Success with Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns does not come easy, but you can improve your results if you know your numbers well and make proper adjustments. This is essential whether you work with an agency or self-manage your accounts.
Figure out how much a customer is worth to your business
Make sure you know how much a customer or lead is worth to you, and how much you can afford to spend to acquire them. Ideally, you should calculate your Customer Lifetime Value, which essentially means how much money you can expect to earn from a customer over your whole business relationship. This will allow you to set appropriate goals in terms of cost-per-conversion or sale.
Depending on your business, you might be able to lose a bit on the front-end (for example with a free trial offer), if you are able to make it back with subscriptions or future purchases. Your return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) goals for SEM campaigns should be closely aligned with your overall business profitability goals.
Track everything!
Another essential tip is to track conversions, usually leads or sales, but you can also track other actions on your website. Most SEM platforms allow you to generate a conversion tracking code to put on your website. In the case of Google AdWords, you can also link your account to your Google Analytics account. This way, you won’t have to make changes to your website’s code if you already have Analytics working, as well as allowing you to get more advanced metrics. Either way, you will now get conversion metrics right on your campaign dashboard.
Keep your eyes open
It’s also very important to check out your account’s performance regularly (at least once a week) and making the proper adjustments. SEM is very much like the stock market, so depending on supply and demand and other market dynamics, clicks and impressions can vary wildly over days, weeks, months, and even different times of the day, so you must stay on top of your campaigns if you don’t want to lose your shirt, but instead get maximum performance and ROI.
The bottom line
By applying these 3 simple adjustments, you can turn a losing SEM campaign into a winning one, and a winning campaign into a home-run!
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