Most advertisers in the past did not have the skills or awareness to engage in PPC conversion tracking. Many were put off by the high prices of most web analytics solutions while those that were engaged in some form of tracking probably only utilized last click attribution.
However, PPC conversion tracking has attained a lot of importance in these competitive times and has actually developed into a niche segment of the software industry. A growing number of software solutions now enable advertisers to track their campaign in great detail as well as point out channels that lead to successful conversions.
Even though attribution modeling is necessary, it is still a costly proposition and many marketers also have a tough time in implementing it. If you wish to engage in multichannel attribution, using multichannel funnels provided in Google Analytics is the best solution.
After a successful setup, you can certainly use multichannel funnels to view which keywords and campaigns result in conversions. In case you avoid using multichannel funnel reports for your campaign, you risk pausing ads as well as keywords that have led to assisted conversions, which in turn can result in fewer conversions.
You can also measure cross-channel integration once you begin to use multichannel funnels. Even though PPC may not deliver high number of last-interaction conversions, it might still have the power to provide high numbers of assisted conversions. Additionally, PPC may also be able to reach out to new clients at higher rates that might need more than a single visit to turn into a successful conversion.
By visiting the Tools section in AdWords and selecting Conversions followed by Search Funnels, you can extract excellent Search Funnel reports. These reports will help you to find out the number of clicks taken by visitors to convert, the number of days for a successful conversion, and the number of visitors that have been transformed into conversions.
Furthermore, features such as Assist Impressions in these reports can display ads that contained impressions rather than clicks that finally transformed into a conversion. The Time Lag report is another feature that allows you to view the number of days taken by a visitor to convert since not all visitors convert at the very first visit.
Such detailed data can be very useful to understand the exact impact of your ads over a longer period of time since several visitors may pay multiple visits and even conduct non-branded searches before finally converting over a brand search.
Multichannel funnels thus provide greater insight into your PPC campaign by providing detailed data on clicks that deliver instant conversions as well as clicks that transform into conversions at a later date. If you have not utilized multichannel attribution for your PPC campaign then you should certainly do so to track your campaign in far greater detail and achieve improved results.