• Finding the Sweet Spot, Friday, December 7, 2007 3:02 PM

Aside from lead-gen models like click-to-call or third-party sources like Yodle, there's no industry standard for making direct correlations between PPC ads and offline sales. But Scott Clark compiles info from fellow search marketers and a recent SMX conference to come up with an outline of five ways to link offline conversions to paid search campaigns.

Anecdotal tracking is the most ambiguous, since it just attributes a specific number of sales to the paid search efforts. As Clark says though, this method is "never, ever accurate" unless PPC is the only kind of advertising the company ever uses.

Direct questioning of customers at POS (either on the phone or in-store) is another method, but given the complexity of ad networks, the ubiquity of Google search and the nonchalant attitude of many shoppers, just getting accurate info may prove to be too time-consuming and difficult.

That leaves three more technologically advanced options, including "poor man's IVR," which Clark defines as linking a specific phone number to paid search ads, setting each one with a cookie (so that the number stays the same across sites for a pre-determined number of days) and then tracking the calls that come in on that number.

Read the whole story at Finding the Sweet Spot »