Accurately attributing your PPC leads

By Alex Worth
28 Apr 2017

3 min read

The value of Adwords is $2 for every $1 spent (approx. £1.58:£0.79). This makes pay-per-click (PPC) one of the most important components of your marketing strategy.

Due to the high cost of PPC keywords, you need to make sure that each one you choose to bid on is pulling its weight. You can do this by accurately attributing PPC leads to their original source. But this is becoming more and more difficult as buyer habits are evolving to include more online research, and the rise in popularity of multichannel shopping.

As marketers, your aim is to focus on keywords that convert, but you can only ascertain the effectiveness of keywords through accurate attribution. You need a tool that can help you come to these conclusions as picking the wrong keywords could be a costly mistake.

However, PPC attribution is a complex and confusing challenge. There are many metrics and factors that can distort your analysis. Here we'll explore these issues and see if there is an existing method for accurate PPC attribution.

3 problems with PPC attribution

There are many ways in which PPC attribution can give you an inaccurate view of your data. Often this is not done on purpose but the result of a more relaxed approach to PPC or a lack of understanding of the intricacies of PPC advertising.

Here are the top three issues that cause conflicts when attempting to attribute PPC leads:

1. Increased audience bidding

Through the introduction of remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA), Google has given marketers the ability to target previous visitors to their website in different ways.

By tagging your entire desktop and mobile site to capture insights, you'll be able to create RLSA lists and segment them by user behaviour – e.g. past visitors/past converters.

You can then bid more aggressively on these lists through RLSA to compete for the top ad slots. Alternatively, you can choose to lower your bids for some lists, or exclude lists completely, to avoid targeting certain people based on their previous behaviour on the website.

Tips for RSLA: What you're bidding for must be relevant to the audience you're targeting, and be vigilant when boosting your bid as it may not be worth it. Only through accurate attribution will you be sure that you are targeting the right users.

2. Conversion tracking issues

Conversion tracking is a complex task, and it is easy to accidentally duplicate conversion actions.

Duplicate conversions occur when a visitor returns to the conversion page (e.g. a white paper landing page) or reloads the page. The conversion tag may be triggered twice and the second 'conversion' would be counted on the same order.

3. Ineffective attribution models

Attribution modelling is a relatively new field. Therefore, it is no surprise that most are inaccurate or misleading. Some models are still based on estimates, rather than real-time data, so the results are severely flawed.

Consequently, the PPC data is distorted, and any changes made to PPC bids/campaigns are also inaccurate. Many also struggle to account for multiple conversions. If a buyer purchases another product within the conversion window, the original keyword is still attributed to the action. How can call tracking improve attribution?

For accurate and actionable attribution, you need a solution that works both on and offline, as well as across separate devices.

Visitor level call tracking is the only way to be certain that your PPC leads are accurately attributed, as it gives each visitor their own unique phone number and ID so you can accurately track the customer journey.

Where Infinity comes in

Infinity has several features that make accurate attribution a possibility.

Highly accurate PPC tracking

By pulling data from Google and Bing, Infinity's portal can display campaign, adgroup and keyword data. You'll be able to see the impressions, clicks and PPC cost information in an intuitive format that will deliver a detailed understanding of the cost of each PPC campaign and the calls/conversions they deliver.

This level of call tracking gives you an accurate view of your ROI and allows you to create efficiencies in your PPC spend.

The Infinity portal allows you to add deduplication rules to your goals. This allows you to stop artificial inflation of your goal count if a customer was to reload the page, which in turn would refire the conversion trigger.

Conversion attribution

Infinity can allocate the cost of a sale against various touchpoints. It also assigns different weightings to different events so marketers can understand the value of the touchpoints you've paid for.

CRM integration

Integrating your CRM with your attribution data will allow you to work out the true ROI on advertising spend per campaign and keyword. It provides a valuable link between sales and marketing data, and allows you to change bids with confidence.

Visitor level call tracking is the most accurate way to attribute your PPC leads, and form actionable insight for your marketing team.