With two months of work under our belt it’s time for an update. As a point of reference I’ll point you to the May 7 Pronto Insider on AdWords Campaigns as a reference point of our strategy. Here’s a summary of where we stand.

Click-through-Rate

A 2% CTR is, without other data, a good benchmark for CTR. For all of May and June our average CTR was .55%. However, through testing we’ve driven some keyword and ad combinations up to 1.5% averages. We’re confident that with more data and testing we can push this up and beyond the 2% benchmark.

Conversion

At 1.8% our web-based conversion is a bit under a conservative benchmark of 2% but well below top performing B2B sites of 5-10%. As I detail below this is where we should be focusing. In my table below I’ve assume a total conversion web+phone at 2x. Not everyone has reported their leads to us but of those that have this is a fair estimate. Phone will also be an inexact measurement. We are doing research now on the visitors that click and left the landing page for other pages on the site to get insight on where they went and what they did.

Lead Quality

It’s been some good and bad news. Overall we haven’t had significant issues with non-target leads. Initially we did have a few geo-targeting issues but made changes to avoid that. Nor have we had issue with home users. The poor quality leads that I’m aware of have been small business with the right infrastructure profile – they just haven’t been quality prospects; searching price only or a quick break/fix solution for instance.

ROI

We’ve had three closed sales reported, and a number of good leads. However, the majority of clients have not received any leads. There are minor differences between client campaign executions, for instance website are different colors. Any clients are in different areas as well. We just don’t have enough data to suggest that these are driving different results. Until we have data to the contrary we’re assuming that the differences are a normal random distribution and given enough time would even out.

The total spend for May and June, inclusive of our fees, is close to $7000. At this point I don’t know the value of the closed sales and pipeline but to be on the conservative side I’d put the ROI at about half where it should be.

Next Steps

At this point we’ve paused all campaigns for a week or so to create new landing pages with changes to the copy, design and forms. I am very sensitive to participating client budgets and would like to stop spending on clicks until we’ve got new landing pages in place. The data is clear in this area and we’ve been doing our homework on changes that can help with conversion. We will A/B test these with the existing ones.

Here’s my rational for a tight focus on landing pages and conversion at this point.

1. First row is actual performance.

2. 1 on 2 row: assumes improving CTR to 1% and conversion to 2% - a realistic short term goal

3. 2 on 2 row: assumes CTR to 2% and Conversion of 2% - improving CTR without improving conversion doesn’t change the ROL

4. 2 on 3 row: assume CTR to 2% and Conversion of 3% - now we see ROI improvement

5. .55 on 5 row: for the sake of illustration assumes no improvement in CTR but a 5% conversion – big impact on ROI

We have a good foundation with impressions – we know the keywords that drive impressions – and we can tune the ads for higher CTR. But at this point we need to be doing a better job to ensure that we convert the clicks you paid for. 1440 people have clicked through – we need more to turn more of them into leads.

Clearly all of these factors work in concert with a lot of variables. For instance, CPC (Cost per Click) of Keyword/Ads that produced conversions is $3.75 versus the $4.80 average. If you changed the $4.80 in the actual row with $3.75 the cost per sale drops to $1800. However, I’d caution against too many assumptions with what is still a small data set.

One interesting validation in the initial data is the 11.5% close ratio. When I solicited initial feedback on lead generation there were two “envelop math” data points that emerged. One was a 10% close of good leads as a reasonable assumption and the other if the cost per lead was $100 the ROI would be acceptable. It’s interesting that the Close % is close to that – we need to close the gap on cost per lead and that’s via Conversion.

It’s a disappointment that the rewards haven’t been shared equally across participating client but that’s the nature of the beast – at least until we have data to prove otherwise. I do expect that both we’ll improve results and the averages will in fact, average out. If you have questions or feedback please let me know.

Regards,

Derek