The pay-per-click (PPC) marketplace has been very good for Google. According to Statista, in 2022, Google ad revenue amounted to $224 billion. That's enough to float a couple of developing economies.
But are companies able to track the effectiveness of their PPC expenditures and specific campaigns?
Consider the travel retail industry. Customers searching for a holiday in Spain may be presented with several different adverts from the same or competing airlines.
If a customer clicks on an ad and subsequently starts a web chat with the airline contact centre, is there then a way to track which ad generated that engagement? Sometimes. Sometimes not.
To Follow the Money, Follow the Clicks - and Measure
"Many companies live and die by PPC," said Steve Tutt, Commercial Director at Kakapo Systems. "The success or failure of PPC is their whole business, and it's fundamental to them," he explained.
A contact centre's top-line cost structure is usually salaries and infrastructure costs. “Another major expense for BTC providers can be Google ad words," Tutt said. "And many companies don't have the granularity to know where they're getting the most bang for their buck on that advertising expenditure."
Tutt continued, “Analytics are key. Traditionally customers used separate call centre numbers for campaigns to track effectiveness. But now we do the same with web chats. So, if the customer has a monthly pay-per-click investment of, say, £20,000 per month, Kakapo can show how many of the resulting clicks from that campaign started from a web chat. And then we can show how many ended up as sales. It’s all mapped back to that £20,000 campaign.”
Track PPC With Precision
It isn't easy to measure the success of PPC campaigns. It requires a lot of metrics to determine which ads are most effective.
