Web Site Savvy - CPC Cost Analysis

Mary C. | 16 February 2005 |

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WEB SITE SAVVY—INSIDE BLIZZARD TRACKER
INTRODUCING LIVE CPC COST ANALYSIS
Christine Burke, Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.

Blizzard is offering a new add-on feature for Blizzard Tracker ROI Edition called “Live CPC Cost Analysis”.

In previous editions of this newsletter, I have explained the benefits of campaign tracking and conversion tracking. Here is a quick review of these features, standard in the Blizzard Tracker ROI Edition. Campaign tracking allows you to see how many visitors your website is getting from your CPC (cost-per-click) campaigns, regardless of the referrer from which they came. For example, you paid for the click in Overture, but the visitor came from MSN. Conversion tracking adds another dimension; not only can you tell how many visitors came from each campaign and search term, you can also tell which visitors completed a sale, and how much they spent. You can see the quality (profitability) of the visitors delivered by each campaign, as well as the quantity of visitors.

Calculating your return without Live Cost Analysis
To calculate your return on advertising spend (ROAS), you need to login to your CPC account (e.g. Google Adwords or Overture) and get the statement that shows how much you have paid for each term that was clicked upon. You then compare those numbers with the revenues that came from the resulting visitors, as revealed by Blizzard Tracker. In other words, you collect data from different sources—the CPC account and Blizzard Tracker—and then you do the math yourself. One tool that can help with the math is our own ROI calculator, found at www.blizzardtracker.com/roi.html.

Letting the tracker do it for you
With the Live CPC Cost Analysis add-on, the tracker does the calculations for you, and displays the results in a unified report.
Here is a sample report. I’ve renamed the search listings to protect the client’s confidential information.

Here is the glossary of terms for the information that is displayed in the report.

Clicks: Number of click-throughs performed by new and returning visitors
Uniques: Number of unique visitor sessions
Returning: Number of visitors returning to your site who were originally acquired by the campaign
Cost: Total dollar amount spent on advertising campaign during the selected time period
Revenue: The revenue amount generated by first time and returning campaign visitors
ROAS: Return on Advertising Spend: revenue divided by the cost of advertising
CPA: Cost-Per-Action: cost of advertising divided by the number of actions (sales)
ACC: Average Cost-Per-Click

For more information about Blizzard Tracker ROI Edition, please visit www.blizzardtracker.com or call 888-840-5893.