us. After several years of fine tuning our website and ad copy, we have been able to achieve 7% pretty consistently. The question is, how good is 7%? I have been asking this question for years. I have come to the conclusion that our 7% rate is a pretty good number for our product. I am basing this conclusion on three pieces of evidence:
The first evidence I would like to present is our history with PPC. When we started using PPC, our conversion rate was at only 2%. Through some good tracking tools and a lot of trial and error, we continued to fine tune our landing pages and ad copy. By closely observing our website visitors, we were able to move our conversion rate from 2% to 7% in about a 2 year period. My conclusion here is that 2% was pretty bad and 7% is pretty good.
The second reason I believe our 7% conversion rate is pretty good is through researching many articles. They are not always easy to find, but over the years, I have read enough articles to suggest that we are on the right track. Have we arrived? Of course not! 10% is our next target and I do believe we can get there.
The final evidence I would like to discuss is our work with a PPC Management and SEO company. About a year ago, we hired a very well known PPC Management company to take us to the next level. They convinced me that much could be done to increase our PPC return on investment. Much to my disappointment, they were wrong. In fact, my conversion rate dropped after I turned my PPC campaigns over to this company. I learned an expensive lesson that even the “experts” have a lot to learn sometimes. Needless to say, this company was unable to get us past the 7% mark. To their credit, I did learn quite a bit more about PPC marketing, so it wasn’t a total loss. But this did give me some confirmation that our conversion rate wasn’t half bad.
What’s your conversion rate? I’d love to hear from you! In a future article, I’ll give some details on how we moved our conversion rate from 2% to 7%. In the mean time, I wish you well in your PPC adventures.
Brian Foxx is a partner in a custom t-shirts company called Best American Tees. The company’s website for Custom T-Shirts was recently redesigned and relaunched to increase PPC effectiveness and overall SEO. The website offers a wide variety of custom t-shirts including: adult, youth, organic, long-sleeve, ladies’, ringer, and performance fabrics.
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27th Feb 2010
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Category: Advertising
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