I like to start blogs with stories because it makes such a great introduction, so it’s story time. I was at a friend’s business the other day when he asked me to look at his latest keyword report. He wanted to know “what to do to improve his performance.” The “report” was a list of keywords and their corresponding impressions, clicks, cost, CPCs and CTR. As he hovered over me with this worried and intrigued eyes like I was looking at an x-ray trying to determine how much longer he had to live. “What do you see?” “A bunch of keyword,” I replied. The question I promptly asked, which he odiously couldn’t answer, was, “how does this report drive your business forward”?
A lot of times, lesser Search experts will pawn a report onto a less knowledgeable business owner expecting them to take the report without question. An even more unfortunately, not wanting to look un-knowledgeable, business owner accept the report! As professionals and business people, we have to ask ourselves, “Does this report drive our or our clients business forward”? If the answer is no, then fix it. Before every report I build for a client, here is the process that I follow.
Pick Your KPI
Before a report can make a difference, two questions have to be answered: 1) what is the strategy? 2) What Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) show success? Reports are built to answer the main question of, “is this worth my time and money”?
Picking a KPI is actually easier than one may think. If you are an online store, well then it would make the most sense to pick revenue. If your website is designed to drive lead to your sales team, and then by all means make sure you tie your campaigns success to how many leads you drive.
Business is about driving profit and investing money that maximizes that effort. You’re reporting needs to highlight the KPI’s that show the success or failure of those efforts.
Pick Your Tool
Now that you have your goal and KPI’s picked out, find a way to track your success. As Eric Anderson pointed out in one of his posts, search marking is completely data driven. Search identifies data from a tone of different source, aggregates them together, and then produces actionable insights into the way consumers interact with brands. However, as he often says, “junk in, junk out.” If you don’t have the most accurate, accessible, and actionable data, then you won’t be able to make the most accurate and actionable decisions that drive your business forward.
If you have a website and are not using a form of Web Analytics to track your customer’s interactions, then shame on you. Here are some great solutions to get you started:
- Google Analytics, which is what I use on all of my small business clients and my own site
- NuConomy, which I have seen demo’s of and feel like it could offer a some great solutions for small business getting started with Web Analytics
These are great sources of information and can help track both Natural and Paid Search campaigns on the cheap…and fairly accurately. Google Analytics has actually started to releases some enterprise level features that are making GA and great solution for business at every level. Not happy with those solutions, try a search for small business web analytics solutions.
If you are an enterprise level client, strive to be an enterprise level client, or for those who have a more complicated business model, check out Omniture SiteCatalyst. Once you and your pocketbook get past the headache of training your people and customizing your tool, it is one exceptional program. The best part is that it works so well beside its A/B Testing platform and Search Management program.
If you are only working with Search (something I always recommend against), check out these great tools that not only track keywords to conversions, but also offer some cool bid management programs that help reduce the time spent on managing millions of keyword bids:
- SearchCenter: Absolutely awesome control over bid management, but way to expensive if you aren’t going to use it properly….which means bundling it with its web analytics counterpart.
- DART Search: If Google ever figures out how to integrate DART with Google Analytics, it will be a game changer. However, until then the interface and bid rules work well…especially if you are not trying to track web analytics data along with it.
- Atlas Search: Third and cheaper choice that I recommend for small to midsized business. Technology isn’t great, but it is better than working with nothing.
Design Your Output
Reporting Dashboards, PDF reports, Excel Files with every keyword known to man and yet you still can’t figure out what your report says? Over the years, I have become pretty good about developing dashboards within Web Analytics programs and within Excel. However, flash doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t tell you something worth wile. While I have placed “how to design a report” on my things to write about, the base line is this. Start with a pivot table that shows you the performance of each layer. Start with the account month over month (or week over week if you prefer) and then jump down to the next level….Initiative, Campaign, Category, AdGroup, Keyword, Product, etc. The basic principle of any report should help you answer questions that drive your business forward.
I will work on a post on how to analyze data (this one is long enough), but I’m hoping the information on at least what to expect out of a report has resonated. There are several ways to determine success, but being handed a list of keywords without an answer to “how does this help me” just isn’t one of them. Basically, if it doesn’t answer your question of how to drive your business forward, the report isn’t helping you…nor is the person handing you the report. Work with your client/agency to design a report that works for both of you; it will be best for all parties involved. Happy hunting!
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